Recently I was browsing the news and features here at FlightSim.Com. Because of the holiday weekend there wasn't much change in the venue. When I got in from work I made my way to check the latest news features. I also check out the latest in virtual airline entries. I'm particularly interested in aviation military virtual airlines and there have been a couple making the charts over the past month. I came across another addition. I don't know when this one was posted as it is half way down the page and will probably be off the main page in a couple days without being noticed by anyone. But what caught my attention was the title, Americas Air Force Virtual. There was something about just saying America that felt real good, but seeing it in a title name and I haven't seen this with the exception of variants of American Airline virtual airlines and you don't see this often. I said to myself, why Americas Air Force instead of USAF or something more traditional, so I went to the site to find the answer.

When I clicked on the link I was presented with clean and well laid out site. I got my answer right on the main page. A little anticlimactic, as I was expecting some philosophical explanation to the name they choose. Anyway, my point of this article is this. While I was there I decided to have a look see. I tried desperately to find some form of formal documentation about this VA. I found a couple links that seemed at the time a little incoherent and didn't tell me much. I couldn't even find a link where someone could join this VA. But then I looked at the recruit link and clicked. I was greeted by a virtual recruiting officer who explained if I didn't follow his lead on this tour I would get lost and he would wait until I caught up with him. If I didn't pay attention and made a wrong turn, he will wait. The bottom line as I don't want to give this away is unless you follow his lead and read all the information about this program you will not get to the application form. Very entertaining I thought.

I realized what this approach is attempting to accomplish and it is a process that any VA owner operator could refine and use. I have been in VA management for years and one of the big issues you have to deal with is members who fill out the application and that is as far as they go. What this program is doing is weeding out these speculators before they are entered into this system. They take it further but I won't get into this as I'm not trying to promote them but as a VA owner operator who has the issue with no show new members, you might enjoy this process and create a version that would work for your VA, as it is an effective process and worth the visit. Just a final note, this is not a php site and from what I see of its content it would be a very difficult challenge to make it one.

Ron Snyder
rnsnyder4@aol.com

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