News

Hello Pilots,

We are currently reducing schedules to and from Russia as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions implemented. Any future restrictions, or loosening of restrictions will also be implemented. This includes likely fleet reductions regarding leased aircraft in Russia, which are to be returned to their lessor by March 28th. To fully implement these schedule changes may take a few days, and if we miss any do please let us know. This will affect a number of tours, we will be reworking these in the coming days to allow for their completion. If you have any questions regarding this do not hesitate to let us know via a support ticket, on our forum or 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 at this FlightRadar24 page. Please try and adhere to these closures when performing flights on the VA.

Tour updates

We are working on a number of tour updates, along with the aforementioned tours, to keep tours fresh. Currently we expect to retire 1-2 airline tours every month to refresh these, and to refresh our existing themed tours with new ones at the rate of one a month. This month will see the retirement of the WestJet-Delta tour, the Etihad-Saudia Tour, and the Mega Cities tour. If you have any suggestions regarding tours which you would like to see please let us know.

With regards to the implemented restrictions the Europe Tour, Russia Tour, Airbus World Tour, Sukhoi Superjet Tour, and Aeroflot-Rossiya Airlines tour have been updated to allow for their completion. These will currently not be awarded a new badge.

Closing words

As always if you have any suggestions please let us know.

We would also like to remind you we have a Discord server. To join it, use discord.gg/EAKR7Qe.

Hello Pilots,

First of all happy new year and we wish you all the best in 2022! This news update brings some more airline news and development updates.

Airline News

The IAG group has stated to no longer takeover Air Europa, therefore this airline will remain part of SkyTeam and also this VA. China Southern's joint venture with the Air France-KLM group has come to a close and given the closening ties to American Airlines we are exploring moving this airline to our sister VA Oneworld virtual. Please let us know your thoughts on this in the forum.

Pending other developments Virgin Australia's ties to Delta will move to United Airlines in April 2022, and this airline will be moved to Star Alliance virtual then. Suparna Airlines, partly owned by China Airlines has been added to the VA to provide more varied freight routes around the world. We will as always do our best to mirror real-world developments and things may change in the coming months.

Development Updates

We are working on a rework of the booking page to provide a better, simplified experience when booking flights. This will include a rework of the current booking page, as well as back-end changes that will enable us to more easily switch between summer and winter flying season's. Hopefully lessing the delay in updating routes in the future.

The VAS ACARS native X-Plane support and support for Linux and macOS are currently undergoing testing and we hope to launch these features in the coming weeks.

Tour updates

The monthly tour takes you across the the Eastern seaboard of North America. A number of tours are currently in the process of being reworked and for more updates on retiring tours please check the Event and Tours section on the homepage.

Closing words

As always if you have any suggestions please let us know.

We would also like to remind you we have a Discord server. To join it, use discord.gg/EAKR7Qe.

Hi Pilots,

This month brings a number of VA updates, which are detailed below.

Airline restructuring

Alitalia's restructuring means that it no longer operates flights; remaining assets have been taken over by successor ITA Airways. ITA Airways has become SkyTeam's latest member and has been added to the VA. Furthermore, China Eastern subsidiary OTT Airlines has also been added to the VA. The Garuda Indonesia group has divested its share of Sriwijaya Air, and as such will be removed this month. We will be migrating to the winter schedule this month; we hope to have most routes updated by mid-November. If you have any suggestions do not hesitate to create a support ticket.

Native SimConnect support in VAS ACARS

The latest version of VAS-ACARS has native SimConnect support. This means it is not required to use FSUIPC anymore if you are using a FSX-based simulator, including Microsoft Flight Simulator. If you encounter any issues using FSUIPC to record or you would like simply like to use one less program in your simulator, you can change to recording using SimConnect.

To switch to SimConnect, open VAS ACARS and click the cog wheel in the top-right hand of VAS-ACARS. Click on Use for SimConnect, the change is applied immediately. The method is also shown in the video below.

The next features we are working on inside VAS ACARS are native X-Plane support and support for Linux and macOS.

Tour updates

This month is the last month in which the Autumn Tour can be completed. The monthly tour takes you across the continental United States.

Closing words

As always if you have any suggestions please let us know.

We would also like to remind you we have a Discord server. To join it, use discord.gg/EAKR7Qe.

Hello Pilots,

After the LATAM airlines group left the oneworld airline alliance following Delta Airlines's stake and regulatory approval for a far reaching joint venture we will be moving LATAM Airlines from our sister VA oneworld virtual to SkyTeam Virtual on July 1st 2021.

We expect Air Europa to move from SkyTeam virtual to oneworld virtual later this year as a result of IAG's takeover bid. This move is pending regulatory approval. In the mean time if you have any suggestions, regarding tours or otherwise please let us know in the forums.

Hello Pilots,

First of all happy new year and we wish you all the best in 2021!

This year will prove to be a new chapter for most of the aviation industry, and we will be following these developments as they happen. Primarily this will be the moving of Air Europa to Oneworld virtual as a result of IAG's take-over, and LATAM moving to SkyTeam as the joint venture and takeover by Delta Airlines takes effect. This change will most likely happen in the first half of 2021 as IAG's takeover is finalized.

All Freighter aircraft have received unique identifier and have been split up on the fleet and routes pages, to improve scheduling clarity and better represent the unique uses of these aircraft.

A number of tours have been updated and more are scheduled as always we are happy to hear from you what tours you would like to see.

This year we also hope to make various improvements within the VA's including route suggestions and searchable return flights. Once these features have been released we will let you know via a news post.

Best Wishes and Safe Flights!

Hi pilots,

Tomorrow (or today depending on your timezone), Microsoft Flight Simulator will release. VAS ACARS NXT is compatible with Microsoft Flight Simulator immediately, in combination with the FSUIPC7 beta.

To get started, follow the following steps:

1. Follow the instructions to download and install FSUIPC7:

   Instructions for installation of FSUIPC7

2. Start your Microsoft Flight Simulator

3. Start FSUIPC7

4. Start VAS ACARS NXT

5. You can now start recording your flight as usual

Unfortunately, due to some lacking functionality in MSFS2020, you will need to start FSUIPC7 manually before starting your recording. We hope to release VAS ACARS NXT with native SimConnect support in the future, which would work directly without starting FSUIPC7.

Please report any issues you find to us by creating a support ticket.

Hi pilots,

At the start of this year, we announced a new version of VAS ACARS, VAS ACARS NXT. After thorough testing, we are retiring VAS ACARS version 1 and are moving all pilots to VAS ACARS NXT. As of now, we recommend recording your flights using VAS ACARS NXT and uninstalling the legacy version. Detailed instructions can be found below.

VAS ACARS NXT is a complete rework of our recording system and is also more stable than legacy VAS ACARS, and as such, we will be shutting down the legacy VAS ACARS v1 on September 1st, 2020. All of your flights can be done using VAS ACARS v1 until September 1st, 2020, but after that date it will not be possible to record any flights using VAS ACARS.

While we announced that VAS ACARS NXT would have chat functionality in our January post, we have decided to instead only use Discord and not integrate chat functionality in VAS ACARS NXT. VAS ACARS NXT will contain the link to the Discord server prominently, and we will make sure there are enough channels available in Discord for all kinds of matters.

Migrating to VAS ACARS NXT

Migrating to VAS ACARS NXT is an easy process:

1. Check that all of your flights flown using VAS ACARS have been uploaded in full, as uninstalling VAS ACARS will remove all of your old flight data from your computer (although they will of course still be available on our website if you have submitted your report)
2. Uninstall VAS ACARS using the Windows "Add or remove programs" feature.
3. Download VAS ACARS NXT and install it.
4. You can now open VAS ACARS NXT and start recording your flight.

Download VAS ACARS NXT

If you have any problems with VAS ACARS NXT, please do not hesitate to create a support ticket.

A more detailed shutdown schedule of legacy services may be found below the image.

Shut down schedule

We will be gradually shutting down more services of VAS ACARS v1 and increasing our communication of the shut down, according to the schedule below:

Hi pilots,

As you may know, a lot of airlines have scaled back operations due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At this time, we will still be keeping our current route network, and we do not intend to change this. Removing all of the routes which have been (temporarily) suspended would be a significant effort and would significantly reduce your possibilities to fly certain routes, tours and airlines. Therefore, we have decided to not remove any of these routes, to keep the fun in simulation and allow you to still all routes that were available before.

Airline fleets will continue to be updated. Aircraft types which have been temporarily grounded will remain bookable. Aircraft types which are scheduled to be phased out completely will be removed and replaced by their successor types. Should airlines permanently suspend their operations, they will remain in the VA for approximately 30 days after the suspending of the operations. This is to allow you to complete tours or routes that will no longer be available.

The news changes rapidly and should we deviate from what is stated here we will update you in a follow up news post. If you have any questions regarding this, please post your questions here and we will do our best to answer them.

Hi Pilots,

Given the recent news regarding Flybe, Flybe and any associated tours will be retired on the 31st of March 2020. If there are any tours you wish to complete using Flybe there are approximately three weeks left. We will be keeping an eye on the developments and should the situation change we will try to adjust accordingly.

First of all, happy new year! We will be kicking this year off with some major announcements.

oneworld virtual

After having launched both SkyTeam Virtual and Star Alliance Virtual, only one major airline alliance was still missing: oneworld. Today we are completing the major three alliances by launching oneworld virtual, available now at oneworldvirtual.org.

All three VAs are part of VASystem and use our in-house developed system. The pilot handbook and rules for all three VAs are the same. However, all three are still completely separate VAs with no integration: profiles are not shared. You will need to register separately on oneworld virtual and we will not transfer hours between the VAs to keep the workload managable for the staff members of all three VAs. It is possible to login to all three VAs using a single login, which is described at our support site.

To register for oneworld virtual, visit its website at oneworldvirtual.org.

VAS ACARS NXT

After a few months of behind the scenes work, we now have an early alpha version of a new version of VAS ACARS, which we will refer to as VAS ACARS NXT. This version is a complete rewrite and uses completely different technology than the current version of VAS ACARS. We hope that this version will resolve issues some pilots experience during flights, or when uploading.

However, as this is still an early alpha, there are of some limitations and things you need to be aware of. One major feature that is still missing is the chat, we hope to be adding it at a later date. Instead, we recommend to join our Discord and ask your questions or chat with your fellow pilots in the appropriate channels. If you have not yet joined our Discord, visit discord.gg/EAKR7Qe. Moreover, as this is a completely new version of VAS ACARS still in the alpha stage, there may be new issues which we might not yet be aware of. Therefore, there will be a separate forum category in which you will be able to discuss VAS ACARS NXT with staff members and of course fellow pilots. You can find this forum category here. We will also be posting updates on the status of VAS ACARS NXT there.

If you have read all these limitations and would still like to try this new version of VAS ACARS, you can download VAS ACARS NXT from here. It can be installed alongside the current version of VAS ACARS will continue being supported whilst more features make their way into VAS ACARS NXT in the future. Note this is a completely seperate version which is installed next to your existing version, the new version can be identified by the new logo present on the created shortcuts.

Pushback

We now also have a better detection algorithm for the pushback phase: we are now able to detect whether you have done a pushback and will dynamically add or remove the pushback phase from your flight analysis based on whether you have done a pushback. If you don't have a pushback phase, the lights that would normally be checked during the pushback are now checked during the taxi-out phase. Moreover, when you do have a pushback it now includes an item that checks whether your engines were shut off at the start of the pushback. That also means that we now detect a pushback even if your engines were already started, which was the most likely cause of your missed pushback before. Now you will instead get a point reduction for starting your engines prior to pushback.

The Complete Guide To Flight Scoring will be updated in the coming weeks to also document this behaviour. Since our last update in August, this guide has also been updated with a section on short flights which is also a new feature of the flight processor. When your flight is very short, you usually do not reach the threshold of 11,000 ft AGL to enter the cruise phase. Therefore, short flights use a different method of determing your cruise phase and skip some phases such that you will still get full score.