VATNZ Partner VA Policy Change

[Alex Burrow]

G'day gentlemen,
In the past week the VATNZ board of directors have been discussing the VA partner policy and have come to an agreement that changes needed to be made. The changes are as follows:

Criteria 9 has been changed
Old criteria: Partner virtual airlines must maintain an appropriate level of activity with VATNZ airspace and at VATNZ events.
New criteria:  Within each calendar quarter the Virtual Airline must have:
(i) At least 10 pilots flying on VATSIM; and
(ii) At least 5 flights within VATNZ airspace (NZZC, NZZO, NZCM)

Criteria 10 has been added
It states: In order to identify and acknowledge each VA's flight activity within VATNZ airspace, each partner airline must provide VATNZ with a string that will appear in the Remarks section of its members' filed flight plans.

This string must uniquely identify the VA and should be in one of the following formats (listed in descending order of preference):

An ICAO Field 18 Operator item. eg: "OPR/VIRTUAL AIRLINE NAME"
The URL for the Virtual Airline's website. eg: "www.virtualairlinewebsite.com"
The Virtual Airline Name. eg: "Virtual Airline Name"

Only flights that contain the specified string in their Remarks field will be identified by VATNZ's systems as being operated by the Virtual Airline.

Criteria C has been added
It states: All airlines are subject to VATNZ evaluations to confirm compliance with VATSIM and VATNZ policies. These evaluations are carried out at the initial application stage and then annually thereafter. Any airline not complying with policy may be removed from the database at any time

The changes to the VATNZ Virtual Airline Partners Policy are designed to provide clarity around the expectations we have always had with respect to VA Partners' presence in VATNZ airspace. Where previously the activity requirements we extremely vague, they are now more explicit, however the required levels of activity are very low - five VATNZ flights a quarter - and we do not believe that this should prove a difficult task to complete for any active virtual airline. The only new requirement is Clause 10 (a string uniquely identifying the Virtual Airline in the Remarks field of pilots' flight plans), and again we do not anticipate this being too onerous a requirement given that most of the existing VA Partners already have policies to this effect for their pilots.

What does this mean to us?
Criteria 9: If every pilot does his required monthly flight we will easily pass this requirement.
Criteria 10: Every pilot must include a VA unique field 18 identifier so that his flight can be registered as completed and in accordance with criteria 9. The preferred method is using the ICAO field 18 operator item, in our case it would be OPR/NOBLE AIR. Whatever this may be, all pilots must use the exact same field 18 remark to have that flight be registered on the system.
Criteria C

We need to come to a decision regarding field 18 prior to 10 January 2012.

If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact either myself (alex@vatnz.net) or Nick Johnston, VATNZ's Division Director (nick@vatnz.net).

Cheers.

Alex Burrow, VATNZ6
Pilot Operations Director