March 2023 VA Update
Hello Pilots,
This month's news update will highlight some updates to the website, as well as some general airline information.
Website News
The forum has been discontinued and may now be found in our Discord server. For tour suggestions, or longer format discussions we encourage you to use the forum functionality. If you haven't joined Discord yet, use discord.gg/EAKR7Qe to join. The flight briefing page will now show the airline call sign for reference, we are working on improving the accuracy of the displayed callsigns to take subsidiaries into account. Further airports have received gate information to further improve the information on the flight briefing page.
Tour updates
We are expanding our tour section, and older tours will slowly be phased out. Some tours will be direct replacements, but for airline tours there will generally not be a new award available. Other tours, and of course any completely new tours will receive new associated awards to collect.
The monthly tour takes you across South-East Asia. If you have any suggestions on tours you would like to see please let us know on Discord.
Closed airspaces
Current scheduled flight time durations may need to be amended due to longer flying times on account of closed airspace. Exceeding the listed scheduled flight time for this reason is expected and not an issue. If your flight is given a remark incorrectly please let us know via support ticket.
You can find more information about which airspaces are closed and how the civil aviation situation is developing on this FlightRadar24 page. Please adhere to these closures when performing flights on the VA.
Event Updates
We are working with the vACEPG initiative to co-host more VATSIM events. Please check the Events page for more details, we hope to see you there! Please let us know via Discord what kind of events you would like to see! To receive more frequent updates please subscribe to the Event Announcements notifications on our Discord server.
Airline News
Virgin Atlantic will be joining a the SkyTeam Alliance on March 2nd, taking the airline from a transatlantic joint venture partner to a full-member airline.
Several shifts and mergers are expected throughout the year, though as ever timeframes appear somewhat loose. We will do our best to follow real-world shifts in the aviation industry as they may occur, though none of the following news is final. As of writing ITA Airways is in negotiations with the Lufthansa group regarding a (partial) take-over of ITA Airways. Both the IAG group and Air France-KLM have expressed interest in a (partial) takeover of TAP Air Portugal. IAG has again offered to take a controlling stake in Air Europa. The planned Korean Air merger with Asiana Airlines is currently held up with multiple regulators requiring more time to investigate the planned merger. Multiple airlines including the Avianca group, LATAM group, JetSMART, Wingo and Aerolíneas Argentinas have all expressed interest in taking over VIVA Air Colombia.
Broadly we can gather there is interest in consolidation throughout the industry and we will continue following these developments.
Closing words
As always if you have any suggestions or questions do not hesitate to let us know. If you would be interested in helping improve the VA do not hesitate to send an application to join the volunteer staff team using the support ticket system.
We would also like to remind you we have a Discord server. To join it, use discord.gg/EAKR7Qe.