The following page sets out to establish the expectations that Atlantic Northeast have of our pilots. This can be considered similar to a pilot's manual, and is worth reading before signing up. Generally, we are a pretty laid back organisation. We don't have a minimum number of hours per month and your account won't ever become inactive unless you decide you no longer want to fly with us and update your profile accordingly.

Becoming an ANE pilot is reasonably straight forward. Head over to the membership page and add your details, and the management will decide whether or not to recruit you. We like to keep our active roster between 150 and 200 pilots, so when we are nearing a full roster, competition for places is greater. Places are allocated to applicants who we believe are likely to be regular fliers - this can be proven through experience with previous VAs or, for example, a presence on Vatsim. We aim to return to applicants with a decision within 24 hours.

When you sign up, you will select a hub to which you want to be assigned. This is purely administrative, and doesn't dictate the flights you are allowed to fly. Each hub has it's own forum and hosts its own events where only hub members can attend. Our hubs should be seen more as communities than operating centres. You can fly any flight from any hub, so long as your flights are contiguous. If you fly from London to Paris, your next flight has to depart from Paris but can be to any airport, like Glasgow. Your hub manager is your first point of contact if you have any queries or concerns, and can be contacted either through the email address shown on the hub page or (more preferably) through the internal email system.

All ANE pilots are encouraged to sign up to the forum. This is the place to discuss how you want the airline to run! We take a lot of notice of what our pilots want, and if you want to fly a particular route just let us know. Please sign up, using your pilot id as your username. This makes it easier to identify you and easier to make sure than no non-members are using the facility

After signing up, you will be able to access the downloads from the pilot's area. Each download comes with very detailed installation instructions, but if you have any problems head over to the forum where someone will be able to help you out!

We have a very informal approach to flying. Simply take a look at the flight schedule and pick a flight. Just like in the real world, the size of aircraft you can fly isn't dictated by experience (after all, you can go straight from flight school onto a Boeing 747!) That said, you are expected to be comfortable with the aircraft you choose. If you haven't flown a commerical jet before, you are best to fly a few island-hopping services first to get into the swing of it, and then a couple of domestic services before moving on to anything more challenging. Try flying between quieter airports where things don't happen quite so quickly and go-arounds aren't as likely. All flights must be flown IFR, and routes must be planned properly. Use of Direct GPS is not allowed. Flights can be planned either by using the Flight Simulator planner, or by using our own flight planning software which is available in the pilot's area. You can fly any flight from any hub, so long as your flights are contiguous. If you fly from London to Paris, your next flight has to depart from Paris but can be to any airport, like Glasgow.

There is a great deal of honesty involved here, and so we don't think it makes sense to dictate what speed you should run your simulator. As a guide, we think that you should spend around an hour on each flight. This means that if it's a domestic service, it should be flown in real time. Flights to southern Europe can be flown at anything up to 4x speed. Flights to the US east coast can be flown at up to 8x speed, and upto 16x speed can be used for US west coast services. You should never exceed 16x speed, as this will cause you to disengage the autopilot which is simply too dangerous. The first and last 100 miles of any journey should really be flown in real speed. We want to main the integrity of the airline, but recognise that everyone really just wants to have fun, so we think this sounds fair! Ultimately, if you can keep up with what ATC are telling you, we are happy!

After flying, you will need to file one pilot report for each leg of the journey. This can be done in the pilot's area and, assuming that you've done everything we've already told you to, it should be pretty straight forward! Your hours are added automatically. Each week, we look over the flights that have been submitted and just make sure everything looks to be in order. We'll be in touch if anything looks odd!

We are very lucky to have an internal mail system. This means we can all contact eachother without disclosing private email addresses. Apart from your welcome email and monthly updates, management will not contact you at your private email inbox. Instead, we will use the internal system. You are welcome to use it too, to email any pilot or any member of the management team!

Above all, we want you to have fun. We have to put a few simple rules in place to make sure it's structured, but the whole point of setting up the airline was to give people a safe and enjoyable way to expand the hobby. We're happy to hear your concerns, either voiced publically in the forum or by contacting the management team directly. Thank you for choosing to fly with ANE; we wish you many pleasent flights!