Growth, ACARS 101, and New Tours
Growth, ACARS 101, and New Tours
It's been another busy few days at VirtualFlight.Online!
The fastest growing Virtual Airline!
In a quite unexpected turn of events, it looks like we may be the fastest growing virtual airline in the world - and may even have more flights, hours, and miles being covered than any other virtual airline too.
Huge thanks go to VABase for supplying the software that under-pins our operation, and makes it all possible. Thanks also go to you - the community - for being a community - answering each other’s questions, reaching out to each other, and making our Discord server and Facebook group a great place to hang out.
We know there have been struggles in the first couple of weeks, but following a lot of hard work behind the scenes, everything seems to be calming down. I may even get a chance to do some flying!
Surviving Simulator Crashes and Internet Drop-Outs with ACARS
There has been quite a bit of discussion about how to handle disrupted flights this week - how to successfully log flights and tick off tour legs if your simulator crashes, your internet connection drops out, or whatever else.
Help is at hand:
If your flight has ended unexpectedly, go to the Dispatch page (under your name in the website), and make sure the flight is still dispatched.
If the flight is not dispatched, dispatch it again.
Open the Manual PIREP form. It will be pre-filled with the dispatched flight details.
Fill out the PIREP, and submit it.
The key in all of this is that a manual PIREP will only tick a tour leg as complete if it is pre-filled with a dispatched flight. If the PIREP form is not pre-filled, go back and dispatch the flight you need to record first.
New Tours!
Today we have three new regional tours for everybody to explore - open to everybody with a rank of Private Pilot and upwards:
The River Nile Regional Tour
Follow the nile from it's source in Uganda, through South Sudan, Sudan, an Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. Aircraft choice is unrestricted, and leg time estimates based on point-to-point with a Cessna C172. Expect longer durations if you follow the river. Beware the leg between Malakal and Khartoum - it's by far the longest leg - across the Sudan - at over 350nm. Many legs are under 100nm, with a few between 100 and 200nm.
Germany Regional Tour
A tour of Germany - visiting many of the major cities along the way. While designed for GA aircraft, aircraft choice is unrestricted. All leg estimate timings are based on the Cessna C172.
France Regional Tour
A regional tour exploring France. While the tour is designed for GA aircraft, aircraft choice is unrestricted. Most legs are between 70 an 100nm. All time estimates are based on the Cessna C172.
One more thing…
I tweaked the code of the virtual airline website to hold on to your logons. As long as you have the site open in a tab somewhere, it should no longer forget who you are every few minutes.