United Virtual Airlines reaches 600 members strong

[Guest SIX]

CHICAGO, June 27, 2004

[Guest jonf]

Question: How come almost every VA considers a pilot with 0 hours an active pilot? If they've never flown a flight then they can't be very active. Shouldn't they be added to the active roster after they file their first flight? Also, I've always wondered what other VA's consider the amount of time to consider a pilot as being active? Some do 30 days, others 90 and others still don't ever remove pilots from their roster and count pilots as active even if they haven't flown in years. It would probably be a good idea to try and standardize the definition of "active" in the VA community.

[Guest chrismcgee87]

Thats a very good point. I agree with you " would probably be a good idea to try and standardize the definition of "active" in the VA community" i think its time for VATSIM to step in on this issue. But enought has been said. Hold on let me count how many on Virtual UAL are at zero hours...UAL0361 Bryce Nelson SEAFO 0 860361 UAL0055 Alexei Rudomentkin ORDFO 0 665544 UAL0056 Alexei Rudometkine ORDFO 0 665543 UAL3081 Andrew Hercus MIAFO 0 893081 UAL3979 Eduardo Furtado Guimaraes IADFO 0 903979 UAL0196 Ross Smith JFKFO 0 880196 UAL2792 David Wade IADFO 0 902792 UAL0468 Mike Meadows DENFO 0 870468 UAL9303 Alen Vettichira JFKFO 0 869303 UAL4849 Mark Palmer JFKFO 0 894849 UAL0222 Eric Tarnow ORDFO 0 810222 UAL3960 Trenton Scott SEAFO 0 903960 UAL4546 David Graham ORDFO 0 814546 UAL4352 Shayne Blevins SEAFO 0 904352 UAL5360 Chad Craig LAXFO 0 855360 UAL1762 Sebastian Schlesinger MIAFO 0 901762 UAL1065 Juan Arenzana LAXFO 0 891065 UAL2918 Bryan Kraynack SFOFO 0 902918 UAL2501 Sergio Rodriguez LAXFO 0 892501 UAL3642 Michael Phillips JFKFO 0 853642 UAL0917 Aaron Kearney LAXFO 0 900917 UAL2181 Loic Severin SFOFO 0 872181 UAL3474 Scott Obermiller MIAFO 0 893474 UAL0642 Ruth Marx JFKFO 0 832642 UAL1105 Jim Ward LAXFO 0 851105 UAL6438 Thinus van Zyl JFKFO 0 826438 UAL8905 Eduardo Guimar

[Guest jonf]

I'm not sure VATSIM would be the best choice to make a ruling like this. I think that too many VAs wouldn't adhere to their definition of "active" since they aren't a VA and don't cater exculsively to VAs. They provide ATC service but aren't directly involved in the VA portion of this hobby. I think it might be better to get a collective agreement between the top VAs like BAV, Delta, United, etc. The serious aspiring VAs are probably more likely to follow the standards set by the large, time-tested VAs. Most of the other VAs are the free-serve hosted sites with a life expectancy of 2 weeks so they don't really matter. The hard part of this is determining which VAs qualify as a leading airline to participate in this standardization and then contacting each CEO and trying to get them all to agree on that standard. Personally, I'm not too picky about what becomes the standard just as long as there is one. Right now my site is set to deactivate a pilot automatically after 3 months (which is high but seems to be the most standard time used so I've followed suit) and a pilot doesn't make the active roster list until a flight is filed keeping all 0 hour pilots off the active roster (and in my case, inactive roster also. Their application doesn't even acknowledge them as a pilot until they complete their first flight)

[Guest Flying Tigress]

Our pilots go on the roster when they join, but they are deleted if they don't fly within 7 days - so I doubt there's much inflation resulting from this rule. Pilots are deleted after 90 days if they haven't flown. I don't know the rationale for 90 days - the rule was in place long before I came. The 7 day period between joining and deletion for not flying seems reasonable to me as new pilots often need time to ask questions, acquire appropriate aircraft, etc.The Flying Tigers group as a whole has 1200 pilots and that number seems to be growing at a pretty steady clip. My own airline (part of the Flying Tigers Group) has 106 pilots at the moment.

[Guest drklain]

Wow! Boy did some of the posts surprise me...especially coming from people who have an agenda. Let me set the record straight and start off by telling you that I am the President and COO of United Virtual Airlines (the subject of this thread) so clearly I have a point of view but I'll be open about my perspective...Let me try to answer some of the questions/comments raised:Q: Why do our pilots go on the roster as soon as the sign up instead of when they file their first flight?A: We made this decision because we want our other pilots (the UVA community) to know they have joined, welcome them, and provide assistance as required. The posters in this thread obviously haven't accessed our forums (you need to be a member to access anything but the publicly-viewable forums) but there are many posts and threads on these issues. Believe it or not, many new virtual pilots have tremendous trouble getting online. The VATSIM Pilot Resource Center is an excellent guide (and yes, we are a VATSIM partner airline) but it doesn't cover all the problems new pilots (especially people who aren't computer smart) have. Ultimately we had a choice - put on roster immediately or wait until after they file the first flight. We chose the first. I don't blame or accuse people who go the other route...both choices have advantages and disadvantages. By the way, if they haven't filed a flight within a specified period of time, we initiate actions on the account.---Q: Why are accounts listed that don't have at least 2 hours given the fact you require 2 hours/month?A: As articulated in our employee manual and staff manual - we have detailed procedures we take when a pilot fails to fly enough hours to maintain currency. We don't just delete an account out of hand in an arbitrary fashion. Instead, staff contact the pilot to see if they need assistance or have some issue preventing them from flying (we have one pilot who was in a major car accident and in a coma for several days. He is presently undergoing physical therapy and obviously not flying a game online right now. I made the decision to just carry him until he is able to start flying again. Again, decision could have gone either way. I chose to keep him on the roster. My choice.). If the pilot doesn't answer or is no longer interested in flying, we then make several more attempts to contact him or her before the account is deleted. Simply put, we follow our procedures.---Q: Why are there so many "0" hour pilots?A: Two reasons. First, unlike many VA's we limit the number of hours that can be transferred in to 100 and those 100 hours must be verifiable, VA flight hours. This means the majority of our new pilots (even those who have flown online before) start out at zero hours. Second, we get a tremendous number of new pilot applications. Not sure when the snapshot described above was taken, but I do know that in the last 36 hours we have processed 34 new pilot applications. We are generally processing 20-25 a week with the majority submitted on the weekend (no surprise there). Not all of those zero hour pilots listed were brand new, but a majority were (I looked up their join dates...something the poster had no way of doing as we don't publish that on our site).---Q: Isn't the number "600" for active pilots inflated?A: I don't think so. In the past three months we have deleted just under 300 accouunts. If I wanted to inflate UVA's numbers, we'd never delete an account and be well over 1000 now. At one point we went from 475 to under 300 in two weeks. We have an ongoing process to contact pilots who show inactivity and delete their accounts if they chose to resign and/or don't meet our activity criteria as described in our procedures. Do we do it as quickly as other VA's? I'm not sure and I really don't care. We at UVA have our standards and our procedures and I (and the board of directors I report to) are happy with them. Bottom line: Every pilot listed on our roster is an active pilot by our criteria.---Q: What about cooperation with other VAs on standards?A: UVA cooperates with many VA's on issues of mutual concern. We work closely with British Airways Virtual on the Pilot Watch system/database. We have worked closely with another VA (I won't name them for obvious reasons) resolving a matter concerning a pilot at both our VA's who was disruptive. We have conducted joint fly-ins with several VA's including Delta Virtual and UPSVAC. We are also working with a number of VA's on rolling out a Virtual Star Alliance (it's a trademarked item much like the United logo and we have permission from United to use both as part of our relationship with them).I'd be happy to answer any additional questions either in this forum or via email. My address is dklain@virtual.united.com. At UVA we're committed to a providing a quality online flying experience, not a quantity of pilots on the roster issue. I think we do that pretty well and, judging by the number of applicants we are getting, we must be doing something right...all the best,DaveCallsign: UAL003dklain@virtual.united.comhttp://virtual.united.com

[Guest jonf]

"We work closely with British Airways Virtual on the Pilot Watch system/database."How closely? I am also a member of their pilot watch program but consider it a joke. I've emailed them many times regarding pilots that VA's should be aware of and never had a single email answered. Even after mailing a couple admins at BAV to see if their pilot watch program was still active my emails went unanswered. I'm thinking it's just a way for them to get BAV images on other VAs (since they require it to participate in their program)

[Guest drklain]

I've exchanged emails with the CEO of BAW as does my Sr. VP of HR. We have also added people to the database as well as checked that applicants to us are not in the database...Not sure what else to tell you.