Compulsory flights for Students

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Tower
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Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Tower » Tue Apr 14, 2020 7:50 pm

In the past, our company used to assign a short number (six or seven) of compulsory flights to any new applicant for pilot, while Flight Student rank, in order to guess which level of simulator aviation skills he had managing a whole flight (charts, VFR navigation, plane driving, etc).
For the applicant pilot, the software we used locked all flights, so that it was impossible for him to fly a route other than assigned. Once all compulsory routes were flown, he can access to fly ordinary routes.

Do you know if is there any chance to do something similar into FSA currently? Otherwise, may be an improvement for the future?

Thank you in advance for your answer.
Night navigation is so easy. Just try to maintain the plane centered between the red light on your left and the green one on your right.
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Cat
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Cat » Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:27 am

Yes, Use Training Flights that will have no financial affect on the airline. Put your training aircraft into it's own fleet and assign just that fleet to the pilot in training, thus locking the trainee into that aircraft or group of aircraft you have for training purposes.

There is a 'training" type rating as well, but to be honest, I have never played with that.

If your trainee has only one type rating and access to only one fleet, the options are pretty well straight forward.

If you like, I can make a video tutorial to add to our series - this one covering how to set up training flights, etc.

You can also make routes "fleet specific" as well so those training routes would only be available to the training fleet aircraft.
You can even go so far as to make several levels of trainee ranks, so as the student progresses through your system, he/she would then step into package cargo loading permissions, etc... depending on how you want things to go in your airline. You could also start the rank I with just a simple trainer with a short flight to prove the student knows the FSA system, then promote them to the next training rank level into more advanced aircraft and then finally up to package cargo handling permissions.

If you make the process too tedious, be prepared for a high drop out rate. We get a lot of sign on's who never even acknowledge my initial greeting and are booted after the manadatory 'must fly by' date has expired. I think making them read our Standard Operating Procedures and sign off on the form saying they read it and understand company policy is a little intimidating for some.

Some VA's are just too serious for the casual sim pilot looking for a more gaming experience and personally I'd rather know that up front than have them smash something expensive into the ground.
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joefremont
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by joefremont » Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:16 am

We don't have anything like what you describe. The topic has come up from time to time but every time the requirements seam to be very different from VA to VA and coming up with a system that people fine useful, that is not so complicated it overwhelms users has been a challenge, cause if I spend time creating something I want it to appeal to a large number of VA's.
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Cat
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Cat » Wed Apr 15, 2020 2:49 pm

OK I have done a little research with my account I use for making some video's and have discovered this:

Use the TR rating and the only flights available will be training flights.

You can set up ranks to be fleet specific as well so if you are using say a Beechcraft King Air for training but you have a bunch of them in your airline, you can assign a specific aircraft to routes or put it in it's own fleet so the pilot must fly that particular airplane.

I am going to make and post a new video today in the "Getting Started Video" topic showing how it can all be done using the current tools we have available. There is enough control whereby any virtual airline can create an entire training program with various levels by using ranks, fleets, TR ratings, etc.
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Cat
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Cat » Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:01 pm

New video that covers the subject fairly quickly considering the information given.

https://youtu.be/1Uqf7Km5KYk
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Tower
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Tower » Thu Apr 16, 2020 10:47 am

joefremont wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:16 am
We don't have anything like what you describe. The topic has come up from time to time but every time the requirements seam to be very different from VA to VA and coming up with a system that people fine useful, that is not so complicated it overwhelms users has been a challenge, cause if I spend time creating something I want it to appeal to a large number of VA's.
Thank you, Joe. I can understand the improvements should be useful, in the begining, for a wide variety of VA. Thankyou anyway. I think the option given to me from Cat, will be enough to get our target.

Regards,
Night navigation is so easy. Just try to maintain the plane centered between the red light on your left and the green one on your right.
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Tower
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Tower » Thu Apr 16, 2020 11:11 am

Cat wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:27 am
1-Yes, Use Training Flights that will have no financial affect on the airline. Put your training aircraft into it's own fleet and assign just that fleet to the pilot in training, thus locking the trainee into that aircraft or group of aircraft you have for training purposes.

2-If your trainee has only one type rating and access to only one fleet, the options are pretty well straight forward.

3-If you like, I can make a video tutorial to add to our series - this one covering how to set up training flights, etc.

4-You can also make routes "fleet specific" as well so those training routes would only be available to the training fleet aircraft.

5-If you make the process too tedious, be prepared for a high drop out rate.
1 and 2- That is exactly what we have: a special fleet of 3 units of C208 Cargomaster, and several special routes for learning, all of them easy to fly and whose flight number start with WGA-2XXX. All routes starting with the number 2 are special for training, in spite of they can be used for any other pilot. The point I do not know until now, is the posibility of restrict this fleet for a trainee, preventing the use of the rest of VA aircraft.

3- It would be great, as always !! I can see you have done some video tutorial job. Thaks for that.

4- That is what I am going to experiment just in short.

5- Nooo ! this is exactly what we don't want. 5 o 6 short training flight,s driving our Cargomaster, is enough to guess should the trainee knows or not the FSA system, and the VA rules.

Thank you for all you good work, my friend.
PD- Sorry for my bad English. I'm only an English language student, who has never been in an English speaking country.

Regards,
Night navigation is so easy. Just try to maintain the plane centered between the red light on your left and the green one on your right.
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Cat
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Re: Compulsory flights for Students

Post by Cat » Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:18 pm

Always my pleasure to be of assistance, we are all in this together - much like fighting that damn virus. I don't see any "competitive advantage" for any VA to withhold information on how to use the FSAirlines tools.


pssst - no sorries needed, you communicate just fine. ;)
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