I joined a virtual group a while ago called the Virtual Pilots Association. So far it has been pretty fun, but they only reward online flights done on VATSIM and IVAO, and a lot of the pilots are not in the US. Some of the things I like about them:
- their motto is "Free your Wings"
- you can fly VFR/IFR, GA, Non-Scheduled Charter or Cargo, or scheduled airline flights
- they have tons of awards for things like # of airports in an area, # of night flights, # of airliner flights
- they have tons of very cool tours/missions (think Alphabet Challenge but lots of them)
- to move up the ranks requires taking exams to verify your knowledge
- they have lots of forums where pilots talk about aviation (real and sim), gear/planes, skills, etc)
Some of their missions are just epic. They have a North America VFR tour that is 250 legs. The Alphabet Challenge on MyFlightRoute is popular with PE clients, but there is only 1 of them. Tours and events can be incredibly fun, and I think PE would benefit a lot of there were more *things* to do on the network in addition to just FSEconomy.
I would like to help organize something like this focused on just the PE subscription area.
- allow flying anything, anywhere\
- recognizes the PE CAT and I ratings, and then augments with additional ratings to help pilots keep increasing skills
- supports training/certification for getting aircraft type ratings
- scheduled airline flights between all the supported PE airports for airliner buffs
- allow non-scheduled charter and cargo (can use with FSEconomy)
- have lots of neat tours and awards for PE subscription area (e.g. Idaho Back Country tour)
The combination of free/open-source SimACARS (
http://www.simacars.net/) and the Virtual Airlines Manager (
http://virtualairlinesmanager.net/) pretty much gives you everything you needs out of the box to launch and manage a virtual airline including tours, events, awards, hubs/routes, etc. There may be others available too. The reason to use an ACARS system in addition to PE flight tracking is that it can help with establishing awards, and organizing/tracking events/tours, etc.
If anyone is still interested in this, let me know here, or on the PE Discord - @Kawfee Bassie#0270.