A day doesn’t seem to go by at the moment without something new to tell everybody - either to help, guide, or inform our fast growing community. I’m sure the updates will slow down as we figure out how to run a virtual airline, or even what a virtual airline is or should be.
At the moment we’re fuelled by coffee and enthusiasm.
Anyway - please read this update - it’s an important one.
Jonathan Beckett
Founder, VirtualFlight.Online
Drawing up Guidelines
I’m going to let you in on a secret. We don’t review pilot reports. Given that there’s two or three volunteer staff, and over four hundred pilots (and more every day), we are never going to review pilot reports. Therefore we rely a lot on trust from pilots that the reports they file are accurate, fair, and representative.
Without getting into who, how, or why, we’re going to set out some basic guidelines that everybody will be expected to abide by if flying routes while being tracked by ACARS, or filing flight reports:
You will not use time acceleration within the simulator.
You will not use any form of teleportation within the simulator.
You will not use any “slew” type feature.
If you have to file a manual PIREP, it will be accurate, fair, and representative of the journey you completed.
We completely understand that some flights can be boring if you’re doing no more than twiddling your thumbs for several hours - and that’s why the various classes of tour exist - they allow you to find a flight of a length suitable for the time you want to devote.
We trust that everybody will try to abide by these guidelines going forwards.
New Tours
We always seem to have new tours to tell you about - and that’s probably never going to change.
This week brought three new Class D tours:
Chile
A tour of Chile, from the far south of Guardiamarina, through the mountains and flat-lands to Chavalluta on the border with Peru and Bolivia. Aircraft choice is unrestricted. Legs range from 160 to 280nm. Estimate leg times are based on the Cessna C208B Grand Caravan.
Visit the Chile Tour
Alaska
A tour of Alaska, starting out in Ketchikan, and heading north around the coast before ending on Kodiak Island. Aircraft choice is unrestricted - although perhaps dictated by leg length and runway length. Legs range from 200 to 300nm. Time estimates are based on the Cessna C208B Grand Caravan.
Visit the Alaska Tour
India
A tour if India - starting out in Amritsar in the north east, and then touring the country until we arrive in New Delhi, 4000nm later. Aircraft choice is unrestricted. Each leg ranges from 180 to 400nm long. Time estimates are based on the Cessna C208B Grand Caravan.
Visit the India Tour
Support
If you are in a position to help fund the internet machinery that makes VirtualFlight.Online possible, everybody in the community will be appreciative. As you may have noticed, we hit a speed-bump with Google Maps this week - who knew that 400 people requesting maps repeatedly would increase costs by an order of magnitude!?
Seriously though - if you can help, that would be great. We have a patreon account: