Flight Times

[EHM-2309 Joshua]

When you are doing flights that will last for 2 hours or more, do you use time acceleration? Or do you site at your computer for that length of time? Or leave your computer (plane) on autopilot and leave it to fly and check back everynow and then?

[EHM-2378 Ashley]

Hi there Josh,

You should never use acceleration if you use ProPilot, but if you do, you can't give an accurate time, so i would get to cruise altitude and as you said, leave it and every now and again keep coming back to it.  Hope you are enjoying the virtual airline and hope you have many great flights.  Just think more hours higher rank;)

Enjoy,
Ashley V EHM-2378

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

If I fly, I NEVER use accelleration. I f I want to do a 5 hour flight, but I only have three hours, I usually wait for another opportunity to fly the leg, or fly a different flight.
If I fly a long flight, I usually sit behind the controls all the way (not counting the 5 mins. to refill my coffee). If I know upfront I am not going to do that (say I have some vacuum cleaning to do while on auto-pilot ), I'll do the flight offline and walk away when cruising.

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Official company policy is you can if you wish use acceleration, but your flight time should be recorded as your real-life time used, not the FS time (so, if you fly a 5 hour flight in under an hour, you should submit the under an hour, not the full 5 hours...)

[EHM-2383 Ian]

Can I just clarify? Is it official Euroharmony policy that if you fly in accelerated time you cannot ever use Flightlogger or Propilot but would have to put in a PIREP manually...... or can Flightlogger and/or Propilot be used and they would automatically record a shorter flight time?

I would have to fly accelerated time for a long haul flight as I would be unable to sit in front of the computer for 5+ hours. The answer might be to stick to shorthaul but I don't want to be deprived of the chance to fly some heavy metal sometimes!!

[EHM-2272 Callum]

As an online controller there is nothing worse than coming online and having to vector aircraft around one aircraft as he is not at the screen, however a maximum of around 20mins away is fine really. Just keep checking back on the flight and making sure nobody is trying to contact you. Online pausing and acceleration is against the rules (I can only account for Vatsim). You also do not need to have FS on full screen and watch every second of it. I tend to open up flight sim, get up in the air with autopilot set and then open up MSN and chat to my friends or turn on the TV and I have a tone if I get sent a contact me. So my advice, flying online feel free to leave in for no longer than 20 mins. Not too sure about ProPilot but i'm pretty sure you can use propilot in acceleration, it will just count the time you took not taking into account the actual time without the acceleration if that made sense :%.

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Ian,

You've spotted the fatal flaw in our current policy

If you're using the current FLogger, you're going to get the FS times not the local times, and there's nothing we can do to stop that in the current FLogger...

Next FLogger (v4) we could perhaps ensure "correct" hours are logged, but I wouldn't like to say for certain (Andrei is developing the client, not I)

As for ProPilot, the rules for PP state categorically no acceleration whatsoever.

As for the online networks, I know IVAO operate a 20 minute policy. I've only ever been contacted while long hauling once (a polite /msg from a SUP to check the plane was manned, sort of thing) but better safe than sorry; if you intend being away from the cockpit for anything more than 5 minutes, don't fly online at all (or if already online, disconnect).

[EHM-2097 Andrei]

Originally posted by EHM-0654 Murray
Next FLogger (v4) we could perhaps ensure "correct" hours are logged, but I wouldn't like to say for certain (Andrei is developing the client, not I)

Yes, this has been taken care of

As for the online networks, I know IVAO operate a 20 minute policy.

In fact some 30% of the IVAO forum activity seems to be dedicated to this subject, and several opinions exist (and will exist as long as IVAO has members, as someone pointed out recently). It depends a lot on the ATC (country and individual) and of the trouble caused (to ATC and other pilots) by one pilot not being available at the right / wrong moment.

Andrei

[EHM-2155 Mariano]

I think they could make an exception say in a 10 hour long flight and you're on cruise level... there's that field in your Flight Plan (on IVAO at least) where you specify misc information... like you're a newbie etc... maybe you can say you wont be manning the plane from xx time to xx time zulu. Better ask in their forums about that...

I'd like to suggest FLogger to log only the flown hours... not the simmed hours... otherwise we'd have tons of people accelerating the flights always, to get more logged hours...

[EHM-1749 Hector]

Because 100% of my flights are online, I am always at the controls no matter what the length of the flight is specially when flying on ProPilot.
However, every 2 hrs I normally take a 20-30' break and announce it as:
"(XXXX FIR, WILL BE OUT OF THE COCKPIT FOR 20' AT XXYYZULU)
When back, I do the same announcing the Zulu time I am back in the cockpit.
Previous to leave the cockpit, I normally reduce the speed to account for whatever wind shift that could put the aircraft in an overspeed condition.
Of course, never use speed acceleration when on line.