Training Academy

An airline can now apply to become an Approved Training Organisation from the Training Organisation page in Helix, giving a motivation and an instructor plan. vAOMS staff review each request in Aegis, and an application can also be rejected, or an approved organisation suspended. Once approved, the airline gets a Training Academy for its pilots at /academy and course management in Helix. Airlines that are not approved see none of it.

Courses, Lessons and Course Templates

Courses are built from lessons: reading, video, briefing and flight tasks, with formatted content that is sanitised before it is shown. Airlines can start from the syllabi vAOMS ships — Private Pilot Licence, Instrument Rating, Commercial Multi-Engine Licence, Airline Transport Pilot Licence, Oceanic Operations and Type Rating — or build their own, grouped as a licence, rating, type rating or endorsement. Pilots enrol, work through the lessons and see their progress on the academy dashboard; instructors get a Students page showing where each student stands.

Written Exams

A course can carry written exams made of single-answer and multiple-answer questions, run either as a graded written exam or as practice. Every attempt is scored and the student can review the result afterwards, with the exam attempts also visible to staff on the exam in Helix.

Checkrides

A course can end in a checkride. What it requires — lessons completed, written exams passed, a minimum number of flight hours or flights, or a manual sign-off — is checked automatically. Once a student meets it they can request the checkride, and the examiner conducts it from the academy and records the result.

Training Sessions

Instructors can schedule review, briefing and simulator sessions that pilots book onto, with a capacity limit, cancellation, and attendance recorded afterwards. A pilot only sees the sessions they are enrolled for or allowed to attend.

Flight Lessons

A lesson can require a logged flight, optionally with a minimum credited flight time and a maximum touchdown rate. The student puts an approved PIREP forward from the academy, and their instructor either accepts it, which signs the lesson off, or returns it with feedback. Pending flights show as a badge on the instructor students list and dashboard, and a lesson that needs a flight can no longer be signed off directly. Nothing changes in Connect for this.

Training Notifications, Reminders and Discord Announcements

Training events — an instructor being assigned, a checkride being requested, a flight being submitted or reviewed, a session being cancelled — now notify the people involved in the app and live, by email unless the pilot has turned training emails off, and by Discord direct message when they have linked Discord. Booked pilots are reminded of a session, and students and examiners of a checkride, within 24 hours beforehand, once each. An airline can also set a Training Academy Discord channel to announce completed courses and new sessions.

Rank Progress

The dashboard and pilot profile now show a rank progress card: the pilot's next rank, each requirement it needs, and how far along they are on every one. The same figures are in the ACARS dashboard data, and the card is built from the same rules that decide a promotion, so it cannot disagree with it.

Flight Experience Points

Every airline now tracks Flight Experience Points, worked out from a pilot's lifetime distance flown and a rate per nautical mile. The airline names them itself, for example TFP. Optional bonuses add points for long flights, after a set distance and then per extra stretch, and for quality flights that score at or above a par. A rank can require flights or experience, or flights and experience. Experience points are not on the leaderboard, and flights migrated from another system never earn the quality bonus.

Guaranteed Experience Programme

Airlines can opt in to a monthly guarantee of experience points, set by the rank and position a pilot held on the 1st. When the month closes, a pilot who flew less than the guarantee is topped up to it, and a pilot who met it by flying earns an incentive credit, a percentage of what they flew. Both are recorded in a ledger, count towards rank progress, and can be corrected by staff from the pilot record in Helix. Months are closed automatically each night, and a missed run is caught up on the next.

Reserve Pilots

A pilot can now be marked as reserve. A reserve pilot is left out of the experience guarantee; nothing else about how they are treated changes.

Certification-Linked Ranks

An honorary rank can now be tied to a certification, so a pilot holds it while their certification is valid and loses it when it expires or the grace period runs out. Ranks are re-checked daily, and immediately when a pilot flies or is awarded something. The matching Discord role is given and taken away with the rank, and staff can set a staff position on the pilot record.

Standard Operating Procedure Rules

Scoring groups and failure rules now live together under a new Standard Operating Procedures cluster in Helix. Each rule can carry a severity, and there is a new Penalized outcome that takes points off a PIREP without blocking its approval, so an airline can mix flag-for-review, point penalties and outright rejection on the same rule. A rule can also award points. The catalogue gains real-world checks: speed restrictions, stabilised approach, weight and fuel limits, flight envelope exceedances, engine power management, aircraft lights, bank angle, reverse thrust, speedbrake use, and autopilot, autothrottle and APU policies, and ten rules that existed in the form but were never evaluated — pitch and roll limits at liftoff and touchdown, flight length and taxi time thresholds, SimBrief fuel tolerance — now work. Rules that need telemetry an ACARS client does not send simply never trigger.

Excessive Landing Force Rule

A new rule judges a landing on its rate and its G-force together, in two tiers. Excessive Force triggers only when both exceed their thresholds at once, so a firm but normal landing is not punished twice. Certified Maximum triggers on either alone, since either is a limit in its own right.

Aircraft Defects

Pilots can report a fault against the aircraft they flew, from a Report a fault form on the booking page or through the Connect API. A reported fault is always minor, because a pilot cannot ground their own aircraft. Only staff, from the new Deferred Defects page in Helix, can escalate a defect to grounding, and a grounding defect stops that aircraft being booked or dispatched until it is resolved. Every raise and resolve is recorded in the aircraft history. For airlines running the condition model, the booking page shows the aircraft overall condition, whether it is in maintenance or due for it, and its open defects, and the PIREP approval message and the staff PIREP view show its condition after the flight.

Aircraft Liveries

Each aircraft type can now have liveries, each with a name and a tail number and a Pending, Approved or Rejected status, managed from the aircraft type in Helix.

Continue After A Diversion

A pilot who diverts shuts down and files their PIREP as normal and is then always offered the flight on to their original destination, whatever the airline settings and even when the airport they landed at is on no list. Yes loads a continuation flight into their bookings from the diversion airport, with the same aircraft, callsign and payload, for one hour after their in-block time. Flying it is optional, and it is removed if the time passes. No removes it altogether. The offer shows in Connect after the PIREP is filed and on every pilot page of the website, and comes back if the pilot missed it. A diversion to an airport the airline does not hold adds it to the network, hidden from destination lists, and one on no list at all becomes a placeholder airport where the aircraft was last seen.