1 September 2002
To All Of Our Pilots,

Our excellent summer of growth continues. We reached record highs in flight hours, pilots, and PIREPs. This growth was created by our recent expansion, the addition of Alaska, Hawaiian, Horizon, KLM, and Northwest Cargo. Our transition from Continental-Northwest Virtual Airlines to the Continental-KLM-Northwest Virtual Group went smoothly, and the new flights have proven popular. However, people are still learning about the new airlines, so we should expect more growth over the next few months.

Unfortunately, the recent expansion hurt Swissair-Sabena and Virgin after their recent gains in popularity. While Continental-Northwest operated between 61.3 and 66.3% of our flights in May through July, Continental-KLM-Northwest flew 75.7% of our flights the last month. Our Swissair-Sabena flights dropped by nearly 17%, and Virgin by over 30%. This is a trend which has been obvious since Virgin started losing popularity midway through 2001. Swissair-Sabena has also been less popular than expected, based on the market for such a virtual airline. We will continue to strive to improve the popularity of our lesser virtual airlines.

Meanwhile, in order to improve our service to you, I have hired nine of our pilots to hold the following positions:
 

Ali Abou-Zeid	Aircraft Painter Fleet Manager (Sabena, Swissair) Technical Assistance Advisor
Britton Brainard	Fleet Manager (Continental)
David Cabatu	Fleet Manager (Alaska, Hawaiian, Horizon) Scheduling Manager
Denny Hyden	Fleet Manager (Crossair, Sabena, Swissair)
John Kay	Flight Operations Manager
William Krachman	Fleet Manager (KLM, Virgin)
Jonathan Tepper	Industry News and Resources Advisor
Jonathan Wossene	Fleet Manager (Continental, Northwest)
Marlin Yoder	Fleet Manager (KLM, Northwest)

The Fleet Managers will test aircraft for us, and upload them directly to our site so you won't have to go through various other sites to download them, or find them on your own. Ali Abou-Zeid will also be repainting aircraft for us that would not otherwise be available. He will also give technical support for installing add-ons, or any other technical problems you may have.

David Cabatu, also our Scheduling Manager, will update our schedules for Hawaiian, Northwest Cargo, and Virgin as necessary.

John Kay, our Flight Operations Manager, is available for questions about selecting and flying our flights, as well as flight techniques, procedures, and navigation.

Jonathan Tepper, our Industry News and Resources Advisor, will assist me in obtaining necessary information for our operations, such as fleet sizes, new aircraft and routes, and other important information.

Our new management personnel are already working hard to improve our airline's quality and accuracy to the real airlines, and we should all applaud their efforts.

As you may be aware, we have two more expansion situations that could occur within the next few months. US Airways filed for bankruptcy on August 12, so if the airline ceases operations (they have over $17 billion in debt, with $7 billion in assets), then we would restart Virtual US Airways, the predecessor to Continental-Northwest.

Another situation is if Continental, KLM, and Northwest joined the Air France- and Delta-led SkyTeam Alliance. The question would then be what would happen to our recently-added Alaska/Horizon and Hawaiian operations. Our plans for these situations are under discussion at our Message Boards. The exact topic can be found here. I encourage you to join the discussion. Please remember that these discussions are preliminary, and do not indicate any committment to a further expansion.

As always, please feel free to contact me about the issues presented here, or anything else you would like to discuss. I am available at your convenience.

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