Fun until the 26-hour flight
I used to play a lot of Flight Simulator. As long as you're learning to take off and land, it's fun, but after a while... 26-hour transatlantic flights; no thanks.
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Microsoft Flight Simulator
Chapters 3, 7, 10
Do not sleep on this, Lifelong Gamers. Microsoft Flight Simulator lets you fly anything from a single-engine propeller plane to an airliner over a detailed model of the whole planet. I gave the game a spin expecting nothing from it—I only tried it because so many 50+ gamers in my research played it—but it is much more fun than I ever expected. I started with the 2020 version and I have never upgraded it, so my recommendation to newcomers is to look at the Steam reviews and figure out which version fits their goals.
Grownup Gaming Stories
Four stripes on a screen, and I was flying
I always wanted to be a pilot, an airline pilot. That never happened, of course, but it remained a dream. So when I learned about computers, I got myself an old laptop. The monitor showed four or five stripes. That was all the graphics it could manage. But those stripes became a plane and it even made a simmering engine sound. The plane actually took off in my mind! And that was DOS. I played that for hours on end. And of course, then came Microsoft Flight Simulator and so on. I still play today; it stays virtual. It's even much harder than really flying, because you actually see nothing. You're missing a dimension.