Simulated Continental News Blog

We’re Back from Commercial

Sean Fisher — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 01:33:30 +0000

Well, it has sure been a while since you may have heard from us. We have been in a bit of downtime recently. Our staff has been busy and we maybe didn’t have enough time to sit back and relax in our Boeing 737′s. Flights have decreased, activity has been slowing, and don’t even start on the forums.

But we want this to change, now. This is project Envision. Envision is a step to go back to the good days,where people can enjoy flying and having a grand old time with other fellow pilots.

Our current view on the merger between United and Continental, but for now, we are maintain our current Star Alliance partnership between the two as well as other Star Alliance airlines.

Announcing Flight Bidding

Sean Fisher — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:10:47 +0000

We are pleased to announce, with great please, the release of Simulated Continental’s Flight Bidding system! Along with a number of well needed updates to the website, Simulated Continental has now opened the flight bidding center to allow for better flight operations and for ease of access.

To start off, you can find the Flight Bid Center by clicking on “Flight Bid Center” on the side of the website.

From the flight booking screen, you are able to search and “book” multiple flights at one time. This also includes flights that are automatically assigned to you as well as flights that you fly from here on out. After you are ready to fly a flight that you have booked, you can click on “Dispatch Flight to ACARS” and it will assign an aircraft to your dispatch. This will also enable you to use the “Flight from VA” button in FSACARS to load flight information about your dispatch.

Searching for flights has also become easier with the new “Search Flights” page.

By using multiple variables to find a flight specific to your needs, you can get to your flight faster than ever. Please note that we are still in the process of updating out flight database to reflect flights from 2010 as well as the Star Alliance.

Getting ready for flights is also very easy.

The flight booking system will provide you with METARs for you departure and arrival airports as well as detailed information about your flight. The route that is displayed is also one that has been most commonly used on VATSIM, as according to our massive 200,000+ route database.

Something new to consider with flights is flight availability. Each flight isn’t flown seven days a week, and our system is able to reflect that. Though we are laid back about our policy to review flight availability, you can still fly a flight on a day that it isn’t scheduled to fly.

We hope you enjoy this new feature as well as other updates in the Simulated Continental website to make your experience even better. Pushing Forward into 2010.

Welcome 2010!

Sean Fisher — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:18:16 +0000

Time sure flies, doesn’t it? 2009 was a very eventful year, with some extraordinary highlights and low points. One key one, though, was the launch of the Simulated Continental website. This website, already having received a strong among of feedback, will be updated in the coming months (v3.5). But as the year end and we usually look back, maybe it would be better to look forward and to see what the organization can become of.

There have been unconfirmed reports (until now) that the development of a Simulated Continental ACARS system has begun. This is in fact, true. The development actually began in October of ’09, but it was delayed due to personal reasons by our staff. Will this new year comes great inspiration to improve the airline even more. We hope to post more updates in the future.

We would also like to announce that we have reopened the Pilot Wiki. This formerly resourceful location has been lost. The articles that once filled its pages are gone. Wouldn’t it be great if some people could help us out? After all, it is a wiki.

Thank you for your continued support and we do hope that we will bring this airline to new and even great heights this year.

SimCOA Welcomes September

Sean Fisher — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:15:25 +0000

The summer is drawing to a close awfully fast, and with that comes the return to school for many. (We wish all of our students the best of luck on their studies this year!) But with the end comes a great deal of fun and exciting events for our members that will make you (hopefully) forget about the end of the year. Just a few of the upcoming events that SimCOA is sponsoring:

ZKC NFL Maddness

ZID is hosting and event to celebrate the start of the Football Season here in America. The two featured airports, KIND (for the colts), and KCVG (for the Bengals) will be fully staffed and will share the same spirit and rush as the football teams do.

ZNY will be holding an event to celebrate the end of summer and also the fabulous one runway visual approach into Bermuda. It looks to be a fun event. According to the event details, it is recommended that you fly from LGA to BDA, but you still may fly from EWR to BDA as ZNY’s entire Tracon will be fully staffed for this event.

We will still be adding so much to the SimCOA website in the coming months. And with the transition to the Star Alliance coming on October 25th, I have high hopes that you won’t be bored under our callsign. Blue Skies!

Express Fleet Online

Sean Fisher — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 02:09:38 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our Express Fleet is now back online. You can now download the fleet anything from http://simcoa.org/fleet/. Please do note that the fleet is a member’s only feature. We will also planning to add payware repaints later in the week. If you experience any problems or you have found a broken link, please email support[at]simcoa[dot]org. Thanks!

Coming Soon to SimCOA

Sean Fisher — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:38:57 +0000

Simulated Continental will be releasing a good deal of new features in the coming weeks. One was already know, which was the Flight Bidding. The Flight Bidding system will allow users to bid on flights sets that were planned out by our dispatch department. When a user would bid, the one with the most seniority would receive the bid. This is in the BETA stages right now, so stay tuned!

Some other things that SimCOA is working on is getting an Automatic Dispatch Center online. This would be for only in the even that the Dispatch Center is offline. It would crunch some numbers and give you a basic fuel layout and some flight data and planning. This is in the planning stages.

We do have other ideas that we are also working on, but we always want to keep you guessing! If you have any idea for SimCOA that you think would make us even better, please email suggest@simcoa.org. Thanks!

Flight Dispatch Position(s) Open

Sean Fisher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:07:04 +0000

As a part of the new website system, we have created a new group of positions to allow a Flight Dispatch Center. This Center will give our pilots a detailed and realistic dispatch report, just like that of a real-world airline. The requirements of this position are as follows:
-Be able to maintain the flight dispatch center for a min. of three hours a month.
-Maintain active status on the SimCOA Roster.
-Have prior experience getting some values for a flight such as MTOW, LGW, ZFW, MZFW, etc.
-Have a high-speed internet connection and an active email on file.

If you are interested in applying for this position, please visit the Human Resources Department under the Pilot Center. The Application is under “Staff Applications”.

Automation Online

Sean Fisher — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:59:41 +0000

Very pleased to announce that the various systems and tasks that go out behind the scenes at SimCOA are online. After being entirely rewritten, this will help ease the work load on our staff as well as ease confusion. Some of the systems include an automated VATSIM ID Checker, User Activation Reminder, Awards Checker, and an Active/In-Active Checker. But we do ask that your remember that these system are still in BETA, so there still may be some bugs. One that has given us a large deal of problems is the Active/In-Active Checker. During the first night it was put into service, it sent out inactivity emails to the active pilots. We hope that after this night of testing we will have a more solid framework that runs the SimCOA Website.

Website Transition

Sean Fisher — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:49:18 +0000

I am very pleased to announce that the new and greatly improved SimCOA Website is nearing completion. The original plan was to have it out by Saturday (August 1st) but that wasn’t reached due to time constraints and personal setbacks. But, nevertheless, I plan on releasing the website in full by next Wednesday, August 5th. To get the new site up and running, I will be taking the website offline from 21:30 PM – 01:00 AM EST on Tuesday Night. The forums will still be up right here at http://forums.simcoa.org.

Teamspeak Back Online

Sean Fisher — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:30:06 +0000

Houston, TX June 25, 2009- Simulated Continental is pleased to announce to return of its Teamspeak server for its pilots. The server has been down for an unknown amount of time. “Simulated Continental has finally restored its Teamspeak Server on a newly implemented Server. This server includes various new security procedures that will greatly enhance the security of our server” said a Simulated Continental representative when asked about the new server. One of the new features that has been added it the use of a “Perl” Security System that will prevent the server from becoming vulnerable. The airline also stated the following, “Our pilot can get the information for the server right from the main website. They will notice a a new piece of information on the right side when logged in.”. When asked for the Teamspeak Server login details, they airline only return the Teamspeak Server IP Address. It has also been reported that there is a Teamspeak Server password but it isn’t publicly available.