World Flight 2009 Extreme Approaches

Event at a glance

Organized by Drzewiecki Design Air Transport with participating virtual airlines, the route concentrated on technically demanding, non-standard and historically challenging approaches around the world. Pilots could join the complete itinerary or selected legs on the VATSIM network.

Event description & requirements

Home Cockpit used for the flight: LINK

World Flight 2009 Extreme Approaches, organized by Drzewiecki Design Air Transport in cooperation with other virtual airlines, was a global event held on VATSIM network in April and May 2009. The whole project consists of 27 main flights and 18 extra flights around the world, that makes 45 flights in total. Pilots participating in the event visited 7 continents, 25 countries and 41 airports. All selected airports featured exceptional approaches - technically demanding, non-standard and famously dangerous. The program was intended to challenge experienced simulator pilots across a wide range of unusual operating environments. Please keep in mind that this is not a beginner's event. Pilot's basic experience and knowledge is required as well as all sceneries installed, charts obtained and RNAV equipment in your aircraft with AIRAC cycle operating. Only aircraft with a range greater than 3300 nautical miles can fly with us as there are some long legs over an ocean with no refueling possibility. No booking was required - wherever your home base is located, you can join our group any time for as many legs as you wish. For virtual airlines there is an option of cooperating with Drzewiecki Design Air Transport during World Flight 2009 Extreme Approaches event. Details are listed below.

Event structure and organization

The 27-flight main route was divided into four parts. Longer stops were planned at selected locations. Optional extra routes were provided during those stops. Look at the pictures below showing Earth with all routes. Red line indicates the main route, green lines the extra routes. No extra route contained more than four legs. Cooperating airlines were welcome, but not required, to participate in the extra flights.

Website structure

The event website separated the organizational information from the post-flight record. The About page contained the rules and route, while Photos & Videos collected reports and media after each leg.

Cooperation with virtual airlines

The cooperation framework was designed to promote reliable virtual airlines. A cooperating airline was required to:

• participate in at least one part of our main route on dates and at time UTC as in our flightplan with possible 1 hour difference for every flight and 1 day difference for one leg in total.
• place the banner of our event on airline's website (please contact us for details) and allow us putting a hyperlinked picture with logo of cooperating airline on our event's home page, below "in cooperating with:".
• indicate, which of their aircraft is participating in the event and use the same callsign all the time during the event
• write "WF2009EA" in the "remarks" section of a filed flightplan

Cooperating airline is allowed to:

• skip extra flights
• send different pilots for different legs

Breaking one of the required rules will cause deleting an airline's logo from our website with no other consequences. All other logos and links will remain on this website and will not be removed.

How pilots participated

Completing the whole route of World Flight 2009 Extreme Approaches event (described below) will change your flight simulator flying forever, even if you have extensive experience as a virtual pilot. Our route includes many of the most dangerous and difficult airports in the world. You need to be prepared for all those "strange" approaches and be able to make fast decisions in case something goes wrong.

The way of participation is the same as in many other events. There is nothing like a booking system so you can simply join us for as many legs as you wish, depending on your current location and your free time. Of course we welcome you to join us for the whole route or at least for one part of the routee. Here are few steps to join us successfully:

• See the plan below - you will find a clear visualizations of every part of our route and dates of departures from each airport
• Select an airport where you can join us. Joining for at least one part of the routee will be appreciated
• Navigate to the upper menu and click "Flightplan" - the page with a detailed flightplan will open
• Find a flight you are interested in and download required charts and sceneries
• Select a plane you will fly. If you are planning to join us for several legs, we kindly ask you to use the same plane and the same callsign
• Install a scenery and check it! You should study your charts to make sure you will not be confused later during a flight
• Recheck the flightplan info up to 24 hours prior to departure. Check the proposed route, check NOTAMs and weather forcast

This is all you need to do for every standard event, so actually there is nothing special in the briefing. Remember that every pilot is responsable for himself! There is no excuse if you will not be able to get charts for some reason or an appropriate scenery and then make a mess by using a default airports or having no idea about some local procedures. And after all this don't forget to have fun! Our unofficial voice frequency for the whole event is 122.550. Welcome!