New Tours, Schedules, Aircraft, Liveries, and Software
It's been another busy few days as our start-up airline continues to grow - confounding all expectations along the way.
Wow… what a week it’s been. At the time of writing we’re heading towards 400 pilots, two thirds of a million miles flown, and from a standing start have almost logged more hours than any similar airlines on the internet.
It’s all down to you - the pilots - and your continued ideas, suggestions, enthusiasm, and patience. Yes - patience. We are still not completely over the infrastructure issues that have been going on for the last week - although things are getting better every day.
Rather than write endlessly about not very much I would just like to extend a huge thank you to everybody involved in VirtualFlight.Online so far - particularly those that contribute their time and effort to help others. Your efforts are noticed.
Best regards,
Jonathan Beckett
Founder, VirtualFlight.Online
New Tours
This week we opened up a number of new tours for aviators to explore. The Canadian tours pre-empt the arrival of World Update 11, which includes Canada.
Canada West Coast Regional Tour
An airport hopping tour starting out at Whitehorse, and working it's way down the west coast of Canada towards Kelowna. Leg lengths vary from 75 to 150nm, designed for GA, transport aircraft, and small jets.
The Maritimes Regional Tour
A regional tour taking us around Nova Scotia, to Price Edward Island, and across Newfoundland. Leg lengths range from 60 to 120nm - perfect for GA, transport, and small jet aircraft.
New Zealand North Island Regional Tour
A series of GA flights taking you from the far north of the island, departing Kaitaia, following the East coast down to the Capital City of Wellington, then heading back to the north visiting a variety of airports. The final destination is Auckland International. The legs are best completed in GA aircraft - with a Cessna 172 estimated to complete most legs in between 25 to 45 minutes. Some of the airports have grass Runways.
Rallye Toulouse St Louis Historic Tour
Re-creating the routes of Aéropostale, and the first air-mail pioneers, the Rally from Toulouse to St Louis du Senegal and back forms the basis of this tour.
Aéropostale (formally, Compagnie générale aéropostale) was a pioneering aviation company which operated from 1918 to 1933. It was founded in 1918 in Toulouse, France, as Société des lignes Latécoère, also known as Lignes aeriennes Latécoère or simply "The Line".
New Scheduled Flights
The Alps
This week we connected many of the airfields throughout the Alps to each other with scheduled flights for aircraft such as the Cessna Grand Caravan, the Kodiak, and the Twin Otter.
Search the schedules by departure airfield, aircraft type, or flight number - all of the Alps routes begin with “A”.
The connected airfields are:
LIMA Aeritalia
EDDO Agathazell Airfield
LFLB Aix-Les-Bains
LFKA Albertville
LSPM Ambri
LFLI Annemasse
LIMW Aosta
LIDA Asiago
LICH Aviosuperficie Chavez-Marini
LIQM Aviosuperficie Passo Del Tonale
LIYL Aviosuperficie San Felice
LSZE Bad Ragaz
LSZB Belp
LJBL Bled
LIPB Bolzano
LIPN Boscomantico
LSZC Buochs
LFLE Challes-Les-Eaux
LFLJ Courchevel
LOIH Dornbirn
LSGE Ecuvillens
LOWK Flughafen Klagenfurt
LOLU Gmunden-Laakirchen Airport
LOWG Graz
LOWI Innsbruck
LFHU L'Alpe D'Huez
LFUK La Motte Du Caire Glider Field
LFLG Le Versoud
LSZL Locarno
LSZA Lugano Airport
LOGM Mariazell Airport
LIDT Mattarello
LFHM Megeve Airport
LFLP Meythet
LFHZ Mont Blanc
LSPU Munster Airport
LOGO Niederoeblarn Airport
LOKL Nikolsdorf Airport
EDPL Ohlstadt Airfield
LSTA Raron
LSGR Reichenbach
LSGK Saanen
LFNC Saint Crepin
LFMR Saint Pons
LOWS Salzburg
LSZS Samedan
LSZX Schanis Airport
LSGS Sion
LILO Sondrio Caiolo Airport
LSZR St Gallen Altenrhein
LOIJ St Johann
LFNA Tallard
LOGI Trieben
EDUE Unterwössen Airfield
LSPV Wangen-Lachen
LOWZ Zell Am See
LSTZ Zweisimmen
New aircraft join the fleet
This week two new aircraft join the fleet - the Beechcraft Model 18, and the deHavilland Tiger Moth.
Beechcraft Model 18
The Beechcraft Model 18 (or "Twin Beech", as it is also known) is a 6- to 11-seat, twin-engined, low-wing, tailwheel light aircraft manufactured by the Beech Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. Continuously produced from 1937 to November 1969 (over 32 years, a world record at the time), over 9,000 were built, making it one of the world's most widely used light aircraft. Sold worldwide as a civilian executive, utility, cargo aircraft, and passenger airliner on tailwheels, nosewheels, skis, or floats, it was also used as a military aircraft.
deHavilland DH.82 Tiger Moth
The de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth is a 1930s British biplane designed by Geoffrey de Havilland and built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. It was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other operators as a primary trainer aircraft. In addition to the type's principal use for ab initio training, the Second World War had RAF Tiger Moths operating in other capacities, including maritime surveillance and defensive anti-invasion preparations; some aircraft were even outfitted to function as armed light bombers.
This Week’s Group Flight
The Sunday night group flight will be hosted by Emanuelle (MisterO, of Flight Simulator livery making fame) this week - exploring the Pyreneese mountains. To find out details of the route, keep an eye on the #events channel in Discord later in the week.
If you’ve not taken part in group flights with us before, it’s all very relaxed. We gather at the departure airfield at the time detailed in the flight notes, join the voice chat in Discord, and fly a route together. The only real “rule” is to keep voice chat family friendly.
We usually aim for flights to finish within two hours, performing touch-and-gos at airfields en-route, and stopping for a few minutes half-way to re-fill glasses, or take a comfort break.
New Liveries
MisterO has been busy creating new corporate liveries for the VirtualFlight.Online fleet over the last several weeks - the following are now available for download:
Transmitter gets an upgrade
The little application that started it all saw several small updates this week - culminating in version 1.0.1.9. The latest version improves the connect/disconnect logic within the application, and introduces a news feed to keep users up-to-date with the latest news from VirtualFlight.Online.
If you’ve not already installed it, you can download it for free from FlightSim.To:
Help Support VirtualFlight.Online
While the platforms and facilities offered by VirtualFlight.Online are free to all members, running them is not. If you are in a position to help support VirtualFlight.Online, we have a Patreon account:
All contributions are gratefully received. Huge thanks to those already supporting us - you’re helping to make everything we do possible.