Another month has passed, everyday we get closer to leaving the lockdown the world is currently experiencing. We do hope that UK virtual has been able to provide you with enough activities to keep you occupied while we wait to restart normal life again. Our members jobs range from pilots to lorry drivers, cabin crew to bus drivers, engineers to paramedics. We would like to take the opportunity to say a big thankyou to everyone still working through these difficult times keeping our countries connected, moving and safe.
At the time of writing, unless by some miracle, we are pleased to announce that Easyjet won the battle of the budgets! It’s been a great competition with nearly 1200 flights logged for the battle. Thankyou to everyone who gave it a go, those eligible for a prize will be receiving an email from me over the next few days detailing how you can claim your prize.
Our amazing members have also beaten our monthly flight record, which was at 1039 flights in a month. We have hit a new record of 1702 flights (at time of writing) This is an excellent achievement, so close to that 2000 flight mark! A big thankyou to UNI1011 Chris our pireps manager who has been tirelessly working each day to accept, and occasionally reject, your flights!
Flight Operations – UNI154 Ryan
Our brand new summer tours launch tonight during the group flight, exclusively for our UK virtual supporters. There is a great range of tours from the many islands of Europe to the Capital Cities of the world. We also have a range of members tours created by selected members for everyone to enjoy. All our tours this year are free aircraft choices, so there are no restrictions at all ( unless you are flying a prop tour, which speaks for itself) If you are not a UK virtual supporter you will be able to access the tours from the 8th May 2020. From just £5 a month you can support UK virtual, access the tours along with a list of many other benefits.
We are currently working with a new livery developer, who has a special talent in X plane liveries. You will be able to see more variants of our aircraft available on the UK VA page over the coming weeks, starting with the Toliss A319 and the Flight Factor A320 for Xplane.
Finally we have updated our 737 livery in memory of Graeme Barker. Our aircraft now wears a special decal underneath the cockpit window, and the aircraft has been re registered G-UNGB. A big thankyou to everyone who donated to our fundraiser, you managed to raise over £400 for prostate cancer UK.
General Operations – UNI517 Mike
We have a few rule changes to announce, they are as follows:
In the event that you record a landing rate over -750fpm due to an elevation issue or simulator issue, we will require a recording of your landing in order to accept the pirep. This can be achieved via the instant replay option available on all simulators and should be emailed to [email protected] to go with your pirep.
Members should not distribute or display any custom made UK virtual liveries without prior permission from a UK virtual Staff member. Members are free to create custom liveries for their own personal use.
We would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of our UK virtual supporters. Your support enables us to run the competitions and prizes each month, and create new liveries for all our members to enjoy. Thankyou to you all for your support!
Technical Operations – UNI548 Tony
Good news! You no longer need to comment on your final leg of a tour to receive an award. Thanks to some updates on our admin panel, staff will know when you have finished a tour in order to give you your award.
For our eagled eyed members you will have seen an update to your profile, we have given our tour awards a refresh and your flight achievements will automatically display when you have reached the criteria.
I am still working hard on the new tracker, with alot of testing going on in the background. Thank you for your patience, we look forward to releasing it to our members very soon!
Conclusion
Thank you for choosing to fly for UK virtual, your continued support is greatly appreciated by myself, Tony and Mike.
Stay home, Stay Safe. Let’s work through this together!