Real Word - Special Ops Flight Requests

[Les Parson]

In the real world, selected cargo and passenger carriers operate military and/or U.S. Government charters to various locations within the U.S. and throughout the world. Some may be surprized to know that military uplift capability is often limited in terms of aircraft availability and/or mobility. Therefore, these operations are often chartered out to the civilan world. Some of the airports for these missions are well known; others are highly classified (often within the U.S.) but still operated with civilian aircraft . In times of crisis there is a designated Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) of which many well known airlines are members.

My request is - could we consider a Special Ops section for extraordinary (often classifed operations)?

For example: A special ops assignment from KWRI (McGuire AFB) to a classified site within the Nellis Test Range, Nevada.

I know there have been special USAF and other missions in the past; however I believe these depend on other sites and require VATSIM. I've never been very enthused with VATSIM due to scarity of coverage and subsequent rapid departure from reality.

[yoni63]

Les:

All military charters are conducted through the Atlas Division. As you have seen on the Atlas board, we have many military flights right now (not talking about Deep Freeze either). The military flights you see are actual flights taken from the Atlas schedule mixed in occasionally with a ficticious military hop. I also will place former known military routes that may not be on the current Atlas real world schedule.

One example is lately there have been two routes that supported operations in Afghanistan and of course we have numerous routes that support operations in the Iraqi theater as well. One route also supported supply efforts into an Israeli military base. One thing for sure I don't want to do is over tip the scale on military flights. Though Atlas flies mostly military flights, I know there are guys that don't care as much for that so I try to keep a balance of civilian flights in there as well.

I'll comment on this by saying, some of the military flights you see on the Atlas Board won't be found on flight aware, but that doesn't mean they are not real flights, I just don't feel comfortable drawing special attention to them especially in the times we live. As for your idea, it would be up to the Director of Flight Ops, so I'll let Craig comment on this further.

[esurfman]

Les, if you keep talking about Nellis and Atlas we will have to well.....kill...I mean terminate you with extreme prejudice.....you already know far too much..

[Mike Bridge]

Love the Military Flights, havent found any into Baghdad or Iraqi yet
I use to Fly at Anotonov Virtual Airlines- use to go in there all the time on Vatsim - You just dont put any metion of military and you cant be kicked off

Did a flight to Israel yesterday tho, good fun.
Thanks for keeping it interesting

[yoni63]

Thanks Mike, There will be more coming up, I've just been trying to juggle some of these others. I should have some more of those going into the middle east here in a couple of days. Glad your enjoying them.