North Eastern Airlines

After reading this article and agreeing with a lot of it, I decided it would be in my best interest to talk about the VA I run. My airline is called North Easterm Airlines it is named after my oldest virtual railroad using MS Train Simulator. I also have 2 other virtual railroads. But I also like flying so I decided to start up the VA. The railroad started in 2001 when MS first released their trainsim. I started right in to painting trains and creating activities to run. Before too long several other people who came to visit my site, liked what they saw and asked if I needed some help. I did and they came to help and we created the biggest longest lasting virtual railroad to date. We also helped 3 others set up a virtual railroad with our software. So of the 6 actual functioning virtual railroads using MSTS, I own 3.

Back in 2001 there was no real format for doing any of this virtual thing with MS Train Sim. But I belonged to a VA, American Flight Airways and decided to "borrow" their format to create my railroad. I wrote a php program to be able to enter in trip reports, and create a callboard with hours and ranks and rewards and a logbook. All the stuff you generally see at a VA. It was a great success.

The crew that came to help me came from many walks of life and had many different talents. Brian asked me one day if I would mind him looking at and changeing my php code. I have an open door policy and I mean wide open, so he began rewriting my spaghetti code and turned it into a really great application.

About 2 years ago, when I told everyone I wanted to fly some more, most of the crew came with me to North Eastern AIrlines, which we shortened to NEAir, and Brian began rewriting the program again, only this time for an airline. So I was now making a VA out of code I used to make a VR which was borrowed from a VA. One nice big circle.

Now North Eastern Airlines or NEAir is going into the second year of operation. I shall tell you about it now, if your still with me.

NEAir does not do a lot of things. It does not model the real world in any way. It does not have any nagging rules. There is no real governing body giving you orders or telling you what you can or can't do. It does not have an ACARS system. It does not demand you fly online at VATSIM or any other place. It does not require you to do flights you do not want to fly in aircraft you do not want to fly, to an extent. There are no check flights or massive training to go through. Most of all it does not cost you anything but your time. Everything is free. You need to own a sim, be able to take off and land, use the flight planner in your sim to make a flight and have fun.

You do not get deleted from NEAir. We would like you to fly at least a flightline a month. Thats 2 actual flights. If you don't, eventually someone will notice your inactivity and you might get a canned email from the system telling you of it. Eventually someone might hit the delete button on you, but you are not deleted, but put into storage. All your records are still there, just hidden from the roster. To become active again, all you need do is file a pirep. December 1, 2008 was our first birthday, I did my first pilot delete last week, June 21st, 2009. Thats a year and a half before someone was actually deleted. You always get the people that join on a whim and never come back. So after a year and a half if your record book was still at 0, you went into storage. We went from 125 names to 85 pilots.

So what does NEAir offer? At present there are 70 aircraft for you to fly. Painted in my ficticious livery of blue, white and black with an Eagle on the tail. The trains are painted in this scheme also. NEAir's fleet supports both FS9 and FSX. I started building before FSX was out, but I got it as soon as it became available and it is now my sim of choice. A few months ago, one of the regular pilots offered to repaint a few payware planes and that started that ball rolling. We have repaints of Wilco's CRJs, Dreamfleets 727, and PMDGs 737 and 747. About half of our aircraft are Premiere Aircraft Design's models, another good portion are from Mike Stone. The rest are from different authors but are of high quality freeware. I like nice stuff. There are many different types of aircraft to fly, from C172s to B52s. All aircraft are tested by a beta testing crew, so everything works when you install it.

NEAir offers you a lot of choices. At this time there are 24 operational hubs set up. More are being worked on. In it's virtual world it is assumed NEAir is the big cheese and is slowly taking over the rest of the world. Our hubs span the globe, we are now just filling in the gaps that are too large. Each hub has it's own web pages, with a home page that has news and headlines pertaining to that hub as well as a Hub Director position. Seperate forums are also available to each hub. The Hub Director gets the pleasure of adding Flightlines, Charters and Layovers for the hub pilots to fly.

Flightlines, Charters and Layovers are the 3 different types of flights available to you. A flightline is our main work. It consists of 2 flights. You start at your hub and fly to the destination. Then in another session you fly from the destination and back to your hub. You file a Pirep after each flight at the web site. Charters are special flights that have a scenerio involved or a story line. You start at your hub and then fly to a destination, then another and another and however many the writer adds, then the last flight of the Charter brings you back to your hub. You could actually have a charter going around the world. You file a Pirep for each destination airport. Layovers are a combination of Flightlines and Charters. You start at your hub and you have a destination, however there is another airport to stop at between here and there. When you get to your destination, you then fly the layover back to your hub. You file a Pirep for each leg.

All the flights are in a database. Each hub has their own set of flights. They are just flights, no real world schedules, no true routes, only by coincidence, all though the Layovers were added for the real world feel. If you get tired of flying your hubs flights, you can transfer to another hub. You don't have to ask anyone, you just click the Transfer button, choose a hub and an automatc pirep is filed for you as a Jumpseat flight to that hub. You can then stay there as long as you like and go back home or to another hub. You may never get back to your original home hub. So you can fly just about anywhere from anywhere and you pick the flight. To add even more to it, if there is a flight you would like to fly and it is not in the database of flights, there is a utility for the pilot to use to submit a flight to the hub. Charters and Layovers can also be suggested by the pilots. The database is searchable and from the list you can also get approach plates in PDF format for the US airports and some other countries.

A Category system is used by NEAir. The aircraft are designated by a category, airports are a category and pilots are rated for a category by their hours flown for the VA. Everyone starts off the same, as a new pilot for a new company. You can not carry over your hours from another VA. Thats just fudging in your self prestige to me. If you need to fudge hours, you can do it at NEAir. Who is going to know? Really? Just you. So NEAir is as real as you want to make it. No one is watching over you ready to correct your ways. When you apply to NEAir, you are designated as a Category 1 pilot with the rank of First Officer. Pilots with less than 20 hours, Can fly category 1 or 2 aircraft routes. Pilots with 20 hours to less than 40 hours Can fly category 1, 2, 3 aircraft routes. Pilots with 40 hours or more...Can fly any route.

Our Pirep system called NEPS - North Eastern Pirep System keeps track of your rank and category as well as your flights. As you enter in flight hours you advance in rank and category and can download larger and larger aircraft. At the lower categories NEPS restricts you from downloading higher category aircraft. With the size of our fleet, which is still growing, we don't want it to turn into a download place, thats what Flightsim.com is for. If you want the planes, put in the hours. Hopefully you want more than that.

Airports also have a category. Small airports with grass runways are category 1 as are the small aircraft. The larger the Category number, the larger the aircraft and the airport. The larger the pilot's category, the more choices are open. Category 1 aircraft can go anyhere fuel allows them, but a Category 5 aircraft can only land at a Category 5 airports, like a 747 with a 10,000 foot runway. The airport's category is assigned by the length of it's runway.

The NEPS program has quite a lot of features. I would tell Brian I wanted something and he would code it. I made a web site and he coded that. We made the Pirep filing as simple as possible for speed and ease of use. When you file a pirep you are presented with a few pages that require minimal input. The first page shows you some info on where you are at and has a box to enter your destination's ICAO code or the actual flight number. A table displays data from your last 3 flights to help remember what you are doing. Once you enter the ICAO code and new page pops up show you one or more flights to that ICAO code. There could be multiple flights going to one destination because of categories and payload. A cargo flight is listed as a seperate flight than a PAX to the same destination. After you have chosen the correct flight another page pops up showing you the data for your flight and there are several drop downs and radio buttons to choose for date, departure time, aircraft flown, flight time, which ATC you use, VFR or IFR, your weather and an optional comment box. Once you have the correct data input, click the verify button and one last page pops up with an "Are you sure" prompt and the ability to go backwards through the pages. If everything is good, you submit the Pirep and your hours are posted to the Pilot Roster and your Pilot Portfolio and your logbook. If you advanced enough you will also be promoted at that time.

Each pilot has a portfolio and a logbook. The portfolio is a page that display your statistics, flight, hours, pay for the month, year and grand total. A list of the planes you fly is displayed with the number and percentage of flights you used that aircraft. A list of your promotions and the number of different types of flights you have flown, PAX, Cargo, Air Med or Military. The logbook is just a list of every one of your flights with clickable links that present a map of your actual flight along with all the flight data.

Flying online is alot of fun at NEAir. But we do not do what you might think. We have two seperate servers for flying online using FSHost an Teamspeak. One servers is ours and the other is our freind's. On our server it is pretty much a free for all. We get together not to just fly but to shoot the breeze about whatever we want. Generally we pick a starting point then an aircraft and then a destination and play "follow the leader". There is nothing formal about it, just us having fun and talking. Like a chatroom in the sky.

Our other server is similar but they like older aircraft there from the 50s & 60s. They set up tours and have what they call Vintage ATC where you go through a script of sorts to take off by requesting permissions and such. They follow flight rules more strictly, but no one is banned or yelled at or anything like that. But you won't see 8 Connies flying in line 50 feet apart. It is all very friendly and there are a bunch of guys who are willing to help you. They want to have fun just like you. You are not required to fly online ever. We do not even encourage it. We just blab in ours forums about how much fun we had and post screen shots and let everyone know when we are flying again. The servers are 24/7 so anyone can fly online anytime and start their own session. If one person is online, usually more will follow.

NEAir's adminstrative people are a bunch of old guys who like to have fun flying. Our youngest admin is 38. Our oldest is pushing 70. We range from government officials to tombstone carvers in the real world. Most of us got tired of following some high schooler's trains of thought and controlling attitudes and tempers, so we created the NEAir for other people who are tired of the same thing. If you like to fly and like a mature atmosphere and your interested from what you have just read, then stop on over to North Eastern Airlines at www.vneair.com . You can browse most of our forums and see what kind of people we are, allthough you can not post until you are a member.

Bob Artim
Owner, NERR Network

North Eastern Airlines
www.vneair.com

North Eastern Railroad
www.vnerr.com

C&NW Railroad
www.vcnwrr.com

P&A Railroad
www.vparr.com