Aims

What we are trying to achieve at this Virtual Airline is to simulate flying Holiday Charter Airline Flights from Regional Airports in the United Kingdom ,Eire ,Germany and Sweden to holiday resort airports mainly in Europe bordering Rovaneimi in Lapland through  Moscow, Bulgaria ,Turkey Cyprus Egypt, Tunisia , Morocco and the Canary Islands Ireland  and Norway.  This is a similar operation to  what  the real world airlines such as TUI , Thomas Cook ,Monarch and Thomsonfly operate.

 In addition some long haul destinations are chosen such as Indian Ocean , Bermuda Jamaica ,Cuba Mexico USA and Canada. A guide to operating to these destinations can be found elsewhere on the website. You may choose you own  Holiday Resort  Airport as our guide is not set in stone. Holiday brochures can be a good guide for theses faraway shores holidays.

You can choose which of the Regional Airports in the  United Kingdom ,Eire ,Germany and Sweden  you want to start from. 

All Airports must have adequate runway lengths for the aircraft you operate plus emergency services fueling and customs facilities if operating to countries not in the EU and of course the airport must be able to handle this type of aircraft.  Regional Airports in the  United Kingdom ,Eire ,Germany and Sweden are also known as Homebase Airports 

Please note that most of the Mediterranean resorts close from 1st Nov to 1st May in this case flights cease but ski flights start on the 1st December until 30 March each year. (So do look out for the ski resorts they are quite a challenge often in mountain valleys with fog and snow.)

Aircraft Types

You then choose which type of aircraft you wish to use. Most charter airlines use Airbus A320,A330s or Boeing 737,757.767s. As regard computer flight simulator there are many good add on aircraft you can purchase. Our pilots have voted the  the Level D Boeing 767 as the best add on aircraft.  Indeed our flight school has a course on this to help you get more professional with it. You can use the Microsoft default aircraft. Our airline liveries are on the Avsim website linked from our Aircraft Page on this website.

Departure Times

Having chosen your departure and destination airports and type of aircraft you now choose a departure time. On long flights over 3 hours you may like to make an intermediate stop on route around the halfway mark. For example Gatwick to Tenerife you could stop at Faro in Portugal.

Charter Airlines do not fly to the same resort every day like scheduled airlines do. The departure times will be more or less the same time at homebase airports only the destination changes each day.

Our Departure Off Block Times from our Homebase Regional Airports to the resorts are in UTC time

Sweden & Germany Homebase Airports

UK & Ireland 

On arrival at the resort or intermediate stop you can either save the flight and fly the return leg another day or depart back one hour later

Recording Flight Time

Your flight time starts when you release the brakes to push back at the departure airfield until you park on the gate at the destination. Use your watch not the flight simulator time for this flight then send your flight times in using the form on the website. Accelerated time does not count.

 For example You fly Gatwick to Miami using accelerated time the computer flight time would be about 8 hours but you took off on your watch at 1130 and arrived at 1530. You can only claim 4 hours.. We work in blocks of 15 minutes so if your flight was 2 hours 35 mins you would claim 2.75 hours when you sent the flight report in. see the table below for how to work the hours and decimal part out. Please do not send flight reports in in hours and minutes as this confuses our system. use decimal for parts of the hour as below.

To remain a member of this Virtual Airline you must submit one flight report per month or ask for leave otherwise your membership will be terminated.

If your Rostered Flight Hours are wrong please contact Geoff and advise what they should be

Flights on VATSIM

Many of our pilots fly on VATSIM. You do not need our permission to join fly ins outside of our area of operations they can be classed as a special event. Please use your pilot number on these flights using the code BCA. Your hours will count just place VATSIM  Event in the remarks column of  your flight report. It is not compulsory that you have to fly on VATSIM to be a member of this Virtual Airline

Multiplayer Flights

Normally we operate multiplayer flights on the last Sunday of the month. This is where we all get together and fly around Europe. please watch the multiplayer news page for details. Use your BVA pilot number and first name when connecting. The Teamspeak program is also used for speaking please learn  how to use this. The forum gives details how to connect. It is not compulsory that you have to fly multiplayer flights to be a member of this Virtual Airline.

Forum

We have a help and chat forum please register with your pilot number and first name new pilots have PUT and number until they complete 20 hours 

register as either PUT** Geoff  or BVA** Geoff   no other format is  permitted

You must sign in once a month even if you do not post a message or your forum membership may be terminated.

Leave of Absence

You must contact us by sending a flight report in at least once a month normally or your membership will be terminated. We accept that from time to time people cannot fly. Please drop the Chief Pilot an email if you need leave and give an indication when you are going to return. Persons failing to comply with this courtesy request will have membership terminated and all hours are lost. We can only allow up to six months leave at a time after that your pilot number maybe reissued. This is done to prevent vast gaps in numbers on the rosters which makes the roster look untidy.

Real World Procedures and our Flight School

We try and fly as close as possible to real world procedures. Our flight school will teach these to you. This applies to flight planning using correct routes which we accept a beginner may not know and gradually they can learn. Air Traffic Control Radio and other procedures. Bad weather procedures, ETOPS procedure and North Atlantic Procedures. Altimeter setting procedures, and the law that pilots need to know. Manost modern aircraft now arge glass cockpits with many gadgets to help the pilot we give a few tips on how to become a professional.

Our Website and Grievance Procedures and how our Management works

Basically Geoff is the webmaster and sorts out the operating procedures, flight reports and day to day running  Fred assists Geoff and runs the VA in Geoff's absence he is the VA domain sponsor. Alf is the Multiplayer Training Officer and sets up all the fly in equipment and can give new pilots individual training .Howie is the VATSIM Liaison Officer and Simon Roberts is our Fleet Manager that paints our aircraft.

Occasionally we have to take emergency action and change policy or cover events without consulting our pilots sometimes our pilots can get upset about something and if this is the case please contact Geoff and let him know and we will try and explain it to you and if we can put it right. We do not want any ill feeling here. We do try to consult pilots before hand if this is possible. Sometimes we do not see all the picture and your feedback is always welcome. we are a team here of which all of you are members.

Newsletters

Do please read our newsletters we try to do them weekly published on Fridays  they are linked from the Crew Centre.