IFVARB Information Thread [Updated 20180607]

Danman · May 13, 2018, 5:17pm

IFVARB - The Infinite Flight Virtual Airline Regulatory Board

Official IFVARB Virtual Organisation Information Post

Official Virtual Organisation Database | Website | How to create a Virtual Airline | Infinite Flight User Blacklist

What is the IFVARB?

The Infinite Flight Virtual Airline Regulatory Board is the governing and assisting body that controls and coordinates all efforts and operations within the VA community.

What is a virtual airline/organisation? - A Definition

A virtual organisation (VO) is a dedicated hobby organisation that uses the Infinite Flight Simulator to model the real-world operations of an airline or group. Alternatively, the group may be an original one created to serve a need in the community.

This can include “ground school” training programs, event groups, flying clubs, and ATC groups as well as training flights to help provide further experience as well as to extend the skills of members.

Groups of any sort that wish to utilise the VA category must be certified regardless.

The IFVARB Mission Statement

The Infinite Flight Virtual Airline Regulatory Board is designed and intended to enhance the VA sector of the Infinite Flight Community.

The IFVARB is intended to make VAs more professional, organised, and in line with the guidelines and standards of the community. In addition, the IFVARB helps clear up some of the clutter on the forum that certain members find inconvenient and irritating. While also making the presence of Virtual Airlines clearer, more beneficial, and less confusing for those interested.

Our main goal is to benefit new and existing VAs that add value to the community by creating a professional, organised, and pleasant atmosphere for like-minded individuals to thrive and grow within.

The Team

IFVARB is made up of a team of volunteers, all who bring different qualities to the table. They are dedicated and passionate about improving the VA community and making it a place for individuals and organizations to thrive.

All members of the IFVARB have been specially chosen for their maturity, expertise, and experience involving VAs and the Infinite Flight Community itself. Membership on the board is on an invitation-only basis. Please do not DM members about joining the board.

IFVARB Team Members

Supervising Moderators | The community moderators that oversee all of the operations within IFVARB.

Supervising Moderator | @Levet
Supervising Moderator | @Chris_S
Supervising Moderator | @DeerCrusher

Administrators | The managers of IFVARB, frontline personnel, and point of contact for dealing with VA matters.

Administrator | @IceBlue
Administrator | @BluePanda900
Administrator | @Danman

Members | The people who make the VARB tick with their hard work in developing, and certifying VAs.

Advisor, Disciplinary Matters | @JoshFly8
VA Live Related Matters Consultant | @Tim_B
Databse Managers | @Cbro4 + @Dubya

The Process

Attached Here!

The Policies

Before a VA/VO has a presence in the community, they must be certified via the process detailed above. Any form of virtual organisation within the IFC will fall under this criteria.
All posts in the VA Category must be approved by a moderator or administrator beforehand.
VAs, along with their leaders, their staff, and their members are all expected to act in a respectable and reasonable manner both within the IFC and in other environments. Keep in mind you’re both representing the IFC and the Airline you fly for, so be respectful!
Copying content made by other VAs/VOs is not permitted - be original.
Any form of “spying”, “virtual espionage”, and/or any unprofessional behaviour will not be tolerated.
Any form of attacking and/or trolling of other VA/VO will not be tolerated. Each offense will be handled individually and may result in suspension and/or removal from the community.
VAs should only be advertising in the VA Category, advertisements through mass DM’s are banned and will not be tolerated.
Whilst activity is encouraged, VAs should only be bumping threads to a reasonable extent.
Topic Titles in the VA Category should be professional and not be excessively long, nor contain screaming caps.
Users that stop and start VAs may only restart a VA at the discretion of the Administration Team. If a member chooses to shut down a Virtual Airline, the member must wait at least 30 days prior to starting a new one.
Users in bad standing in the community, along with users with a history of disrespectful behaviour may be denied access to the certification process. Users/VAs that come into bad standing may have their certification temporarily suspended or permanently revoked.
No users present on the blacklist, linked both here and down below, should have any involvement with community VAs.
Perma-banned users from the IFC are also banned from participating in any IFVARB sanctioned VA. Users in bad standing may not be staff in any IFVARB sanctioned VA.
Incidents of misbehaviour on the Live Servers will be left to individual VAs to deal with internally for now (although we may want a quick summary of the action to be taken) unless it repeatedly becomes an issue that is not improving. While we do not wish to intervene, members who are repeated trolls may be added to a section of the blacklist to help avoid damaging the reputation of other VAs.
Members may only be on staff at two VA/VOs simultaneously to ensure that they’re committed and can perform their duties in a satisfactory manner. This also minimizes the number of ceremonial positions granted, and to prevent incidences of staff members going AWOL when needed. For more information on making your VA and staff members compliant with this rule, please refer to post #2.
VA/VO CEOs must not be on staff at any other VA/VO to ensure the CEO is dedicating all of his/her resources to their VA/VO. For more information on making your VA and staff members compliant with this rule, please refer to post #2.
VA CEOs are now subject to a 6-month period of responsibility for their new VA where they must remain with their current VA and not make a new VA for 6 months. If a CEO decides to transfer ownership during the period of responsibility, the remaining period is transferred to the new CEO, the current CEO must face a waiting period of 30 days prior to making a new application. Exceptions may be granted for extenuating circumstances such as copyright shutdown.

In order to avoid any VA related incidents, we advise VAs to keep users who may seem to be a bad apple out of the VA as a whole, and especially the staff team. Same goes for VA staff and leaders - we would advise staying away from bad apples and any other groups or places which have a bad history. IFVARB in no way monitors users, but if a serious report is made and can be backed up, there will zero tolerance for abuse, bullying, and trolling. To protect the IFC, a wide net is often cast with incidents such as this, so we advise sticking to good people and good places, although that is of course at one’s own discretion.

FAQ

How can I contact an admin?

You can either PM them here on the forum or DM them via the IFVARB slack.

How can I have my positive and negative feedback heard?

The #userfeedback channel of the IFVARB Slack. A member will gladly respond to your questions, praise, or concerns.

How can I join the IFVARB Slack?

PM an Admin here on the forum with your email address, and they’ll get you set up.

What if I see a VA that may not be certified?

PM the responsible Admin on the IFC and they will be happy to look into it for you. Please do not inquire directly on the thread as it creates unnecessary clutter. Thanks

Important Links

Changelog

2018/01/26 - Updated Staff Positions to reflect staffing changes. Wording refined in some sections.
2018/02/12 - Added New Members - Welcome!
2018/02/13 - Updated Mission Statement Requirements
2018/03/02 - Added New Members - Welcome!
2018/05/13 - Refined Wording and Revised Application Requirements

Credits

This is the official community thread of IFVARB. There is no warranty for errors.
Thread Design and image design made with by @CasaAviation
Icons designed by Freepik from Flaticon
Images are free for commercial use by PEXELS
Special thanks to all of our current and previous board members and outside contributors who put together this thread and has given us an excellent template to build upon.

Danman · May 13, 2018, 5:17pm

Rule Change - 20180513

Hello everyone, after taking a step back and having a rethink of our application procedures, we have revamped the application process to better fit the requirements of today’s IFC. Here are the three major changes:

Change 1:

We are revamping our application process to gain a better understanding of our prospective CEOs and allows us to better gauge their suitability for running a VA. Details on the new statement of interest is available below and in the post above:

The candidate’s statement of interest should answer the following questions:
– 1. Why do you want to start a VA/VO?
– 2. What do you hope to get from starting a VA/VO?
– 3. Why are you a good candidate for running a VA/VO?
– 4. What previous experience have you had with VA/VO and what position and responsibilities have you had during that time?
IFVARB admins will then examine this application, along with the candidate’s posting history to determine if a candidate is suited to run a Virtual Airline. We may look for leadership qualities, clarity in communication, and overall forum etiquette.

Once a candidate is deemed eligible, they will fill out the operations plan, which remains unchanged.

We’re completely revamping the evaluation process to make sure we only have the best of the best in our VA community. Instead of assigning members to evaluate VA’s in groups of three, we have decided to consolidate them into three groups of 5 to work collaboratively with prospective VA owners to make the best VA they can. These groups will read the statements of interest and operations plan at the beginning of each month, then select one candidate to work with each month. Then each group has one month to work with the prospective owner to create a website and VA that will add value to the IFC. At the end of the month, the members can choose to:

Pass the airline and send them off to the IFC.
Fail the airline and keep working with them for another month instead of taking on another candidate.
Fail the airline and declare that the proposed VA/VO and/or the owner will not be a good fit for the IFC and seek another candidate.

To prevent certain users from reserving VA’s and keeping them in limbo between application and pickup by a group of members, application times will be tracked. If a prospective VA is not selected by members in 3 months, then the application will be immediately removed, and the prospective user will have to wait the 45 days before submitting a new application and reservation.

Change 2

We are also introducing a rule to limit the number of staff positions a member can hold. While there have been VA-specific restrictions put in place, there has never been an IFC-wide rule. The number of staff positions a member can hold at one time is now capped at 2, effective immediately. Current members who hold more than two positions are asked to apply to the IFVARB for a one-time, 60 day grace period from the date of this post to determine which positions the member desires to keep and arrange replacements for other positions.

VA CEOs are no longer permitted to hold any other staff positions, effective immediately. Members are allowed a 15 day grace period beginning today to transition out of all other roles.

Change 3

To better allocate board resources, new VA CEOs are now subject to a 6-month period of responsibility for their new VA where they must remain with their current VA and not make a new VA for six months. If a CEO decides to transfer ownership during the period of responsibility, the remaining period is transferred to the new CEO; the current CEO must face a waiting period of 30 days prior to making a new application. Exceptions may be granted for extenuating circumstances such as copyright shutdown.

Once again, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact any member of the administration team, and we will be happy to answer them for you.

Best,
Danman
On behalf of the IFVARB team

JoshFly8 · May 17, 2018, 3:54am

FYI to any potential VA owners- I no longer accept submissions. If anyone messages me with one, they’ll get no reply. Recruiting for IFATC takes the focus of my efforts in the meantime.

BluePanda900 · May 22, 2018, 2:42pm

We are delighted to welcome @moritz to the team as a member to prepare for the surge of applications. Welcome Moritz! (He will also fail all VAs who don’t use realistic gates at Munich 😜)

Dart · May 27, 2018, 9:52pm

Does IAG count for a Virtual Airline?

Joeoreilly77 · May 27, 2018, 10:08pm

International air group which own British airways Aer Lingus Iberia veuling ?

Dart · May 27, 2018, 10:11pm

Yes, that is the one

Joeoreilly77 · May 27, 2018, 10:14pm

I say you could try you wouldn’t be able to do the whole fleet of iag because there is a number of livery’s missing from the game tough

Dart · May 27, 2018, 10:15pm

Oh ya ok. I thought it would be interesting but BAVA already exists so.

Matthew_Chan · May 27, 2018, 10:21pm

In the future, please use the VARB questions and feedback thread to keep this clean

Danman · June 7, 2018, 7:31pm

Update 20180607

“The Process” section has been replaced by this great topic by @IceBlue!

Now with 50% more clarity and (1*10^65)% better writing!

schyllberg · July 14, 2018, 8:22pm