Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | Airline Operations |
Pilot Feedback - Thank You! |
DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP
Joined on June 10 2001
Event Half Century Club
Online Double Century Club
50 State Club
DVA Twenty-Year Anniversary
Everett 1500 Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Four Million Mile Club
"Col. Panic" Marietta, GA
2,241 legs, 8,967.3 hours
240 legs,
553.9 hours online 1,899 legs,
7,760.4 hours ACARS 75 legs,
196.3 hours event 2,277 legs, 9,102.2 hours total 91 legs dispatched, 66.4
hours
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Posted onPost created on
June 24 2003 18:01 ET by Luke Kolin
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On behalf of the entire DVA staff, I'd like to thank everyone that's contributed this far to Mark's feedback thread: Your opinions are important to us, because the only way that a virtual airline will succeed is by reflecting the needs and wishes of its members. Feedback is a two-way street: we need to know your opinions, and I think it's also important that we explain why our thoughts on things. I'd like to take a second to express my thoughts on some of the larger issues raised, and hopefully we can work together to meet everyone's needs. I hope that some of the points I raise may help focus the discussions.
Flight Bidding - there appears to be a split here between pilots that want the extra realism offered by flight bidding, versus others that are more interested in just getting in an aircraft and flying whenever infrequent spare time provides the opportunity to do so. As the father of one little girl with another on the way, I can tell you that my flying hours have dropped alarmingly in the past six months - just check my logbook. We're also in an interesting situation in that flight bids work best when there is a close match between the supply of flights and demands - and I can tell you that despite the tripling of flight volumes since a year ago, we still have many more flights than pilots.
Our attempt at a flight bidding system were flight assignments. This gives pilots the opportunity to select flight routes and essentially "bid" for flights. As I see things, the major problem is that the assignments are tied to the schedule, and the schedule involves a lot of work to update - which is why it is almost two years' out of date. Question: How can we improve Flight Assignments?
Auto PIREP - As I understand it, this would involve the system automatically approving PIREPs upon filing. For the record, over 99.2% of all PIREPs (just under 25,000 of them now) have been approved. Abuse of the system is very low, but it does happen from time to time. Typing errors occur as well. I've found that the improved data quality from manually approving PIREPs is well worth the sacrifice in time. If we were to implement an auto-PIREP system, I'd be forced to code a lot more auto-rejection code, like for unrated aircraft (even if it's an error on our part in your profile) and excessive travel time. Considering that the SLA for PIREP approval is 48 hours and is usually exceeded, I'm not sure where the demand is coming from. Question: What aspect of current PIREP/hours handling would cause you to want an Auto-PIREP system?
Message Forum - I'm in agreement here. We probably need to move away from the current water cooler threaded format, to something closer to phpBB. I personally don't think that the single-threaded phpBB model is superior to our threading, but that's neither here nor there. We're not going to go to phpBB for the simple reason that a) my HTTP server doesn't easily support PHP and b) the user directories probably wouldn't sync well. We do have the ability to view threads by last activity a la phpBB. Adding notifications to posters and users about new posts would also be possible. Question: What do you like about phpBB - the ability to view an entire thread in one page, or something else?
Flight Planning - Probably time for a revisit. Since EchoFlight is no longer free, I should dust off my plans to get their CD directly and import the approach charts into a database for permanent viewing. Preferred routes isn't easily going to happen unless someone can provide me with the source data. 99% of our flight planning issues stem from a lack of data, not an inability to do something with it.
Pilot "Pay" - While we originally supported VASM, I've pretty much given up on that gang to ever get something out.
These are the biggest issues I noticed. I'd be interested in hearing your answers to the questions I raised. If I missed something, please point that out too. This is an iterative process, but together we can make a great virtual airline.
Cheers!
Luke
Luke KolinSenior Captain, MD-11
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DVA953
Senior Captain, B737-800
E-MAIL
Joined on November 17 2002
50 State Club
Double Century Club
Online Double Century Club
"V1 means V1..." West Lafayette, IN USA
214 legs, 376.8 hours
211 legs,
373.0 hours online 117 legs,
223.6 hours ACARS
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Posted onPost created on
June 24 2003 18:43 ET by James Brickell
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Flight Assignments - I much prefer to just fly whenever I feel like it/have free time, however I'll offer my input. You mentioned that the flight assignments system is linked to the schedule. Well, why not abolish the current assignments system and create a new one where the Chief/Check pilots add "bids" for pilots?
PiREPS - I personally do not see the need for an Auto PiREP system. I agree with you..manual approval of the PiREPS does make it more secure. There are those among the Virtual Aviation community who unfortunately do fake their logbooks - however it is a minority.
Message Forum - phpBB's ability to read threads in one page is nice. I'm perfectly happy with the current setup, though.
Flight Planning - if this could be implemented it would be great.
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DVA822
Senior Captain, B777-200
Joined on September 05 2002
Quincentenary Club
Million Mile Club
"I love the smell of jet fuel" Northeastern United States
589 legs, 2,254.6 hours
47 legs,
112.9 hours online 97 legs,
400.7 hours ACARS 16 legs,
39.2 hours event
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Posted onPost created on
June 24 2003 18:49 ET by Trevor Fenimore
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All those points look good, and I think should be adressed futher at the next BOD meeting.
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DVA711
First Officer, B757-200
Joined on July 18 2002
Southeastern United States
14 legs, 21.1 hours
11 legs,
17.8 hours online
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Posted onPost created on
June 25 2003 05:52 ET by Benjamin Bloch
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Flight Bidding/Assignments: The current assignment system would work fine, however, there is just not enough flights to bid on in the database at this time. By increasing this, I think the bidding system would work work great.
Also to remember, that the flight bidding system shouldn't have to be mandatory. That way both pilots looking for the "real feel" as opposed to those who don't want to be restricted are happy.
Ben
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DVA1070
Senior Captain, B777-200
COMM
Joined on January 28 2003
Online Century Club
Double Century Club
"I believe I can fly" Jeffersonville, IN USA
218 legs, 841.9 hours
182 legs,
778.3 hours online 108 legs,
505.1 hours ACARS 42 legs,
200.5 hours event
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Posted onPost created on
June 25 2003 07:54 ET by Adam Gaweda
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> Auto PIREP - As I understand it, this would involve the system automatically approving PIREPs upon filing.
> ...
> Considering that the SLA for PIREP approval is 48 hours and is usually exceeded, I'm not sure where the
> demand is coming from. Question: What aspect of current PIREP/hours handling would cause you to want
> an Auto-PIREP system?
If I may suggest something. I would not change anything about the current PIREP handling system. What I would recommend, though, is an OPTIONAL filing of PIREPS through ACARS. FSACARS2 by Pedro Sousa allows that. The help file states: " ... It (FSACARS) can be used to automatically send pilot reports to the VAs and real-time flight information to the VA website and make it available so that all users can see it. This program is Freeware and if you want to use its log or ACARS capability in your VA please contact p.sousa@satavirtual.org ..."
In my view, adding the FSACARS-based PIREP filing would:
1. tremendously add to the reality of the flightsimming.
2. allow for evaluation and improvement of pilot skills.
3. virtually :-) eliminate the possibility of abuse.
I would run this in parallel with the current PIREP system for a while to see if it gets enough acceptance from the commuity. The only drawback I can think of right now, is the additional room required on the HDD on the DVA server.
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DVA1086
First Officer, MD-88
Joined on February 09 2003
Western Europe
16 legs, 19.6 hours
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Posted onPost created on
June 26 2003 06:30 ET by Will Murphy
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I could run PHP on a seperate server, would require pilots to sign up again but thats not too much trouble? Was also interested in setting up a seperate fleet page but I know that a nice shiny message board would be a good idea. I could also run Ikonboard as I have PERL and MYSQL?
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DVA1264
First Officer, B757-200
Joined on July 09 2003
Southeastern United States
61 legs, 113.4 hours
3 legs,
3.6 hours online
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Posted onPost created on
July 13 2003 06:17 ET by Frank Perreault
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Question: What do you like about phpBB - the ability to view an entire thread in one page, or something else?
I use phpBB to run a forum on one of my websites and it's great. I thiink the big advantage to that program is what it gives the administrator - a lot of options in controlling how things work, especially from a security standpoint. For the user it gives you a more cohesive user interface, the option for avatars and a private message facility. I used to use a program that listed the messages in a hierachial format and really thought that was important. Because of that I was pretty apprehensive to make the change to phpBB's inline format. At the end of day though it didn't matter that much. If someone is following the thread, it is no problem keeping track of what is being said.
Finally, everything in phpBB gets put into a database. This makes life easier when dealing with large amounts of messages, instead of manipulating large text files (a performance killer). It doesn't look like there is a huge amount of traffic here but that could be an issue in the future. The problem the phpBB solution however is that you need a webhost that supports both PHP and a database such as MySQL.
Contact me via email if you need more info.
--- Frank ---
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