7 November 2002
To All Of Our Pilots,

October was a good recovery from our expected drop-off in September. However, we have several issues we need to face to further our success.

Continental-KLM-Northwest Virtual Group
A disturbing trend has been noticed involving our most popular virtual airline. While flights for airlines within the group title have decreased by 8% (flights for SimAirline.net decreased by 12% since our best month ever), flights for the other airlines (Alaska, Hawaiian, Horizon) have decreased by just over half. If this trend continues, it may be necessary for us to restructure our operations to remove those airlines which have not been effective. Considering that Continental and Northwest intend to enter a triple alliance with Delta, and Continental, KLM, and Northwest are all considering joining the SkyTeam Alliance, it may be in our best interests to refocus our efforts, should the situation arise. In addition, there is still the reasonable possibility that US Airways could terminate operations, allowing us to resume Virtual US Airways.

Swissair-Sabena Virtual
Swissair-Sabena will most likely be split into separate virtual airlines in the near future. As discussed in the message boards, Belgian pilots were reluctant to join the virtual airline because of its embrace of the alliance between Sabena and Swissair, which ultimately led to the demise of both. A parallel issue is whether or not we should include their successors, SN Brussels Airlines and Swiss Air Lines. A complete decision on the Swissair-Sabena issue has not yet been made

Message Boards
The Message Boards were not frequently used over the previous two months, and activity remains low. We may not be able to keep this feature if it is not used.

Management Positions Available
SimAirline.net still needs to fill five positions within management. Further information is available here.

Downloads Section
We will begin developing a Downloads section to SimAirline.net, which will contain what we feel are necessary or highly recommended add-ons or utilities to have on your system to enhance your time with SimAirline.net. This section will be released next month at the earliest.

Fly-Ins
Based on the recent poll results, we will try to conduct fly-ins on a weekly basis. Although most of the support was not for weekly fly-ins, because many pilots do not fly for more than one of our virtual airlines, we hope to conduct them weekly to accomodate members of all three virtual airlines. Initial fly-ins will be to more common destinations, such as London, Los Angeles, or New York, but we will eventually expand to include more locations. More details will be available in the near future.

PIREPs
As you may have noticed, the Swissair-Sabena PIREP has been reformed to include selectable destinations like for the Virgin PIREPs. Eventually, this feature will be available for Continental-KLM-Northwest.

If you have anything about these or other issues you wish to discuss, please feel free to contact me. I strongly encourage you to inform me of your opinons on these important issues. Thank you, as always, for your continued support of SimAirline.net, which helps us maintain our status as one of the leading real-based virtual airline organization.

Aaron Robinson
aaron.robinson@simairline.net
AOL Instant Messenger: SimAirlineNet