A Long Flight Locations Guide: Desert Places and What to Do at Each

Quick answer

The desert holds a handful of recurring kinds of places: gas stations, abandoned buildings and houses, at least one small airport, and abandoned or broken-down planes. Each has a job — fuel, loot, shelter or a replacement aircraft — and roads and railroads are how you find them.

• Gas stations — kerosene canisters for the plane, plus water, food, soda and flashlights.
• Abandoned buildings and houses — medicine, bandages, weapons and food; a furnished house can even serve as an overnight stop.
• A small airport — a landmark worth checking when fuel runs low.
• Abandoned and broken-down planes — one player found a better, flyable replacement with fuel already aboard.
• Roads and railroads — follow them in line with the radar to hop between places.

You start stranded in a vast, abandoned desert with nothing around but endless sand, forgotten places and an old airplane waiting to take flight. The mission is open-ended — keep the plane flying, explore the unknown and survive as long as possible — and you choose your own direction. That makes one question practical: which places are worth a landing, and what should you do once you're on the ground? If you haven't flown yet, the first flight walkthrough covers getting airborne.

The routine at almost every stop

Whether the stop is a gas station or a house, visits tend to play out the same way:

1. Land close to the building and stop the engine.
2. Kill the zombies around it — and the ones inside — before you loot.
3. Loot quickly. Zombies respawn over time, so there's no reason to linger once you're done.
4. Take off again; a road makes a handy runway.

The scavenging guide goes deeper into the looting side.

Gas stations: fuel for the plane

Gas stations are a recurring stop on the route — players come across them on flight after flight. The main prize is kerosene: canisters of it are a fuel you can put in the plane. Gas stations also yield water, food, soda and flashlights.

Expect zombies around the pumps every time. Clear them first, grab the canisters and leave, because new ones wander in over time.

Abandoned buildings and houses: loot, and sometimes a bed

Ordinary abandoned buildings are scattered along the route. Each holds zombies and a varying pile of loot — water bottles, medicine, bandages, a med kit, pilot rations, weapons and flashlights have all come out of them. Not everything inside is reachable, though: some fridges, cabinets and locked doors can't be opened.

A furnished house one player stopped at held bandages, a cooler and lanterns — and it doubled as shelter, since you can actually stay there and spend the night. An intact house is worth remembering as an overnight option. The scavenging guide covers what buildings hold, and the longest flight guide covers staying alive between stops.

The small airport: a landmark for low-fuel moments

The world contains at least one small airport. One player spotted it mid-flight, decided he could use the fuel, and landed there while his tank still had some in it. Exactly what an airport offers inside hasn't been confirmed yet, so treat it as a promising landmark rather than a guaranteed refuel point — but if you're passing it while low, it's a natural place to set down and look.

Abandoned planes (and your starting hangar)

Every run starts in a hangar where you assemble the plane. Out in the world you can also find abandoned and broken-down aircraft, and they can rescue a run. After lightning disabled one player's engine, he found a completely new, better plane nearby that already had plenty of fuel on board. He unscrewed the rear seats and doors he didn't need to free up cargo space and moved all his supplies across.

One swap doesn't mean every wreck hides a flyable plane, but it's a real reason to search the area before giving up on a dead engine or a wrecked airframe — and stripping seats and doors you don't need turns a replacement into a proper cargo hauler. If you'd rather fix the plane you have, the longest flight guide shows how to reattach detached parts.

Finding places: roads, railroads and the radar

You pick a direction yourself, and the way players navigate is by following a road or railroad visible on the ground and keeping it in line with the radar. Flying along a road is how players have kept finding buildings one after another, so pick a stretch and follow it. The navigation guide has more on reading the route.

What's between the stops: hazards in the open sand

The gaps between places aren't empty. Things players have met out there:

• Tornadoes. One player flew toward what looked like a burning gas station — it turned out to be a tornado — and his plane vanished inside it.
• Rain and lightning. A strike can disable your engine; that's exactly how the plane-swap story above started.
• Stray zombies can show up in the open, not just around buildings.
• Junk finds. Not everything out there pays off — a rusty car parked near a gas station held nothing useful.

These are encounters players have actually had, not fixed rules for every flight, but they're a good argument for flying with a destination in mind. The desert dangers page covers the survival side in more detail.