Results from my VA Survey

[Captain K-Man]

So I ran a survey for our VA to figure out what people love and hate about FSAirlines and our VA. Here are some of the ideas that were thrown out that I loved and would like to see if it would be possible one day to get some of this in.

Custom Rewards with Image Upload Capability - You have an awards system in place but it would be nice for VA's to create custom awards that they can add their own icon/images too that can be awarded to pilots who achieve VA goals and what not. Doesn't need to be automated but VA officers need to be able to assign them per pilot.

Deviations Cost Money Too - When a flight deviates to an alternate destination the airline should be penalized not just with rep loss but with a money cost too as the Virtual PAX must now be compensated for their inconvenience (Put up in hotels, bused to destination, etc). One of the problems I see in my VA is pilots will deviate just hit up an airport with really valuable cargo and load it in then continue on. I think this is an exploit that needs to be addressed.

Variation on ZFW/PAX/Cargo Loads - I know this one has been touched on already, probably until your sick of seeing it, but this was a huge amount of the negative feedback I received on this survey. People just don't like having their planes stuffed full every single flight so that the same data is always keyed in to the FMC over and over again. I get that airlines in the real world try to fill every seat and sometimes even overbook flights but external factors can cause flights to be less booked, cargo to not be needed, etc. Don't know if anything can be done on this front but at any rate, just sharing the #1 compliant I see.

Toggle KG/LBS on Booking Page - Rather than have the user have to edit their profile why not allow the pilot to pick between Kgs or Lbs on the booking page

Integration with Simbrief - Many people have asked for there to be a button/menu option added to transfer the FSA booked flight data into SimBrief or vice versa. Don't know what could be done on this front. Simbrief is the #1 used tool for flight planning. It would be nice if FSA could some how harness this system's planning power.

Better API Integration with VA Website - More API to allow more things to be done from the VA website. Your competition excels at this and truly allows a VA to customize how their VA GUI looks. Pilots rarely need to go to the homesite. I know you disabled some stuff because of exploits. Any planes in the API realm?

A lot of folks think the UI is a bit dated and would love to see it beautified over time or even customized search as being able to adjust our menu colors and background from white to something more pleasing and less retina burning so each VA can truly have a unique experience on the platform. I know this would be a HUUUUGE undertaking. Overall, FSA has received fantastic feedback, thumbs up and high praise. Keep up the great work. I think you are #1 for sure but there is always room for more!

[joefremont]

There a lot of ideas there, many of them good, each of which would warrant there own discussions. My comments where are not the end of my ideas but to start with :

Variation on ZFW/PAX/Cargo Loads

This has come up several times recently. with VA's trying to get the numbers in our database match the sim model they are using. Up to this point our position has been that sim model makers are not always very reliable and rather than use there numbers we would rather use the aircraft manufacturers numbers. But then the manufacturer does not make just one version of a given aircraft, take a look at this document.

https://www.boeing.com/resources/boeing ... ps/767.pdf

The manufacturers airport planing documents have been for us the gold standard of specifications, but if you scroll down to page 13 or so of that document you will see the weights they specify for a given model, you will notice they very quite a lot, so for the 767-200 the DOW ranges from 78,975 kg to 80,127 kg and the MTOW ranges from 128,820 kg to 143,789 kg. How do you keep everyone happy and as part of my job, keep it real, our answer has been up to this point, to always pick the heaviest version of any aircraft and use its numbers. It would not be hard for me to add to the seat configuration and override DOW/MZFW/MTOW and as long as the number entered is greater than the DOW and less than the MTOW/MZFW we use we can prevent those who want to game the system, but how do I keep those who wan to use the light DOW with the heavy MTOW, its something I don't have an answer for.

Deviations Cost Money Too

Not a bad idea, I have often though it strange when pilots cancel a flight they get a penalty but if they kick passengers at boarding because of weight they don't. For deviations, how do we tell the difference between someone who decided to stop when it was not needed to pick up packages and when the its required because the aircraft does not have the range to do it on one hop, then again if you stop for less than an hour to refuel very few passengers would be upset, while if you stop for two days they would be very upset. Many things to consider.

The other topics on this page all deserve comment but I don't have the energy right now to do so, but they all deserve it and I encourage everyone else to add there view on these.

[Captain K-Man]

Few more ideas were tossed out on last night streams that we thought we're pretty good for future consideration.

[*]The pilot Salary (V$) is pretty gimmicky. What if on top of being able to own property and buy planes we could use that money to buy temporary perks/power ups? Like for $50000 a pilot could buy a x0.5 mile booster for the next flight they do. Or $25000 to have one bad landing rate removed from their over record. FSCaptain which was a payware program for P3D/FSX allowed you to build up Pilot REP for each good flight and use those points to do things like this. Have perks/powerups be purchasable via a FSA store would make earning a salary worth something.

[*]Warehouses are kind of pointless. The whole point of a warehouse should be to gather cargo into one spot so then a big cargo plane can come scoop it up and whisk it away to make a huge profit. The problem is... the cargo rot timer doesn't stop once the cargo is flown to a VA owned warehouse for storage thus making warehouses kind of useless for what they are designed for; TO STORE STUFF. Consider slowing down or having the cargo rot timer completely halt while cargo is stored in a VA's warehouse. Make Warehouses useful again.

[*]The ability to assign charter status to a fleet so that players can charter their own flights with the aircraft available. We've had several pilots express their desire to be able to create a flight plan, pick up pax and cargo and just GO. No need to just our booking system. This is very useful for Biz/Corp jet type operations where we don't have a fixed route schedule but are at the mercy of what our clients need. Right now we have a BizJet Manager who creates routes but perhaps we should let players create their own routes for this type of stuff? I realize I could make a new rank and make that rank able to create routes BUT I don't want them making routes for the whole VA to use.. just for themselves. Something to consider.

[Cat]

[*]The ability to assign charter status to a fleet so that players can charter their own flights with the aircraft available. We've had several pilots express their desire to be able to create a flight plan, pick up pax and cargo and just GO. No need to just our booking system. This is very useful for Biz/Corp jet type operations where we don't have a fixed route schedule but are at the mercy of what our clients need. Right now we have a BizJet Manager who creates routes but perhaps we should let players create their own routes for this type of stuff? I realize I could make a new rank and make that rank able to create routes BUT I don't want them making routes for the whole VA to use.. just for themselves. Something to consider.

We have created a workaround for that at Fly Vegas. Assign your charter pilots a specific flight route code and teach them how to make "one off" routes whereby the route will auto erase after it's flown. Then if you have pilots who quit and have left their routes in the system, because they are all the same flight number, you can find them easily to delete and not have to scour your entire master list looking for those routes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNMmYa ... sp=sharing

One thing not covered in that video is Fleet assignment: Your pilots can select their charter fleet and only the aircraft in that fleet are able to access that route. You can also go as far as assigning a specific registration number to any given route as well.

[JasonO]

[*]The ability to assign charter status to a fleet so that players can charter their own flights with the aircraft available. We've had several pilots express their desire to be able to create a flight plan, pick up pax and cargo and just GO. No need to just our booking system. This is very useful for Biz/Corp jet type operations where we don't have a fixed route schedule but are at the mercy of what our clients need. Right now we have a BizJet Manager who creates routes but perhaps we should let players create their own routes for this type of stuff? I realize I could make a new rank and make that rank able to create routes BUT I don't want them making routes for the whole VA to use.. just for themselves. Something to consider.

We have created a workaround for that at Fly Vegas. Assign your charter pilots a specific flight route code and teach them how to make "one off" routes whereby the route will auto erase after it's flown. Then if you have pilots who quit and have left their routes in the system, because they are all the same flight number, you can find them easily to delete and not have to scour your entire master list looking for those routes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNMmYa ... sp=sharing

One thing not covered in that video is Fleet assignment: Your pilots can select their charter fleet and only the aircraft in that fleet are able to access that route. You can also go as far as assigning a specific registration number to any given route as well.

Learnt something here.

Didn't think of the 1 limit flight rule for ad-hoc flights
Wasn't aware you could have one of the same flight numbers!

Thank you

[Captain K-Man]

[*]The ability to assign charter status to a fleet so that players can charter their own flights with the aircraft available. We've had several pilots express their desire to be able to create a flight plan, pick up pax and cargo and just GO. No need to just our booking system. This is very useful for Biz/Corp jet type operations where we don't have a fixed route schedule but are at the mercy of what our clients need. Right now we have a BizJet Manager who creates routes but perhaps we should let players create their own routes for this type of stuff? I realize I could make a new rank and make that rank able to create routes BUT I don't want them making routes for the whole VA to use.. just for themselves. Something to consider.

We have created a workaround for that at Fly Vegas. Assign your charter pilots a specific flight route code and teach them how to make "one off" routes whereby the route will auto erase after it's flown. Then if you have pilots who quit and have left their routes in the system, because they are all the same flight number, you can find them easily to delete and not have to scour your entire master list looking for those routes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNMmYa ... sp=sharing

One thing not covered in that video is Fleet assignment: Your pilots can select their charter fleet and only the aircraft in that fleet are able to access that route. You can also go as far as assigning a specific registration number to any given route as well.

The problem with this is we don't have 'charter only' pilots. And you can't limit what routes they can make. They could make routes for any of our divisions. Now we have to constantly Admin these folks to make sure they aren't jacking with our routes made for the other divisions because someone WILL try to add stuff. I know they will. This is why I wish we had control of this in the options so we could assigned charter status to trust pilots and don't have to make a new rank just for them.

[joefremont]

[*]The ability to assign charter status to a fleet so that players can charter their own flights with the aircraft available. We've had several pilots express their desire to be able to create a flight plan, pick up pax and cargo and just GO. No need to just our booking system. This is very useful for Biz/Corp jet type operations where we don't have a fixed route schedule but are at the mercy of what our clients need. Right now we have a BizJet Manager who creates routes but perhaps we should let players create their own routes for this type of stuff? I realize I could make a new rank and make that rank able to create routes BUT I don't want them making routes for the whole VA to use.. just for themselves. Something to consider.

We have created a workaround for that at Fly Vegas. Assign your charter pilots a specific flight route code and teach them how to make "one off" routes whereby the route will auto erase after it's flown. Then if you have pilots who quit and have left their routes in the system, because they are all the same flight number, you can find them easily to delete and not have to scour your entire master list looking for those routes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNMmYa ... sp=sharing

One thing not covered in that video is Fleet assignment: Your pilots can select their charter fleet and only the aircraft in that fleet are able to access that route. You can also go as far as assigning a specific registration number to any given route as well.

The problem with this is we don't have 'charter only' pilots. And you can't limit what routes they can make. They could make routes for any of our divisions. Now we have to constantly Admin these folks to make sure they aren't jacking with our routes made for the other divisions because someone WILL try to add stuff. I know they will. This is why I wish we had control of this in the options so we could assigned charter status to trust pilots and don't have to make a new rank just for them.

This is an idea that has come up before. Thinking about it I had an idea, say we allow a 'charter flight' permission. If granted when the pilot when they go to book a flight would have the option to create a 'charter flight', they could select an aircraft from those at there current location that they are allowed to book and are in the fleet that the charter flight permission grants, they could select the a destination and then a one time use route is created and the flight is booked. If they cancel the flight the charter route deleted. Would this meet the requirement? One implementation detail I have, I like to give the pilot a short list of airports in a drop down list to make things easier and less error prone, how would we filter these airports? would the VA want to restrict what airports they can charter flights to?

[joefremont]

[*]Warehouses are kind of pointless. The whole point of a warehouse should be to gather cargo into one spot so then a big cargo plane can come scoop it up and whisk it away to make a huge profit. The problem is... the cargo rot timer doesn't stop once the cargo is flown to a VA owned warehouse for storage thus making warehouses kind of useless for what they are designed for; TO STORE STUFF. Consider slowing down or having the cargo rot timer completely halt while cargo is stored in a VA's warehouse. Make Warehouses useful again.

I really envisioned teams of pilots working together in a hub and spoke model to bring packages to a central location and then return with packages from other locations, to be honest I don't know if anyone is doing that. But my big fear is that VA's would use the warehouses to hoard packages to prevent other VA's from getting them. Airfreight is supposed to be fast and even the 6 days we give to get it there with full revenue seams long.

[Captain K-Man]

We have created a workaround for that at Fly Vegas. Assign your charter pilots a specific flight route code and teach them how to make "one off" routes whereby the route will auto erase after it's flown. Then if you have pilots who quit and have left their routes in the system, because they are all the same flight number, you can find them easily to delete and not have to scour your entire master list looking for those routes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uNMmYa ... sp=sharing

One thing not covered in that video is Fleet assignment: Your pilots can select their charter fleet and only the aircraft in that fleet are able to access that route. You can also go as far as assigning a specific registration number to any given route as well.

The problem with this is we don't have 'charter only' pilots. And you can't limit what routes they can make. They could make routes for any of our divisions. Now we have to constantly Admin these folks to make sure they aren't jacking with our routes made for the other divisions because someone WILL try to add stuff. I know they will. This is why I wish we had control of this in the options so we could assigned charter status to trust pilots and don't have to make a new rank just for them.

This is an idea that has come up before. Thinking about it I had an idea, say we allow a 'charter flight' permission. If granted when the pilot when they go to book a flight would have the option to create a 'charter flight', they could select an aircraft from those at there current location that they are allowed to book and are in the fleet that the charter flight permission grants, they could select the a destination and then a one time use route is created and the flight is booked. If they cancel the flight the charter route deleted. Would this meet the requirement? One implementation detail I have, I like to give the pilot a short list of airports in a drop down list to make things easier and less error prone, how would we filter these airports? would the VA want to restrict what airports they can charter flights to?

This would be perfect. I think you wouldn't even have to go that far on drop downs. Make it so we can flag a fleet as a Charter capable fleet then those aircraft only because available to the charter system. The pilots can then move themselves to where one of the charter capable plans is and make their route to their hearts content. The would make all of my pilots happy for sure that want the BizJet division to be charter flexible.

[Captain K-Man]

[*]Warehouses are kind of pointless. The whole point of a warehouse should be to gather cargo into one spot so then a big cargo plane can come scoop it up and whisk it away to make a huge profit. The problem is... the cargo rot timer doesn't stop once the cargo is flown to a VA owned warehouse for storage thus making warehouses kind of useless for what they are designed for; TO STORE STUFF. Consider slowing down or having the cargo rot timer completely halt while cargo is stored in a VA's warehouse. Make Warehouses useful again.

I really envisioned teams of pilots working together in a hub and spoke model to bring packages to a central location and then return with packages from other locations, to be honest I don't know if anyone is doing that. But my big fear is that VA's would use the warehouses to hoard packages to prevent other VA's from getting them. Airfreight is supposed to be fast and even the 6 days we give to get it there with full revenue seams long.

Yeah I could see that. And no, our pilots aren't work together in that level of coordination. You'd have to be really dedicated to cargo ops to get that level of coordination going. Alternatively, perhaps VA owned warehouses can generate their own cargo loads over time to simulated cargo being delivered local from shippers? Then pilots can look at not just the airports but at our own cargo warehouse in when picking up cargo to ship. Maybe cargo generated by VA owned hubs give a slight bonus? Gives incentives for Airlines to buy them now and scattered them throughout the world. Right now I can tell you our cargo warehouses are being used for nothing but to dump off unwanted cargo and left to rot. They seem very under utilized.

[joefremont]

The problem with this is we don't have 'charter only' pilots. And you can't limit what routes they can make. They could make routes for any of our divisions. Now we have to constantly Admin these folks to make sure they aren't jacking with our routes made for the other divisions because someone WILL try to add stuff. I know they will. This is why I wish we had control of this in the options so we could assigned charter status to trust pilots and don't have to make a new rank just for them.

This is an idea that has come up before. Thinking about it I had an idea, say we allow a 'charter flight' permission. If granted when the pilot when they go to book a flight would have the option to create a 'charter flight', they could select an aircraft from those at there current location that they are allowed to book and are in the fleet that the charter flight permission grants, they could select the a destination and then a one time use route is created and the flight is booked. If they cancel the flight the charter route deleted. Would this meet the requirement? One implementation detail I have, I like to give the pilot a short list of airports in a drop down list to make things easier and less error prone, how would we filter these airports? would the VA want to restrict what airports they can charter flights to?

This would be perfect. I think you wouldn't even have to go that far on drop downs. Make it so we can flag a fleet as a Charter capable fleet then those aircraft only because available to the charter system. The pilots can then move themselves to where one of the charter capable plans is and make their route to their hearts content. The would make all of my pilots happy for sure that want the BizJet division to be charter flexible.

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