Our survey is an important tool for us to hear directly from you about what we do well, where we can improve and what suggestions you have for future endeavours. At euroSKIES, we strive to provide an exceptional experience for our members. Your insights will play a critical role in shaping our strategies and initiatives for the coming year. The annual survey 2023 was created and analysed using google.
Simulator usage
The initial crucial inquiry pertained to the usage of the simulator. The survey participants mainly use Prepar 3D v4/v5 or MSFS, but there are also XPlane users. Therefore, XPlane support will continue.
In february 2024, we released a lot of new XPlane liveries like
- Flight Factor A320
- ToLiss A320neo
General Development
Fleet selection is crucial for a virtual airline as it determines operations, destinations, and the flight schedule.
Interestingly, all of euroSKIES’ fleet is actively flown by our members, with the 737-800 being the most frequently used.
Upon reviewing real statistics, we found that the Airbus A320-214 fleet is the most popular among our members.
The livery design is a crucial aspect of a virtual airline as it defines its corporate identity.
Our long-standing members are aware that our corporate design underwent a significant evolution before reaching its final version, which is currently in use. Additionally, member satisfaction with our livery is important, with a rating of 1 indicating poor quality and 5 indicating excellent quality.
Operations and its future
Every virtual airline is defined by its operational concept. euroSKIES defines its destination selection as a mix between the ‘scheduled operation’ known from line carriers and the ‘leisure operation’ known from major holiday operators. In the future, euroSKIES will expand further with more destinations and a larger fleet.
Our flight operations department received positive feedback. Our schedules also received positive feedback.
Almost 90% of our members are aware that euroSKIES selects destinations and schedules based on seasonal preferences. However, only one-third of our members fly our schedule regularly.
Our main purpose is to present an interesting flight schedule to our members. However, only a few members are actively flying, and most of them are choosing ‘free flights’, which means none of our scheduled tours and events.
Our members have expressed concern that our flight plan has too many long legs. We can confirm that our schedule is indeed lengthy, with 90% of legs lasting longer than 1.5 hours. However, euroSKIES will be changing its operational concept by 2024.
We are planning to introduce our regional fleet in the autumn, which has been requested by many of our members.
The regional fleet will be built around a Bombardier fleet, consisting of Dash 8 Q400 and CRJ 900 aircraft, and supplemented by our A319 and 737-700 fleet.
The A319 and 737-700 fleet will operate a mixed concept, serving both important regional and leisure destinations.
The main purpose of our regional fleet is to provide more interesting short-haul flights and city connections, both to and between our bases.
You may have noticed that we have also made changes to our scheduling concept. We have implemented a fixed schedule for each plane, but to add more variety, you are able to book every leg with any airplane from this base that is capable of operating the specific sector.
One of our main future goals is to implement an intercontinental operation. The opinions of our members are mixed, ranging from ‘absolutely not’ to ‘absolutely’.
However, the fleet concept is relatively safe with a ‘B777/787‘ and ‘A330/A350‘ fleet. Additionally, there is a nostalgic interest in the ‘MD-11‘, which will also be discussed.
The intercontinental operation is a long-term goal, with the earliest prediction being late 2025 or 2026.
In autumn 2023, euroSKIES experienced its latest fleet growth with the addition of four Airbus A321s.
These aircraft are based in Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich and will operate within the leisure sector.
Although we requested our members to add the Boeing 757, it received mostly negative feedback.
Another concept for the near future, and even in the pipeline before an intercontinental concept, is to add more regions to our network.
Our members are interested in this operation and prefer Norway and Spain as additional regions. We are planning this for the summer of 2025.
We have received additional feedback regarding General Aviation and Business Jets, but there are currently no plans to initiate an Executive Operation.
Tours & Events
In 2023, we developed a new and revolutionary Tour and Event System. Tours are designed for longer periods, while Events are shorter and have an ending date.
We received a lot of feedback on our Tour and Event System, which we will take into account in the summer of 2024.
One key feedback is the availability and deadline of events, such as the focus airport event, which was reported as too short and not feasible for most of our members. We will address this issue by reducing the number of focus airport events and increasing their duration.
It is difficult for us to find an effective approach when only a few members are responsible for organising and completing the events. We are all observing the events and if they are not completed, we will extend the deadline.
Our members fly both the Focus Airport and the Charter Event, but the Focus Airport is preferred.
This year, we will reduce the number of events we focus on and instead increase their duration to improve our chances of completing them.
As we did in last year’s summer event, we will extend focus events with scheduled flights to offer extra rewards. Please refer to our tour description for more information.
You have decided, and we will do it. More tours are coming up this year, such as the Hurtigruten Tour and the Summer Season Tour.
Common feedback suggests that we have had too many events, some of which overlap but have fewer legs. To address this, we will increase the duration of each event and create more realistic time schedules (approximately 3 hours of flying per week).
The events will no longer build on each other, and we will start and end them at your home base.
With your feedback, we will update our Tour concept to include more tasks and riddles and fewer trips to and from the destination.
As the main issue will be monitoring and approval, we need some time before we can launch a new and innovative tour like the famous Hurtigruten Tour.
As our new Award concept received positive feedback, we will continue to use it for all future events and tours.
The most recent feedback we received was a request for more Fly-Inns and Community flights. We aim to hold approximately 1 to 2 events per month.
Although these events were not well-attended in previous years, we have decided to resume them. Please stay updated on our Discord Channel!
Marketing and Public Relations
Our newsletter received positive feedback for its useful content. The general consensus was that euroSKIES should reduce the frequency to one newsletter per quarter with more informative content.
Starting in 2024, we will implement this feedback and provide statistics, important news, and event announcements.
To comply with the law, each member must register individually with double opt-in. Members can register within their personal account settings.
Our social media team regularly posts interesting content about destinations and announcements from the flight operations department.
If you use #euroskies in your Instagram posts, we may repost them.
While we may consider creating clips and our own Twitch channel in the future, we currently do not have the resources to do so.
You are free to share interesting content for our social media channels in the “screenshot-for-pr” channel in our discord server.
Membership and Activity
We have received various feedback about membership and the rules of membership.
Currently we have the rule that at least 1 flight per month is required to remain active. Anyone who is unable to meet this can contact us for an individual rule.
As this is a really complex issue, we are discussing it in the staff to find a better solution.
Our discord server received mostly positive feedback, even though it is not used that often.
Our discord server is actively used by 90% of our members. Most of our members do not recommend reducing the number of channels on our discord server.
In general, we have a lot of channels on our Discord channel and sometimes it seems like there is no interest in any of them. So we asked you which channels are the most important and which are the least used.
With this feedback we will discuss the discord server and its channels and bots to keep it modern and up to date.
Staff and Community
Our community lives with an active staff and staff work. We asked our members how they felt about the staff and their work.
There is generally positive feedback about our staff and quality.
All staff are described as friendly and helpful.
Our community is also described as unique and positive, but the activity of the community is less than expected at registration.
euroSKIES will evaluate different solutions to increase our activities and also the community.
euroSKIES lives with an active staff and community. We are interested in creating the network that everyone is looking for. But the staff is also limited in capacity. If you are interested in supporting the euroSKIES staff, please have a look at our staff page.
Roadmap
What comes next? euroSKIES will simulate an almost real operation, including standard operating procedures.
Over the last few years, we have struggled to build this complex virtual airline in all the necessary parts.
Last year we started with our timetable and its consistency. After that we relaunched our website and online services and also the livery to get it on almost all the required add-ons.
In 2024, we will focus all our efforts on the virtual operations manual to complete the most important documents.
After that, euroSKIES will continue with the regional concept and the new fleet.
At the same time, we will continue to work on Tours and Events, taking into account the feedback from our members.
We will try to get euroSKIES up and running again, also on our Discord server and the IVAO and VATSIM networks.
During the last months euroSKIES and the euroSKIES staff have shown their motivation and how we can continue to build our virtual airline.
We will have a look at our activity rules and how to bring all users to a common state. But euroSKIES has to follow network rules like IVAO, which means we have to have 10 different pilots flying every month. We are always under this rule and can only continue as an IVAO partner with our good contact to IVAO.
Some final words from our General Manager
Dear Members,
I would like to thank you all for your valuable feedback on euroSKIES and what we can do better. First of all, I would like to apologise for the huge amount of questions we have asked you.
Every network lives from and with its members and activities. We will try to involve you also in different relevant discussions, to make rules, regulations and decisions more common.
When I see how euroSKIES has grown in the past years, and also the drops in between, I am more than sure that we will reach our goals and make the activity and the network bigger and more interesting.
I am looking forward to any feedback you have to make our network better and to reach our goals.
I will be more than happy to see you at our next events and on some group flights to interesting destinations. We do not live from daily activity, but from regular activity.
Stay informed with our newsletter, which we send out about once a quarter. You can subscribe by following this link.
Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely,
Oliver