Over the rainbow

This time I will not write about my thoughts or my beliefs. I will make a tribute to my hobby, that is flight simming. If you think that this is not as thrilling as bungee jumping or not as impressive as soccer, then please read the whole article. Maybe I can manage to change your view.

First of all, I introduce you Air GREECE VA (VA stands for virtual airline). Air GREECE is a partner in a gigantic VAs network called VATSIM. VATSIM provides the networking that allows as to fly in real time with pilots and Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) from all over the world using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 & X. Imagine that at the time this article is written about 1000 virtual pilots are flying simultaneously, executing real flightplans under real weather conditions. It mays sounds boring but it isn't. You can fly a short route, ie from London Heathrow to Paris Chars De Gaulle airport (approximately 1 hour) or a really long and challenging route, ie from New York JFK to Athens El. Venizelos (approximately 10 hours). We are talking about real time flights so you have to stay in your virtual cockpit for every single minute. There are real people whose hobby is to control the air traffic so you have to communicate with them and follow their orders like in real world.

I am in Air GREECE VA for about 3 years and I have 700 hours in my flight record. I am currently a Senior Captain in this company. Before Air GREECE I was flying with Aegean VA and I had more than 1000 hours of flying. My longest journey was a 13 hours flight from Athens to St. Maarten (the most thrilling airport in the world. Just type St. Maarten airport in youtube).

What's the point? I can't analyze it to you so much. It's a really big community out there and I made some good friends. We organised in the past group flights in which 20 people took place flying together. I can remember the best moment in Air GREECE when 20 pilots flew the 1 1/2 hours route from Athens to Innsbruck. The place where this airport is located and the big amount of traffic that we created led the traffic controllers to order me to execute a holding pattern (imagine it as making cycles above a specific point at the same height) for almost 2 hours. I landed having the minimum allowed fuel in my tanks.

I love virtual flying and I love real flying, too. I had the luck to fly 2 times a Cessna 182 in Makedonia Airport and execute some landings and take-offs. My dream is to fly, over the rainbow, so high. Flight simming helps me to fulfill my dream virtually. I hope that in the future virtual reality will become reality.

The first video is a video I created, recording one flight I made from Heraklion to Thessaloniki. The second is a video form the CEO of Air GREECE VA. Watch them and enjoy the flight. If you are interesting in finding details then visit www.airgreeceva.gr and www.vatsim.net. If you want to fly with us then e-mail me ASAP!