Purpose | Community | Enhancement

What is a Virtual Airline?

Because we love to fly

For those that are new to the idea of a Virtual Airline one of the questions that gets asked the most is “Why should I join a VA?” and “What is a Virtual Airline?”
It’s quite a good start as far as questions go and we understand why it’d might seem a strange concept.

The basic premise of a Virtual Airline is that we provide a place that Flight Simulator users can find new ideas and ways of flying to keep their hobby interesting. There are only so many times you can fly to and from the places you’ve been around the world before you start to think there might be more out there.

The most important thing for us is we provide a community of like minded people who can get together and talk about the hobby, change it for the better and find new ways to enjoy flight simulation.

At Packet we provide realistic schedules, progression and a community where you can enhance your understanding and overall simulation experience. We put our pilots enjoyment first. The flying differs from short regional hops, cargo operations, chartered tours and long haul airline operations so there’s something for everyone.

We also have custom liveries for many popular aircraft covering our fleet, and software (ACARS) that records your flight information and files it as a Pilot Report (PIREP) in your logbook which then counts towards hours and you ‘progress’ through the ranks.

Click to Join – it’s totally free!

Frequently asked questions:

We aim to support as many sims as possible. Most of our pilots use Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 or 2024, We also fully support X-Plane and Flight Gear and will do whatever we can to accommodate your preferred sim.

To join Packet costs absolutely nothing. We are a community led organisation and don’t expect any donations or subscription costs. The only outlay is your own simulator software and equipment. We try and base our operations around as many free alternatives as possible to ensure nobody is expected to pay for their hobby.

We don’t demand that anyone flies in any particular way, our core operations are ‘airline’ simulation so we encourage that you take it as seriously as you like. Most people join a VA to try and enhance their skills and learn how to do things perhaps more ‘properly’ but if you’re just here to fly as best as your skills allow and enjoy yourselves then we’re fine with that too.

Our progression ranks and schedules hopefully allow for people to fly as realistically as their simulation setup allows. If you are one of the many, like us, who enjoy all the aspects of flight planning, performance calculations and ATC interaction then we fully support that.

Our Crew Centre features the ability to dispatch both our own flights and a ‘charter’ flight to/from any destination you wish and plan a suitable route for you. This can then be flown in the sim of your choice. If you are using something like Simbrief then it directly integrates, similarly it can file the flight plan directly with an online network like IVAO / VATSIM or others.