May 2022 VA Update
Hello Pilots,
This news update brings some more airline news and development updates.
Airline News
We have added AeroUnion, a subsidiary of Avianca. This will provide more cargo routes throughout the America's. With Air India's privatization the Alliance Air subsidiary has left the Air India Group. As such it has been removed from the VA. We are monitoring real-world developments regarding the new ownership of Air India, and changes this may bring along in one of the fastest growing aviation markets.
Development Updates
All airlines have received their new summer schedules except for cases where there are still significant COVID related service disruptions. If there are routes missing please let us know via support ticket, and we will add these routes as soon as possible.
We are working on improving gate information, if you would to help collaborate on gathering gate information for airports please let us know by creating a collaboration type support ticket. We will provide a document that can be filled out and imported to help improve our coverage.
Closed airspaces
Current scheduled flight time durations may need to be amended due to longer flying times on account of closed airspace. Exceeding the listed scheduled flight time for this reason is expected and not an issue. If your flight is given a remark incorrectly please let us know via support ticket.
You can find more information about which airspaces are closed and how the civil aviation situation is developing at this FlightRadar24 page. Please adhere to these closures when performing flights on the VA.
Event Updates
We are working with the vACEPG initiative to co-host more VATSIM events. The next one is scheduled for the 15th of May, please check the Events page for more details, we hope to see you there! Please let us know via Discord and the forums what kind of events you would like to see! To receive more frequent updates please subscribe to the Event Announcements notifications on our Discord server.
Tour updates
Following feedback, we have decided to make the following changes to our tour structure. Currently, there are five types of tours, namely: New Pilot, Regional, Themed, Aircraft, and Airline tours. Our restructuring of the tours will start with New Pilot, Regional, Themed and Aircraft tours.
- Firstly, all tours will now have a start and end date giving you time to plan your flying. This was mentioned by various pilots. Most tours will be active for 12 months except for special or seasonal tours i.e., the Winter Sun tour. Aircraft tours will be valid for 18 months and consolidated into aircraft families, for example E-Jets, etc.
- Tours will be re-organised with those ending first at the top left of each category.
- New Pilot, Regional, Themed tours will be limited to 8 tours per section.
- Majority of tours will have no more than 20 legs, again a common request from pilots.
- We will focus on short-haul routes for most tours, especially with the monthly tours.
- In the Autumn we will introduce a new tour category called ‘Second chance’ or something similar where we will re-activate popular tours for an additional 3 months to enable you to finish a tour.
- We will do our best to schedule the tours in such a matter that and on average two to three tours ends and new tours starts every month.
- A common request was to add bonus points once a tour is completed. Due to the limitations of the points system, this is not currently possible.
To enable you to earn extra points we will introduce a new monthly focus flight, which will be a leg on the monthly tour. Additionally, we will introduce one-off events to earn extra points, e.g. flights into EDDF on one day of the month (weekends) to receive bonus points.
All these changes will be implemented over the summer and should be ready by the start of September.
As always let us know what you think of these changes.
Closing words
As always if you have any suggestions please let us know.
We would also like to remind you we have a Discord server. To join it, use discord.gg/gUTREjv.
