UKV1155 - Allan Hook Posted December 2, 2016 Report Share Posted December 2, 2016 ----------------------------- Dear Members, Well November was interesting. Our website was down twice in the month due to problems with our host company, causing us to lose some information. If you have any flights missing please let us know and we will be happy to do manual pireps for them. Please provide the details in the Forum post or email details to Allan in HR. This months Newsletter is full of information from all departments. The policy from the Exec team to communicate to all staff and members and to keep the momentum in Fly UK, is having an effect. Once again, thank you for continuing to fly with us. The past month was good in terms activity at Fly UK. An average of 362 unique pilots per week filed a PIREP in November We received 1,908 Mainstream PIREPs, 585 Tour PIREPs and 306 Flying Club PIREPs. Membership numbers currently stand at 1134. Skytrack version 1.5 should be installed now if you haven't already done so, as older versions will be disabled from the 10th December. Staff Changes Jim Lowery is standing down from the Fly UK staff and his excellent running of the Flying Club. He feels it's time to enjoy flying again, without the pressures of all that he used to do in the background. He will continue to fly and offer advice and support to the whole staff team at Fly UK. Jim has been awarded the Outstanding Service award to reflect his long and loyal service to Fly UK and the Flying Club. Clinton Peake has agreed to continue to organise the weekly Wednesday evening Flying Club events. Fly UK staff member Dave Campbell had agreed to adding the management of the club to his existing duties. Ron Kurz UKV1510 has joined our Training Academy staff and we now feel we have the staff level right for the service needed for Fly UK members. Ron has been with Fly UK just over 12months and has held a PPL licence and flown helicopters with a commercial licence in the past. He now lives and works in Zurich. Piotr Kaminski UKV1777 has rejoined the staff team as Online Event Manager. Besides working on the weekly Fly UK events, he will feed information on IVAO and VATSIM events into our forums. Derek will work closely with him. Operations One month into the Winter schedules and its great to see members enjoying the new routes. The Ops team enters a quieter period now but will soon start preparing for Summer 2017. Montreal is our featured destination of the month served by a daily 787 service and home to three Fly2 757's for the Winter, supporting the Canadian peak holiday season. Nordic Sky The new schedules are out for Nordic Sky, not only a schedule rationalization for Bergen, we have also added a new hub. As a hub, the northern city of Tromsø is now a part of the Nordic Sky network. The new hub brings even more challenges, such as the difficult Winter weather in the northern coastal towns. Keep the Q400 out of the water but most of all have fun. Tours Aircraft assignments have been updated to reflect the fleet changes that came into effect with the introduction of the Winter schedules and the arrival of the new Boeing 787. The 2016 WorldFlight tour is in the final stages of planning and will be added in early December. The 2015 WorldFlight Tour will be moved to the retirement tab and will remain until the end of January 2017 to allow pilots who have already started the tour time to finish. The 2015 IVAO tours have now been retired. Charters (Ad-Hoc) The charters office has been extremely busy in November with staff burning the midnight oil. Twenty five aircraft have been retired from our fleet. Understandably our senior management have been securing the best deals available to best position Fly UK to expand our fleet. To this end our retiring aircraft are being delivered throughout the globe. Retirement flights have started and further flights will be released weekly. These flights will be available for two week periods to allow pilots the opportunity to fly these unique routes. The retirement flights will be completed by the end of December 2016, to allow for further delivery flights in January 2017!! Keep an eye on the charters section for these exciting flights, and be the first to fly some of our new aircraft. Lapland flights have been posted and provide flights from a variety of airports throughout the UK to Rovaniemi (EFRO). As a result of the re-structuring of Fly2, the charters department will return to it's original name of Ad-Hoc to differentiate the department from Fly2. Flying Club As you can see from the above section I'm relegating myself to the regular ranks and I'm happy to add here, my last comments. First of all - 12 Flying Club members joined our memorial flight for Paul Bayley on Sunday 6th November in a flight around Paul 's home area in Melbourne and another 3 flew it offline in their own time. Also, 15 pilots flew FL836 - one of Paul's favourite routes - on the day. Paul will be sadly missed in Fly UK for his interest and generosity, especially in providing personalised liveries for our favourite GA aircraft and his chirpy forum posts. Thanks to all who gave of their time to join the flights on the day. Onward and upward Paul - even low and slow. I must also commend the support that Thomas McGreevy, who moved on to higher skies earlier this year, gave to the Flying Club, and to those who joined his memorial flight - thanks both, you will be missed. The Flying Club has gone from strength to strength in the last few years and it has been good to see so many members joining in our regular Wednesday evening jaunts and also our monthly event flights. We broke our record this year with 16 pilots flying online on one of our Wednesday fllights - thanks guys - you make the Flying Club. I can see that on any month over 140 pilots file a Flying Club pirep and our tours are a great attraction too so why not join in the fun on Teamspeak/FSD server with us - we don't bite and are happy to see newcomers join in. Finally, thanks for all of your support and I encourage all to go on to enjoy Fly UK and what we offer- I will! See you in our skies Training Academy I'm very pleased to announce a recent upsurge in members taking up TA bookings on the Flying Club's VFR procedures and GA assisted flight courses. These courses are set in an informal enviroment, allowing members to settle into a relaxed learning atmosphere. A number of members have begun with one-to-one training sessions on TeamSpeak, then have sucessfully progressed with others to experience multiplay flying on our FSD server; then eventually taking the leap onto Vatsim. A measure of the success was demonstrated on a recent session when I could 'hear' the biggest grin on their faces at the end of the session. Satisfaction experienced all round. As a consequence of the course structure pilots have steadily developed a step at a time, ensuring not stepping to far ahead until they are comfortable. A great advantage of progressing in this manner is that it offers a solid foundation to move onto the IFR scenario should they wish. Currently I am engaged in some subtle research into how we use TeamSpeak and am hopeful we may be able to integrate TeamSpeak with our aircraft radios thus making for a more realistic way of communicating on our FSD server. It is looking promising so watch this space. Gray Fleet News The 787 has started its life strongly at Fly UK and the next airframe set to arrive will be the DO228 which joins the Nordic franchise soon. Documentation Review During December we will be releasing the revised and updated Guide to Online Flying to help and encourage those pilots with an interest in flying online. We will also be introducing a new version of the Pilot Handbook and SOP. This new document will reflect changes that have occurred since it was last published and also attempt to answer more of the questions often asked by new pilots when they join. Watch out for NOTAMs announcing their release. December Online Events Events are held on IVAO, Saturday at 0700z and repeated on VATSIM, Tuesday at 1930z and Thursday at 1400z. Week 1 Germany to Denmark Week 2 Norway to Finland Father Christmas Visit Week 3 Vietnam to Hong Kong Special Kai Tak No events over Christmas or New Year holidays Please visit our online events page for more information or to register your attendance. Screenshot Competition - Sponsored by UK2000 Scenery Congratulations to UKV1480 - Wojciech Binkowski in the November Screenshot Competition. His winning shot "Rovaniemi Approach'' won him a UK2000 Xtreme scenery package. Well done! The theme for the December Screenshot Competition is " Winter Wonderland ''. For more information and to the enter the competition, please see the link below: December Competition - Winter Wonderland ---ENDS--- Chris Sutcliffe - Chairman chris.sutcliffe[at]flyuk.aero Adam Hillier - Vice Chairman adam.hillier[at]flyuk.aero On behalf of the Fly UK Staff Team 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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