Yep, I was planning to have another look on here to see if someone from Captain Sim would have said "yes, you're right, the ready for takeoff state doesn't work, but we are aware and we are fixing it" but clearly they basically just don't care.

I just came across a Youtube review from 3 months ago that states the same thing, the ready for take off state, amongst other things doesn't work.

I will investigate a wee bit more, and if starting it up from cold and dark actually works, I will try that, but having already wasted about 5 hours of my life teying to get this plane to work as it should, I would like to find some kind of confirmation that it actually works properly after starting it from cold and dark before spending any more time on it.

Yes, I only paid $9.99 for the product, but my "at work" chargeout rate for the time I have spent trying to get the aircraft to work is many hundreds of dollars already.