Virtual airline (flight simulation)

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A virtual airline (English Virtual Airline , VA for short ) is a virtual organization that uses flight simulation to simulate the operation of an aviation company as a model. Virtual airlines usually have a presence on the Internet, similar to a real airline. There you can interact with several thousand participants at any time.

Content

The virtual airline simulates the flight operations of airlines using flight simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator , X-Plane , Flightgear and similar. To do this, you can register as a pilot and use the simulators mentioned to fly to flights based on a flight plan , which are often very similar to real air traffic . You often go through virtual careers that start with flying with smaller aircraft types and with increasing number of flying hours and experience, you can switch to larger aircraft. Although most virtual airlines aim for such a model, deviations are not uncommon.

More and more virtual airlines are also represented on flight networks such as IVAO or VATSIM . This is where the two groups “Virtual Pilots and Airlines” and “Virtual Air Traffic Control ” meet and complement each other to create virtual air traffic. It can be stated that this - in contrast to real air traffic - usually only flew in the evening and mainly in the northern hemisphere, whereby the interest and participation in this hobby is also increasing in emerging countries .

Virtual airlines are usually purely fictional and have no relation to real airlines, as many real airlines do not tolerate VAs with their names. There are, however, some exceptions where airlines have allowed their name and logo to be used for a virtual version of the company.

Use

In a virtual airline, the virtual pilot can deepen his knowledge and document the routes he has flown on the computer. With various virtual airlines, the focus is on the flying community, an open cooperation between the pilots, mutual help with a shared hobby and the exchange of experiences. A virtual airline can thus become the virtual home of a virtual pilot.

function

The registration of the completed flights is mostly done via a Pirep system . The VAs use either one of the various available programs in the free and payware area or a self-programmed one. These connect, for example, a flight log system for the simulator with an online database, whereby the recorded data can be automatically collected and transmitted to the VA. However, other VAs also use a web-based system into which the required data must be entered manually by the pilots. Here, too, virtual airlines either use one of the systems that are already in place or they have programmed their own.