In the coming months I will start to lay the foundation for a new kind of Virtual Airline. I have chosen to base it on the small New England based airline Cape Air. This airline also services Florida and the Caribbean. One of the main reasons for choosing this airline is because I am also an employee for Cape Air. I stated earlier that this is a new kind of VA and it will be. There are two main features that I will be working on that will allow this VA to be unique. One will be support from the actual airline itself. The other will be the use of FSMaintenance. As far as the involvement of the real Cape Air, well, that will be announced once I have a presentation to provide to the proper departments. As for the FSMaintenance portion, it will work something like this. By using FSMaintenance our fleet will age and be serviced like a real fleet would. Also pilots will use our planes and return them to the hanger and be assigned different a/c that has been flown by their fellow pilots. By FSMaintenance Cape Air VA will also be able to become a profitable VA or one that finds itself in debt. It is for this reason that choosing the right pilots will make a big difference. A quick run down on how it will work is this. Like all pilots, prior to becoming an employee you need to go thru some checks. Background, credentials, and flights are just some of the things. Once the Chief Pilot feels that a pilot is ready and able to fly for the VA then he/she will become part of the family. Next the pilot will bid on his/her routes. Routes will consist of locations and not times or days. Cape Air runs hourly service to most of there locations on a daily basis so when I pilot will bid on a VA route, that pilot will basically be stating where they want to fly to and from and leave it to the pilot to fly when they can (with the understanding that they should fly the same schedule times as the real airline). The pilot will be restricted to how many legs they can fly on a certain airframe until the a/c needs to be returned to the hanger and a new a/c will be assigned. This will ensure that all our a/c are inspected and are reliable. The a/c will then be put into maintenance and the chief mechanic will determine what repairs need to be done if any. All flights will be logged using the FSMaintenance feature and the .cvs file will be emailed to the Chief Pilot which will state the performance of the pilot. All fuel used will be logged as well and will be an expense drawn against the companies income. Virtual Dollars (V$) will also be used as an expense to pay our pilots. We will have an accountant to take care of our V$. For those who have used FSMaintenance you might have a good idea of how this might work. After every logged flight FSMaintenance provides you with a window stating how much is made in income, how much is set aside for repairs, and how much fuel is used. This info is stored in a file and that file will be emailed back to Operations (Ops) to where each department will get the info the need and update the companies standing. Basically we will just be using the Balance amount in V$. If a pilot does his/her job of flying right the company will make money. If the pilot has a bad flight then we will loose money. One thing about the real Cape Air is that many flights get repositioned or

Wow!! this is fantastic! Exactly what I was going to try to do, but I didn't know how to pull it off with FSM! I think that FSM should definately be required for all VA ops.let me know how your VA is coming! I would like to be a pilot.ciao!Brian S

This sounds like a great idea! Especially since I've been flying a lot of Cape Air routes since I got the 421. Mike

Sounds like a great idea, FS maintenance adds a new dimension to flying, definitely interested!!

Perfect Idea, I was going to do the same, but for me i had it all planed out. if you want, maybe we can team together and get this VA up and going, I can get a Cessna 402 and repaint it.E-mail me at [email protected] for your idea.Trevor Bigwood