Flight Data Center NOTAM

To all American Virtual Pilots,

At some point within the next 10 days to 2 weeks (TBD) the CrewCenter will be put in MAINTENANCE mode for 12 to 24 hours. All services will be stopped and the website will NOT be accessible.
The exact time will be communicated promptly to all of our Pilots via all available social media platforms.

If you are interested in learning more about the current situation please keep reading:

For quite some time now, we have been trying to brainstorm solutions to a fairly difficult issue we are experiencing. For the past 18 months, our flights (pireps) production has been very strong, running at an average of 80 flights reported per day.

While that is always welcome news inside a Virtual Airline, it can also become a source of great operational headaches and even create a point of failure within the technological infrastructure.
We reached that junction on the road where it is needed to take appropriate measures to largely cut the number of reports we keep stored in our databases before the administration section of the VA becomes unusable.

However, these scenarios rarely come without strings attached and that is where our conundrum starts. The majority of the statistical data you can find on the CrewCenter is coming straight from the logs of those reported flights (pireps). If we simply start trimming flight reports without a preconceived logical plan in place we will end up losing most of said statistical data.

Inevitably, some compromises will need to be made and some data will be lost in the process of implementing the best viable solution. We are hard at work to minimize those losses and preserve the progress our pilots achieved with great commitment. To be more accurately clear, hours & ranks are not at stake here, only the statistical data is.

Adventures will be impacted too. We STRONGLY encourage all of our Pilots currently in the middle of flying an Adventure to finish it as quickly as possible. We cannot guarantee the progress of active, ongoing Adventures will not be affected by the upcoming changes. Adventures already completed should remain intact (theoretically).

Ultimately, the financial model of the Virtual Airline will be greatly impacted as well as the revenue & expenses figures are all factored into the flight reports and calculated accordingly. We are centering our action plan logic around a “Before X” and “After X” timeline. All operations related to the “Before X” period will be accessible through a separate section of the website (which we will call Historical), while all the new reports linked to the “After X” period will continue to work as they do now and benefit from the fresh start.

In theory, we expect this solution to work fairly well, but given the complexity of the platform structure and the inherent nature of the interconnected data, the practical results may turn out differently.

Please follow this topic closely as we will continue to keep everyone informed about this development and what to expect in terms of changes in the CrewCenter and in your Pilot Public profile.

Keep the sunny side up 🙂