Hagar just so you know: I'm with you.
I followed this post from the beginning and cannot understand either why someone wants to use FSedit. It stinks. From the beginning mine wouldn't load any panels to modify. As soon as I clicked on a panel the program would close. At the present moment it closes even earlier: as soon as I try to load the aircraft list.
I found out a lot of people have this problem, which has something to do with the number of aircraft in your folder.
Anyway. As far as I know the main reason for an airplane not to show up in the list is a fault somewhere in the aircraft.cfg file. This could be as simple as a spelling mistake in the file that comes with the downloaded aircraft. This happended to me a few times and I have always been able to solve it without FSedit. Taking a good look at the entries in the .cfg never hurt anyone I pressume. Thit way you learn what to look for, in preparation of the day your FSedit will let you down.
Question: this Cfgedit program, will it work in 2k2? In the downloads section it says it'for '98 and 2k.
Cheers
AJ