UKV1121 - Chris Sutcliffe Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 Dear Members, The staff team have had a very busy couple of month's behind the scenes. We've welcomed 7 new members to the team and together we have been working on updates to the website, new repaints, new summer operations, establishing a new weekly VATSIM event, planning new Highland Connection operations, new ad-hoc flights and we've updated our offers/discounts. We know you, our pilots have been busy too. We're seeing record amounts of PIREPs being submitted each day, the majority of which are sent via SkyTrack, which is great to see. We continue to see a steady amount of new members join the ranks and our membership currently stands at over 700 pilots. During April we celebrated 8 years of Fly UK. The 8th Anniversary B747 tour proved extremely popular with 66 pilots managing to complete the tour within the allotted time, which exceeded all expectations. Congratulations to all the pilots who completed it and managed to negotiate the tight taxiing/parking at Southampton! We'd like to thank you for your continued support and loyalty to Fly UK. This update gives you all the latest news, it's perfect for something to read during the cruise. We hope you will find it interesting. Happy Flying! - Summer 2012 Schedule Change We launched our Summer 2012 operations for Scheduled and Low Cost flights on 1st May 2012. This schedule change sees the termination of our seasonal flights to winter destinations and the introduction of new summer holiday destinations. There are many changes to the full network. Our flight search as well as the information and destination maps on the mainstream operations page have now been updated to reflect the new schedule. - Cargo Fleet Overhaul We have now released new freeware packages and repaints for payware add-ons for our entire Cargo fleet. The downloads feature the new version 5 Union Spirit livery which includes updated 'Cargo' titles and a new style Motorsport Logistics livery. The new downloads are now available in the fleet centre. The freeware packages are auto-installers and include quality panels and sound sets. The repaints for payware add-ons are also auto-installers with a read me explaining how to complete installation. - FLY2 PMDG NGX B737-700 Now Available We have released a FLY2 livery for the PMDG NGX B737-700 for FSX. This is now available to download in the fleet centre. Many thanks to our aircraft repainter UKV1145 - Steve Trueman for working on this. Steve is currently in the process of working on updated version 5 textures for the entire Fly UK fleet. Obviously this is a major project and the repaints will be released class by class, as and when they are complete. - Screenshot Competition - Sponsored by UK2000 Scenery The theme for the May competition is 'Cargo'. The winner will receive the prize of an airport in the Xtreme range from UK2000 Scenery. This is a perfect opportunity for pilots to show off the new cargo liveries which are now available to download in the fleet centre. To enter the competition please visit the Screenshot Competition section of our forums. Full information as well as competition rules can be found there too. - May Online Events This month we have a great selection of event flights on IVAO, VATSIM and the Fly UK FSD server. Richard Jones (UKV1412) has picked some interesting routes around the world for the Saturday morning IVAO weekly events, kicking off with a multi-start event to Kai-Tak for the nail biting approach over the city. This month also sees the launch of Fly UK's new VATSIM weekly event, 'VATSUNDAYS'. These group flights are on Sunday evenings and are a great time for our VATSIM pilots to get together and enjoy some themed group flights. The theme for May is Extreme Airports! Last but not least, the Fly UK Flying Club are heading for some much needed sun with the Puerto Rico event on Sunday the 20th May. - New Staff Members We are pleased to welcome a number of new members to the Fly UK staff team. Jordan Mctiffin and Tom Boon join Tom Agnew to form our new Operations team. Jordan will focus on managing our routes and operational data (displayed on dispatch pages/CFPs). Tom B will mainly deal with codeshare flights and ad-hoc flights as well as assisting with general operations tasks. Tom A will maintain overall responsibility for scheduling, fleet and route planning. Tom Maskell, Tim Smith, Steve Birchall, Jay Collie and Trevor Darley have joined us as Training Academy Instructors. Together they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience with them. All are now set-up, ready to accept your training requests and share their knowledge with you! - New Offers & Discounts As a registered pilot at Fly UK, you are entitled to some fantastic offers and discounts from a wide range of flight simulator publishers. We have added some new discounts recently, so it’s a good time to take a look and pick up a bargain. You can find out how to obtain these offers under the Community section of the website on the Offers and Discounts page. - Update from Operations With improvements behind the scenes to the operations admin pages, the route network of Fly UK has seen a number of significant changes for the better over the past few months and this will be continued throughout the year. London City services have proved popular and will continue to operate under review until a permanent decision has been made on the base later this summer. Formula One charter flights are also with us again this year and will be continuing to the end of the season. Over the coming months we hope to procure additional cargo capacity to better suit our fleet for this kind of ad-hoc work. Some members have also noticed the Beechcraft B1900 aircraft on our website - this is linked to the Highland Connection project which is still 'under construction' but is scheduled to come online soon. The team has worked very hard to bring pilots some much needed area coverage in our route network, most notably South America and Australia. We recently took delivery of two Boeing 747-400s from World of Holiday Group and drafted another back into service to serve three new destinations: Sydney, Singapore, which operate 6 times per week and Rio de Janeiro at 4 times per week. Closer to home, most of the work has been in switching aircraft to more suitable routes as well as increasing frequency where possible. This will be more phased as we get toward the peak summer months of July and August. Most notably, one E170 will nightstop in Southampton instead of Leeds to operate summer charter routes previously operated by under equipped ATR72s. A new regular item is the Featured Destination. This month's featured destination is Palma de Mallorca, Fly UK offers flights there every day in a variety of aircraft from many of our UK bases. - Flying Club News The Flying Club continues as usual, with our regular weekly sessions being very well attended. Our monthly event for April saw us on a "VFR Procedures" exercise, having a go at NDB approaches. A most enjoyable session and at least one of our pilots has used it for real on the Olympic Torch tour. The May event will be back to a more relaxed flight around the beautiful island of Puerto Rico. We'll be setting our simulators for a dawn departure, so expect some fantastic sunrise screenshots. There will also be a tricky en-route Touch and Go up in the mountains, as well as an interesting twist in the tail at our destination. - Latest from the Training Academy Some great news for you all! We are happy to welcome Tim, Tom, Steve, Jay and Trevor to the Training Academy as Instructors. We're certain that we will all benefit from their combined wealth of experience. In recent months we have been a little thin on the ground in the TA and as a result have been getting behind at times but with our new Instructors we are confident we can stay on top of your requests. A quick reminder for all of our VATSIM pilots, as a VATSIM Approved Training Organisation we are one of a handful of VA's able to train and award the P1 and P2 ratings, so get booking those courses! Over the last moth we have seen three pilots been awarded the VATSIM P2 rating. Congratulations to Howard Brennan, Tom Maskell and Cliff Hunter. - Website Updates Since releasing an updated version of the website in March 2012, we have continued to work on updates and improvements around the site. Much of the written information on our web pages has been reviewed and updated. The Why Choose Fly UK page has been revamped. The contact us page has been updated and we have also begun creating new help videos which can be viewed on our YouTube channel. Over the last 2 weeks we have had many reports about the website running very slow. We are pleased to say we have found the problem and things should now be back to normal. We are aware that iPad users are currently unable to use the drop down menus on the site. This is something we have looked at but have been unable to fix as of yet. We will continue to look at this and let you know when we have worked it out. We are hoping to release a new version of SkyTrack later this summer. We also have plans to make various other website improvements, however this is dependent on the amount of spare time our web team have to work on the site. We'll keep you updated with any changes that we make. - Feedback As always, we appreciate any feedback regarding any aspect of Fly UK. Please feel free to get involved and post in the Feedback, Ideas & Suggestions section of our community forums. --- ENDS --- The Marketing Department marketing.department[at]flyuk.aero On behalf of the Fly UK Staff Team Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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