Fortnite Trick Lets Players Save Fuel While Flying Planes

With the start of Fortnite's Operation Snowdown event, the X4-Stormwing planes have once again returned to the battle royale game. This time though, they have a fuel tank to govern how long players are able to stay in the air, presumably to ensure that players don't just fly above the battles the whole time while being protected by their planes. Players have already figured out a way to make the fuel last longer though so that they don't run out as quickly, and there's even a way to refuel them mid-flight.

The trick to conserving fuel involves the simple step of hopping over to the passenger seat while you're flying the Stormwing. The primary advantage of this is that you can aim and shoot your normal weapons as a passenger and not the pilot, but it's got the added advantage of conserving fuel. The video below from FortniteINTEL shows the trick in action.

ICYMI: You can fly forever by switching to the passenger seat on the X4-Stormwing. pic.twitter.com/FoZzneUIsK

— Fortnite News (@FortniteINTEL) December 23, 2020

The trick isn't foolproof since you'll have to regain control of the plane eventually to correct your course which will use fuel, so you won't be able to fly a Stormwing for forever, but you'll be able to pilot one for a long time. As some players have pointed out online, it appears that you can't stay in this state indefinitely, however. Players have said that the green circle that fills up in the center of one of the plane's gauges when you start flying is an indicator for how long you can go without flying the plane, but we haven't tested that part ourselves to determine if that's indeed how it works.

Shoot down opponent structures with X-4 Stormwings to unlock the Winter Wing Glider!

Report to Snowmando to start the quest. pic.twitter.com/FdObBKRJxB

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 23, 2020

Tricks like this used to conserve fuel will be especially important considering some of the Operation Snowdown challenges pertain to the Stormwing planes right now. One like the one above tasked players with shooting down structures while in a plane, but even without those sorts of challenges live, you can expect planes to be a hot commodity given how rare they are in Fortnite.