One virtual airline, many operators represented.

As our name suggests, the operator our virtual airline primarily represents is Piedmont Airlines (1948-1989). Please note this is not the airline currently called Piedmont, which operates as a regional partner of American Airlines.

However, we believe that there are too few virtual airline communities of good quality and with modern platforms that focus on the history of the airline industry. There have always been a few, and some of the big VAs built on the big surviving major airlines have some historical content, so we want to focus on days gone by and provide the community with a way to engage with the history of the industry we love.

So, what does that mean? In short, if you join you will always have available to you the mainline operations of Piedmont Airlines as it was in September 1988. In addition, we will cycle in and out entire route networks, or pieces of them, from other airlines before the year 2000. For example, at the time of launch we included:

• AirCal in 1983

• Pan Am’s 747-100/200 flights from 1984

• TWA Mainline in 1988

• Braniff’s DC-6 flights from 1956

• CPAir Mainline in 1983

• Ansett Australia in 1995

• Interflug in 1990

On our Histories page, we’ll list what the current composition of our route network is, along with some historical background, a description of what’s included, and why we think it’s meaningful or worth exploring. We will organize swapping these operators in and out into seasons.

Requests from the community.

It’s important to us as we curate and manage our route network and the fleet composition it supports that we take our membership into account. The following section touches on what we’re able to support due to add-on availability, but we also want to include a brief note about how we’re going to plan route requests.

Route network adjustments will be seasonal. What do we mean by that? There are four seasons per year, each lasting approximately three months. So, the route network will be adjusted at most every three months, no faster. Not everything will change when we update, it may be a small change swapping out a piece of one historical operation with another. It may be more drastic than that. It will depend.

When we prepare for a season change, we’ll announce it to our community and we’ll request input on what people would like to see. We’ll assess what information and add-ons are available and thus what is actually possible for us to include. If you don’t see something you’d like to see here yet in terms of fleet or route networks/operators, don’t turn us down right away! We may be able to include it in the future.

What won’t be possible are on the fly updates responding to requests. Finding historical timetables, buying them, scanning them, typing them out, formatting them, and adding them to the database takes time, and we’re not going to include anything that isn’t based on a real timetable or historical document.

All simulators supported, but X-Plane 11 is the current
de facto preference due to available add-ons.

The founders of PVA-HG all enjoy the three main civilian flight simulators: Prepar3d, X-Plane 11, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Each simulator has its positives and negatives, and each has a dedicated fanbase who want to be catered to and to defend their chosen platform. Unfortunately, not every simulator has an identical selection of high quality add-on aircraft, and not every add-on aircraft has a selection of high quality liveries. We will, to the best of our abilities, support every simulator that we can, but the reality is that the current selection highly favors X-Plane 11. At the time of launch, here are the aircraft types we expect to be most heavily utilized by the carriers we plan to include in our schedules, along with which add-on/simulator we will primarily provide content and livery support for:

• Airbus A300/A310: iniBuilds, X-Plane 11; JustFlight A300 offering for P3D will be assessed when released

• Boeing 727-100/200: FJS 727, X-Plane 11

• Boeing 737-200: FJS 732, X-Plane 11; CaptainSim offering for P3D not yet assessed, unlikely to be supported

• Boeing 737-300: IXEG 737-300, X-Plane 11; CaptainSim offering for P3D not yet assessed, unlikely to be supported

• Boeing 747-200: Felis 742, X-Plane 11; JustFlight offering for P3D will be assessed when released

• Boeing 757/767: FlightFactor, X-Plane 11; CaptainSim offering for P3D not yet assessed, unlikely to be supported

• Bombardier Dash 8: Majestic, P3D; FJS, X-Plane 11

• British Aerospace 146: JustFlight, P3D and X-Plane 11

• Concorde: Not included in schedules yet, but planned for the future, options for X-Plane 11 and P3D available.

• Douglas DC-3: Not included in schedules yet, but planned for the future, options for all three simulators available

• Douglas DC-6: PMDG, P3D and MSFS 2020

• Fokker F28: JustFlight, MSFS 2020 (pending release)

• McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family: Leonardo FlytheMaddogX, P3D/MSFS2020 (future); Rotate MD80, XP-11

• Saab 340: LES, X-Plane 11; Carenado, P3D

• Tupolev 154: Felis Tu-154, X-Plane 11, potentially able to support the Project Tupolev Tu-154 based in interest

There are other, older add-ons that we will assess to see how viable they are these days as we grow and develop the community as we anticipate certain popular aircraft types, like the L1011, will be in demand, despite the available offerings for them to be less than ideal.

There are also add-ons of lower fidelity that may be useful for certain things, as an example some of the Carenado propeller regional airliners like the Beech 1900 and Shorts 360 may be included for regional operators in the future.

Finally, there are other add-ons that may be of perfectly decent quality that are compatible with the latest versions of the three simulators that aren’t included here — bring them to our attention and we can talk about how they can be included in future route networks!

Flying old aircraft with old navigational equipment means flying the old way.

If you are sick of being a Child of the Magenta Line, then this is the virtual airline for you. Based on the list above, you’ll note that the vast majority of these airliners either operated only by using physical navigational aids like VORs and NDBs, or with early internal navigation systems like the CIVA INS or LTN-92. Yes, there are a few airliners in the list with a more modern FMS with LNAV and VNAV, but they’re a relative minority. If you’re flying a TWA 727 from Topeka to St. Louis, or a Pan Am 747-200 from New York to London, we want you to fly with period correct navigational equipment and techniques and flight plans, to the extent the simulator and add-on allows. Intimidated? Don’t know how to do it? Don’t worry, we’ll provide training material, manuals, and coaching to get you up to speed.

Please note that all reference materials, manuals, coaching, or “instruction” provided by PVA-HG should be considered purely for entertainment/reference use only and are not, have never been, nor will ever be approved by any regulatory body for operational use in any real world piloting situation. Please consult your local regulatory body, operator, and/or manufacturer for all operational documentation and procedures.

An active community designed for adults, but with no corporate role play.

This isn’t your job. This isn’t a company. This isn’t a real airline. At the end of the day, we’re a bunch of nerds playing pretend airline pilots in a video game. We get it. To the extent that it furthers the hobby and our enjoyment of it, we’ll take things seriously. There’s no point in being a member of a virtual airline if you want no rules, no structure, no external points of reference. We’re going to review your PIREPs, count hours, award and deduct points, etc. based on how you did. We’re going to talk about how things are really done and encourage people to replicate that. But you’ll find no “CEO” here, no HR department here. You’ll find no avatars of people in cheesy suits LARPing like they’re on a C-suite somewhere. This VA is run by volunteer enthusiasts just like you, and we hope you’ll be a part of it.

A note about community standards.

One last topic to briefly mention are our community guidelines. You can read them in full here. As said above, this community is catered to adults. We ask all members to be at least 16 years of age. If you join our Discord, which is our main communication hub, you may see some profanity, you may see an occasional off color joke. We’re not going to slap people on the wrist for that. We do, however, expect people to keep things friendly and to uphold PVA-HG as a welcoming environment for all. We won’t tolerate racism, bigotry, discrimination, or hate speech of any kind. Our forum and Discord won’t have a politics channel, so don’t bring your political commentary here, it’s not the place for it. Anything the volunteer staff deems to be unwelcoming, abusive, intolerant, etc. will be moderated on a zero tolerance basis.

Sound good? the only thing left for you to do is join: