Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | Airline Operations | Flight routes

DVA5385
Captain, A330-300

Joined on September 13 2007
Two Million Mile Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Everett 500 Club
Eight Century Club

North Yorkshire GB

857 legs, 5,275.1 hours
1 legs, 0.8 hours online
843 legs, 5,256.0 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on August 18 2016 06:37 ET by Will Prince

Hey guys, so i wanna start with saying how thankful i am that we have all these new awesome flights. the staff have been great. The only thing thats kinda bugging me is its not very streamlined along with it seems the delta flights are out of date in some cases are over a year old. Was just wondering if we could bring it inline for example we have virgin historic and virgin atlantic yet im not sure whats historic as alot of them are current flights. I really dont want too complain (i'm british its not my thing) but particularly with the delta side of things looking up the RW flight vs the schedule gets alittle fustrating. but once again i do love what you guys are doing along with many of the guys here. Feel free to shut me up if ive got the wrong idea.

Will Prince (DVA5385)

DVA2887
Senior Captain, A320
OLP, 737-ATP, VFRADV
E-MAIL

Joined on January 30 2006
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Tri-Jet Triumph
US Coastal Club
Millennium Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
US Mountaineer Club
Toulouse 250 Club
Online Eight Century

Charlotte, NC

1,286 legs, 1,796.2 hours
840 legs, 1,047.8 hours online
1,268 legs, 1,774.2 hours ACARS
31 legs, 49.6 hours event
3 legs dispatched, 2.5 hours

Posted onPost created on August 18 2016 08:19 ET by Andrew Vane

Hi Will,

We on staff are as frustrated with the schedule database as everyone else here. Innovata, our source for flights, used to charge us nothing for quarterly database updates, then they started charging $100 per quarterly update. As of last year, they were bought out and upped the cost to $5000 per cycle. This is easily twice our yearly operating budget. We've been seeking other sources but most companies are not interested in helping us. We aim to maintain DVA and AFVA as a free offering and don't plan to start charging members. Other VA's are having the same struggles as we are. If there was a quick easy fix, we would have implemented it by now. biggrin

Here in Operations, I'm working hard to at least keep today's routes updated, even if the flight numbers don't match. So, if you see a today's Delta flight with origin/destination not in our database, please open a help desk ticket and get me info and I'll work to get it added. The effort to do a massive update of our schedule database manually (i.e. looking up flights and revising the schedule) is too big a job for anyone here. Since Delta alone updates their flight aircraft/numbers/routes every 30-45 days, by the time we got it updated it would be obsolete. We're working the best we can with the tools in our tookbox and I make adding current flights not in our database a major priority.

Thankfully, we do not limit pilots to flying the actual aircraft designated for a route. So, as long as you're rated in the aircraft and it can make the trip, you're good to fly any route in our database (codeshares too).

Thank you for the compliments and kind words. I've found that adding flights always is a crowd-pleaser here. cool

We have a lot going on behind the scenes in this department so be sure to check the this Airline Operations channel in the cooler for notifications and updates.

Most importantly, thanks for being a part of DVA and for providing input to help us make DVA better.

Andrew Vane (DVA2887)

DVA10705
First Officer, B747-400
OLP

Joined on April 27 2012
Two Million Mile Club
Everett 500 Club
Millennium Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary

Kamloops, BC Canada

1,060 legs, 5,399.0 hours
87 legs, 356.0 hours online
1,059 legs, 5,397.6 hours ACARS
15 legs, 48.6 hours event
3,528 legs, 15,773.5 hours total
15 legs dispatched, 24.4 hours

Posted onPost created on August 18 2016 10:40 ET by Bill Gardiner

Hi Andrew, hadn't realized the struggles you guys were going through behind the scenes. It gives me a new appreciation for what you're doing. Thanks.

Bill Gardiner

First Officer, B747-400

Posted onPost created on August 18 2016 12:12 ET by Will Prince

Perfect responce, thanks so much for clearing up. makes sense now, i will see what i can do in the future with regards to the help desk. Honestly didnt mean to sound like a ungrateful child, but now we know why and who knows manybe the community can help you out smile

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