Pool of "flying CEO's" for startup VA's?

[mischka]

The other day I was browsing some of the new and not so new VA's and noticed that at a lot of new "startup" VA's the CEO is doing a lot of flying. So far, nothing out of the ordinary - you'd expect the founder of a CEO to put time in.

It is a common phenomena, that if you want to get a VA (or any club, society etc) off the ground, you need a "hard core"... a kind of "critical mass" to get the snowball rolling.

Some VA's have the benefit of having a few people that sign up right from the start, or are a result of a merger. Others are not.

Now, to get to my idea: why not form a pool of "Flying CEO's": VA-owners who fly for other startup VA's instead of their own?

So, if you own VA1 you sign up for VA2 and VA3 and fly for them, and their CEO's fly for your VA. An eye for an eye, a pirep for a pirep?

Anyone interested to join in this, just post here in the thread

[mattsmith]

I think a lot of CEO's start there own VA because that is how they want it to run, so why fly for another VA?

Spend all that time and money starting your own VA then fly for someone else's ???

[mischka]

You didn't quite get the point, I think

By flying for another VA, you get the CEO from that VA to fly for yours. And in the end, whatever motives people have for starting their VA, I think most have one wish in common: that many people join the VA and fly for it.

The effort of forming a "pilot pool", as described above, may help to get the critical mass together so other pilots who visit the webpage see a variety of pilots flying and join the club.

[tutmeister]

I actually agree with Matt. Most new CEO's start VA's because they want their own "kingdom" with their own rules, so to speak. So they likely wouldn't want to fly for another airline, even eye-for-an-eye style as you say, unless it happened to operate under the same rules as their own airline--which is unlikely.

[mischka]

I understand that.. if you're not interested in taking part just don't post..

Rather than putting an idea down. This is not a discussion to philosophise why people start a VA

[Stealthbird97]

This problem only exists in Fictional Airlines. The Marjority of people who start a Virtual Counterpart of a real Virtual Airline have little to no problems gaining pilots providing they are a mimicing a well known airline and are advertising it properly. I've found that people prefer these compare to the fictional ones.

The aim of a fictional airline is to gain pilots who are like minded and enjoy either, the fleet, destinations, experience of flying a particular way. I mean a airline that specifically in the Amazon or Sahara desert, will only really be interesting for people who either live there or perhaps like the area. It wouldn't appeal to everyone. Just like an airline with primarily an Airbus fleet would not appeal to me, as I love Boeing.

You have to reach an equilibrium, you either make the airline more engaging for the masses by trying to appeal to a wider audience or have it more specialized closed community airline.

Its not a matter of how many pilots you have. If pilots don't like the VA they just won't sign up or fly once they've signed up.

Ultimately, you have to make the decision on whether you're trying to get loads of pilots or focus on other things such as realism. If the airline is good you will just have to advertise and people will sign up.

CEO's aren't going to fly for other VA because they didn't set up the airline to do that.

[flyjetvaceo]

I am the CEO of Fly Jet va we are due to start operations at the end of Jan..this is a good idea and may form good starting possible partnerships with in va's

[Ariel]

so wats the update on this....is there a pool...or are we all sitting on our pool side chairs just looking at wat happens?

[nabpp]

great idea count me in