Flights

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What fights are available?

Broadly speaking, there are two types of flight at VirtualFlight.Online - scheduled flights, tours, and free flights.

• Scheduled flights are pre-determined flights from a departure airport to a destination.

• Free flights are what you want them to be - your choice

We have pre-programmed a lot of scheduled flights and tours into the airline already, and we will be adding more tours every month going forwards.

Scheduled Flights

Scheduled flights are based on a "hub and spoke" system. Back when we founded VirtualFlight.Online, we chose 7 hubs on each continent - major airports, but perhaps not the usual airports people might think of in order to add some variety to the world of online aviation. From those hubs, we then added over 600 "spoke" airports - essentially all of the "International" airports throughout the world. We then calculated all of the suitable routes from hub to hub, and all of the routes from each hub to the spokes within a given range, and matched the result against the capabilities of each fleet of aircraft - resulting in approximately 6,000 potential flights.

To initiate a scheduled flight:

• Search the flights on the Flights page (it takes a moment or two to load) - and can filter the flights by a number of parameters.

• Either send the flight directly to ACARS (which will launch ACARS), or pre-file with Simbrief - both options appear above each flight.

Remember that scheduled flights are tied to aircraft - so may not be available to you based on your rank. As you file hours and raise in rank (see the ranks page), the flights available to you will increase via the aircraft you are qualified to operate.

Free Flights

We have pre-programmed the database behind the airline with all of the stock airports in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Over 40,000 of them. You're free to fly between any of them, flying any aircraft you are qualified for, and log it through ACARS.

To initiate a free flight:

• Spawn in at Departure Airport

• Please keep free flight "flight numbers" below 1000 to differentiate them from the scheduled flights.

• Flight numbers do not have to be unique

• Make sure your aircraft is in a parking area awaiting pre-flight before starting the flight in ACARS (otherwise it may complain that you're not at the airport)

Tour Flights

Tour flights are curated sets of flights that can be booked into ACARS to fly. Visit the Tours page of this website to access the curated lists of flights. It's up to you to record your own progress through tours, so have fun inventing that. Filed PIREPS will of course maintain a record too.

To initiate a tour flight:

• Spawn at the departure airport

• Visit the appropriate tour leg page (via the Tours page)

• Either send the leg directly to ACARS (which will launch ACARS), or pre-file with Simbrief - both options appear above each leg.

• Make sure your aircraft is in a parking area awaiting pre-flight before starting the flight in ACARS (otherwise it may complain that you're not at the airport)

Demystifying the Flight Numbers

Here's a quick guide to how the flight numbers are made up:

Scheduled Flights

Scheduled flights are prefixed with a code related to the airline (as listed below), with flight numbers starting at 1001. They do not use codes or leg numbers.

• VW - VirtualFlight.Online World (long haul - 747, 787, etc)

• VE - VirtualFlight.Online Express (consumer - A320, B737, etc)

• VB - VirtualFlight.Online Business (business jets - L35A, CJ4, etc)

• VT - VirtualFlight.Online Transport (turboprops - B350, SH33, etc)

• VH - VirtualFlight.Online Historic (heritage - DC6, DC3, etc)

The "Flying Club" (VC) has no scheduled flights.

Free Flights

You can enter any details you wish into the Flight page of ACARS - just be careful not to enter the number of a real flight if you don't want your PIREP to become attached to it.

For this very reason, please keep free flight numbers below 1000, and don't use code or leg numbers.

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