Flights

Homepage > Operations > Airline > Flights

What fights are available?

Broadly speaking, there are three 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.

• Tours are a series of flights that explore a given area, or follow a theme

• 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.

• You can 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.

• You can click on an airport and see the flights that depart from and arrive at that airport - both in list form, and rendered onto a map.

• You can search for a specific airport to see it's flights from from the dashboard page.

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.

Tours

If tours are more your thing, we have you covered. The tours page lists all of the available tours, and they are open to all.

• Tours are open to all - read the description of each tour, and check out the leg lengths before planning flights

• When you complete all of the legs of a tour, you win an award that goes on your profile - noting that you completed it

• Tour flights are typically associated with an airline, and have a "tour code" and "leg number". You can see the tour codes on the tours page. The code becomes important if filing tour flights directly within ACARS in order to make sure a PIREP is applied to the appropriate tour leg

• IMPORTANT - to win the award for completing a tour, you must complete the legs in the correct order. If you do not, the progress bar will turn red instead of green, and you'll have to ask nicely in the #airline-support channel in Discord for the award to be given.

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.

• 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)

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.

Tour Flights

Tour flights are prefixed with a code related to the airline, as with scheduled flights, with flight numbers starting at 10000. Tour flight numbers are comprised of the following parts:

• Airline - prefix, as listed for scheduled flights

• Flight Number - each tour is separated by a thousand to help identify them

• Code - a three letter code that identifies the tour (you can see these on the Tours page)

• Leg Number - an incrementing integer identifying the leg of the tour

As an example, the first leg of the UK tour becomes VFC10100/TUK.1.

Notice in ACARS that the airline, flight number, code, and leg can all be set at the top of the Flight page.

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.

Go back to the Airline