Changelog

Bugfix edition

• Fix fuel used calculation to use takeoff fuel instead of ramp fuel in Orwell PIREP Review

• Fix dashboard map bounds fitting for distant flights

• Fix flight_time community goals to track seconds instead of floored hours

• Fix for bonus point update in API

• Fix community goals flight_time display to convert seconds to hours

• Delay dispatch deletion by 5 minutes to prevent 404 errors

• Filter out hidden routes on Event activity type pages

• Fix Has Diversion flag for when diverting to departure airport

Orwell → PIREP Review Rewrite

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Full overhaul of how Orwell PIREP Review page works and looks; We hope you will find it easier to read, information more clearly presented - and the actions you need to perform - conveniently located.

After a short initial test with VA Ownerss/Staff - similar layout and features will be rolled out to Phoenix PIREP View as well so Pilots can enjoy them too.

Other Fixes and Changes:

• With local times enabled, Departure and Arrival times will sort according to local time, not UTC

• Fixed an error when deleting an autoreject, which was already deleted

• Improved Stabilized approach scorer event tracking to ignore events after landing

• Fixed an error in Community Challenge team page when filtering by airports

• Further attempts to fix point awarding API v3

It’s been a very busy week - 5.3.26 brings substantial improvements to vAMSYS.

Dispatch Table Changes

Virtual Airlines can now fully customize the Dispatch Table defaults in Orwell Settings → Booking & Dispatch:

Column Management

• Drag-and-drop to reorder columns as you prefer

• Set which columns are visible by default for new visitors

• Rename any column with custom labels (e.g., rename "Tags" to "Route Type")

Airport Display Options

• Choose how departure and arrival airports are displayed independently:

Days of Operation Format

• Abbreviated: Mon, Tue, Wed, Daily

• Numeric: 1234567 (except when all 7 are picked, then it’s Daily)

Default Sorting

• Set which column the table sorts by when pilots first visit

• Choose ascending or descending order

Note: Pilots can still toggle columns and change sorting during their session - their preferences are remembered. These settings control what new visitors or expired sessions see by default.

Community Goals & Challenges

Community Goals are collective achievements where every pilot contributes. File qualifying PIREPs, and passengers, cargo, or flight count automatically adds to the Goal-wide total.

Community Challenges add a competitive twist: teams compete against each other (e.g., Team Longhaul vs Team Shorthaul, or Passengers vs Cargo, or Day-Time vs Night-Time, or East-Coast vs West Coast - options are endless!). PIREPs are automatically assigned to a team based on criteria you set.

Registration: Neither Activity type requires registration - all PIREPs are evaluated if they contribute towards Goal/Challenge. Pick what to count: Passengers, freight, flights, distance, or flight time. Set flexible filters: Specific airport groupings, distance ranges, fleets, online networks, landing quality requirements, night operations, and more Rewards

• Participation points for every qualifying PIREP

• Completion bonus when the Goal hits 100% or for winning team in a challenge

• Tiered rewards based on contribution rank (Top 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%) — Elite Dangerous style

Note: For Community Challenges it’s up to you to create unambigious teams with the filters - PIREPs should only be attributable to Team 1, Team 2 or neither; If the filters set up make it possible to PIREP to apply to both Teams, it will be assigned to Team 1 goals.

Activity API & Webhooks

Just in time for January 4th 2026 retirement of API v2.

API v3 for activities dramatically expands on capabilities, bringing full parity with UI - all activities are retrievable, editable and so on - everything you may expect.

We have undertook some initial testing - and everything check out, but as always - be very cautious with APIs marked experimental - Tour/Roster/Goal/Challenge creation can be very complicated; Just as with Importers/Exporters - it’s always a good idea to create an activity manually and then look at the API ‘Show’ response to get a very good idea how data is structured.

Furthermore, 8 webhook events were added to help you track activity creation, update deletion as well as related registrations and logbooks.

Ability to register a pilot for Activity will come with the Pilot API

Other Changes

• Fixed an issue with Phoenix Flight List sometimes throwing an error when one of the in-progress flights has an airport with no ICAO code

• Fixed missing flags in marker popups in maps

• Fixed a data collection issue in PIREP API when editing bonus points

• Fixed Badges API documentation lacking proper details for badge rules

• Improved PIREP Review page by collapsing Container listing in Flight Dispatch automatically

• Improved Routings functionality with the addition of Tags; These can be entered via UI, Importer or API; Can be used to filter down Export or API.

• Fixed Flex Temperature not showing in SimBrief OFP Preview in Dispatch page.

• Added View in Phoenix button for Activities in the table.

• Added ‘Positioning’ radio selector for Image elements in Custom Pages, letting to align left/right/center image. Optional - alignment is left by default.

• Improved Route Create & Create Return in Orwell - it will copy over callsign, flight number and fleet selection to new create form.

• Added livery_status return in List PIREPs data return

For the next couple of days a Beta version is available at https://beta.vamsys.io

Community Goals & Challenges

Community Goals are collective achievements where every pilot contributes. File qualifying PIREPs, and passengers, cargo, or flight count automatically adds to the Goal-wide total.

Community Challenges add a competitive twist: teams compete against each other (e.g., Team Longhaul vs Team Shorthaul, or Passengers vs Cargo, or Day-Time vs Night-Time, or East-Coast vs West Coast - options are endless!). PIREPs are automatically assigned to a team based on criteria you set.

Registration: Neither Activity type requires registration - all PIREPs are evaluated if they contribute towards Goal/Challenge. Pick what to count: Passengers, freight, flights, distance, or flight time. Set flexible filters: Specific airport groupings, distance ranges, fleets, online networks, landing quality requirements, night operations, and more Rewards

• Participation points for every qualifying PIREP

• Completion bonus when the Goal hits 100% or for winning team in a challenge

• Tiered rewards based on contribution rank (Top 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%) — Elite Dangerous style

Note: During Beta, PIREPs will not be allocated to any goals or challenges; Purpose of Beta is to make sure creation/editing/UI works.

CDN

We’ve migrated some of our assets over to Cloudflare for storage, instead of building and storing them with each web server. This immensely improves our deployment timeline when we push new updates (~10 minutes to ~2 minutes), as our servers no longer need to worry about compiling them.

Unfortunately, our migration ran into a little stumble - we’re sorry for the short downtime earlier this evening.

vAMSYS 5.3.25 builds on 5.3.23/24, resolves remaining bugs within our reach and starts tackling some of the improvement suggestions.

In no particular order:

• Improved - Statistics API:

• Fixed Orwell → Settings → API v3 throwing timeout errors when APIs are heavily used

• Fixed Route API create/update issue when creating a route with callsign_options entered as null

• Fixed Route API update issue which failed the update due to an issue with parameter validity lookup

• Fixed PIREP webhook failing on some occasions

• Fixed Orwell → Settings → Webhooks failing to render sometimes by removing the View Page entirely - it does not do anything the Edit page doesn’t

• Improved Orwell → Settings Webhooks by moving the docs into a modal; create Webhook into a modal

• Improved Fleet table in Orwell by adding a column for Hidden in Phoenix, as well as adding a hidden filter, adjusting column grow and wrap properties

• Fixed Freight exceeded notification message in Dispatch - it had KGs and LBs text mixed up

• Fixed an issue when creating Tours/Rosters via Create & Create Another, where registration required toggle would not transfer over

• Fixed a bug with On-Time Arrival/Dearture scorers - it was evaluating tolerance incorrectly

• Fixed a bug with Taxi Overspeed autoreject rule - it would refuse to save even if all required options were selected

• Improved Custom Pages by adding an option to have a dark theme image

• Improved Stabilized Approach scorer by adding fields to populate Human readable Flap Values; If entered, there will show in Scorer Docs and PIREP Scores breakdown (new PIREPs only)

• Improved Badges with a new option to create Activity Participation - Count badges; These will be awarded if Pilot completed >= number of activities in selected categories

For the next couple of days a Beta version is available at https://beta.vamsys.io

Dispatch Table Changes

This Beta is for testing changes to Dispatch Table and it’s related settings.

Virtual Airlines can now fully customize the Dispatch Table defaults in Orwell Settings → Booking & Dispatch:

Column Management

• Drag-and-drop to reorder columns as you prefer

• Set which columns are visible by default for new visitors

• Rename any column with custom labels (e.g., rename "Tags" to "Route Type")

Airport Display Options

• Choose how departure and arrival airports are displayed independently:

Days of Operation Format

• Abbreviated: Mon, Tue, Wed, Daily

• Numeric: 1234567 (except when all 7 are picked, then it’s Daily)

Default Sorting

• Set which column the table sorts by when pilots first visit

• Choose ascending or descending order

Note: Pilots can still toggle columns and change sorting during their session - their preferences are remembered. These settings control what new visitors or expired sessions see by default.

Carrying on from yesterday, addressing some of the remaining bugs before we move onto final tasks of the year:

5.3.23 hotfix applied yesterday shortly after 5.3.23 release:

• Fixed Registration Rejected email sending when reason has special characters or new lines

• Improved Container Importer to better validate before trying to iterate over junk data

5.3.24 changes:

• Fixed Pilot Profile page in Phoenix - it was trying to load data for deleted Pilots instead of returning a 404

• Fixed Routes API returning server error with no ID on Validation issues, instead of validation errors themselves

• Fixed Routes API having different ‘meta’ structure than the other API endpoints

• Improved Webhook page in Orwell to better show Requests/Successes/Failures

• Fixed webhooks not sending on PIREP changes

• Improved Pilot Profile → Statistics → Route Types chart to return actual route types, not PIREP Types

Marketing Email Opt-In

5.3.23 adds Marketing module via a toggle at Orwell → Settings → vAMSYS Modules → Enable Marketing.

Once enabled, pilots can subscribe to receive marketing communications from your Virtual Airline. The Marketing System allows for GDPR compliant way for users to opt-in for such emails.

This module adds a few things:

On registration, there will be a checkbox to opt-in to marketing messages.

In Phoenix -> My Profile -> Preferences the Marketing Communications opt-in can also be toggled.

To help inform your existing pilots of the marketing communications, a dismissable alert will be shown for All Pilots who have not opted in or dismissed the alert.

Finally, a Marketing section in Orwell will list all the pilots who have opted in, together with some stats, export and Usage Guidelines

Following Usage Guidelines is non negotiable;

Other Changes

• Rewritten Route API to be more robust and less error prone

• Fixed a Typo in Discord Settings in Orwell

• Added checkbox to agree to vAMSYS ToS on registration

• Fixed stale cache in Route Importer causing issues with adding routes to airports which were just created

• Fixed departure and arrival conversions when creating/updating routes via Importer or API

• Fixed Discord notification errors and badge awarding on PIREP accept

• Fixed foreach on null error in email template processing, especially when handling Pending Registrations

• Fixed missing departure airport error in Dispatch table, when coming from Activity page

• Fixed Jumpseat Airports not forced on when there are no onward destinations from current location

• Added Jumpseat button to Dispatch table

• Fixed Container creation when creating a new container via Route Create/Edit page

• Fixed an issue with Rejecting Pilot Registration, not removing the rejected entry from the table

• Fixed SimBrief Pax/Bag weight conversions/override when said override is done via SimBrief Airframe Profile

• Fixed Activity registration button being visible outside of specified registration start and end times

• Fixed an issue where fetching current weather runs into an error

• Fixed orphaned ranks set as transfer rank targets causing issues

• Improved ‘Airports’ section in Tour Activity page showing airport names of yet to be revealed legs

• Fixed include_statistics parameter being ignored in List Pilots API endpoint

• Improved Event type Activity page load performance

• Fixed Event type Activity page Map and Route table ignoring callsign and fleet restrictions

There are still a few bugs left to resolve - will tackle them and more Could be Improved posts tomorrow!

Maintenance update resolving some bugs:

• Fix: Pilot API search via discord ID was not working

• Fix: Applying Route Type filters was causing issues when trying to make a Dispatch

• Fix: Time Setter in Dispatch would throw an error if time was not entered by the user; Current time is now populated by default

• Potential Fix: Route Importer, when set to import departure or arrival times as local times, would fail parsing and import the times as UTC, not local

• Fix/Improvement: Route Importer handles large amount of fleets and/or repeating fleets better/faster and no longer times out, which would result in import jobs looping and creating duplicate routes

• Fix/Improvement: Route Importer handles large amount of containers and/or repeating containers better/faster and no longer times out, which would result in import jobs looping and creating duplicate routes

For the last 2 - our test subject was 986 route import - each route containing 81 fleets; Import was done Friday during peak time, when our worker is most busy - Import time reduced from ~50 minutes to ~2 minutes.

Maintenance update addressing some issues:

• Improvement - Changed remaining RadarBox mentions to AirNav Radar.

• Improvement - Removed e-mail field when adding staff member; It is now a searchable dropdown to pick a Pilot in the VA; This resolves the issue of incorrect emails or users not having a pilot account in the VA.

• Fix - Show Paths in Pilot Flight map had no effect; The data will now correctly reload after paths were enabled.

• Fix - SimBrief format validation rules were being called incorrectly in Fleet and Route APIs and causing errors.

Maintenance release addressing various issues and making some improvements:

• Improvement: Stabilized Approach Scorer does not list 0 scores in PIREP Scores list; Showing 0 Scores can be re-enabled via Scorer setup toggle

• Fix: Search error in Scoring Rules Overview

• Improvement: Scoring Group edit page opens Scoring Rules first, instead of allocated Fleets

• Improvement: Show Pilot Location Airport Identifier in Statistics boxes in Phoenix Dashboard

• Improvement: Customizable inactivity removal messages with markdown support shown in Registration Denied page when pilot attempts to re-register

• Improvement: Added multi-select support for map filters to enable filtering by multiple fleets, flight types, Operators

• Improvement: Various changes to power our Discord Bot v2

• Improvement: N+1 Query optimization for the clock component which can slow things down considerably when there are many hubs

• Fix: Typo in the Activity Routes table

• Fix: Webhook event selection box on edit would misbehave

• Fix: Restoring a Pilot account via Orwell would not remove the self deleted flag and would result in pilot being deleted again

• Fix: Route Departure/Arrival Time scorers were processing times incorrectly and not applying any points

• Fix: API error related to route creation

• Improvement: Increased performance in logbook recalculation when Tour, Roster or Curated Roster is edited

Maintenance release addressing reported bugs:

• Pilot Invite allowed adding decimal numbers; Only integers are allowed

• Destination/Book Flight maps showed deleted operators and hidden fleets

• Aircraft Fleet change was referencing old relationship and would throw error on fleet change

• Callsign generator string or array parsing between turbo/non turbo mode would cause issues when creating next or return

• API issues related to fleets due to combined DTO

• Multiple Flights Per day scorer did not look at the pirep on blocks time, but instead - current time

• Selecting Landing rate would reprocess PIREP without resetting normal scorer points awarded as bonus points

Finished migration of maps-v2 to maps-v5 with final 2 maps rebuilt:

• Curated Roster map in Curated Roster table in Phoenix

• Pilot Flight Map in Pilot Profile

Fixed some other bugs or made adjustments based on discoveries made and reportd by the users:

• Orwell SimBrief Profile import error when incorrect profile ID is entered.

• Resource/Document page did not take into account honorary rank seting when opening the page - it would show in navigation, but the page would not open.

• Changed Orwell Route filters to be more like PIREP filters

MTOW/MLW Scorer Changes

It’s a breaking change; Existing MTOW and MLW Scorers were removed.

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• Bound enforcement can be configured from both, only over or only under

• Weight Source can be configured between SimBrief (planned) or Structural.Structural MTOW and MLW weights are taken from Aircraft → SimBrief Overrides and, if not available, from Fleet → SimBrief Overrides.

• Removed unnescessary Under/Over value limits.

Taxi Overspeed Scorer & AutoReject

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Added Scorer to Penalise Taxi Overspeed events (or reward for no overspeeding)

• Evaluation can be done on All events (i.e. total time spent in taxi overspeed condition) or one event (i.e. maximum allowed overspeed for one overspeed event)

• Rule name and points configurable for each scoring type

AutoReject can be configured to perform action on PIREP with similar configuration options.

Pegasus v2 operates on fixed taxi speed maximum of 30kts and this cannot be currently changed.

Other Scorer & AutoReject Changes:

• Shared Cockpit Scorer can now be set to add points as Bonus Points instead of regular points.

• Engine Start Sequence scoring rules gained the options to:

• Flap Scoring Rules can now be configured to accept ‘Human’ values; For compatible addons, Pegasus v2 will record Flap position in human value - for example -

  "UP", "0", "DIAL-A-FLAP", "6°", "11°", "0", "1", "1+F", "2", "3", "FULL" and so on; These values can now be used to configure the scorer, eliminating inconsistencies between flap levels among addons of the same aircraft type.

• All AutoRejects which have Type Override option have gained an option to provide custom rule name which will be shown in the PIREP review.

• Added Scoring Rules Overview table under Scoring Groups; It shows all the configured rules, the Scoring Groups it’s enabled in and has an option to delete the scoring rule from selected scoring groups.

Departures in next x hours

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Added an option to enable Departures in next x hours filtering via Orwell → Settings → Booking & Dispatch.

VAs can configure this to their needs with custom min/max times; For the options to be available, Route Times must be enabled and populated.

Other fixes and changes:

• Improved flight dispatch page loading speed (VAMSYS-D, VAMSYS-2F)

• Improved airport information loading speed

• Fixed broken links throughout the system

• Added validation to prevent invalid callsigns and flight numbers (VAMSYS-1DP)

• Fixed Discord integration errors when airline data is missing

• Fixed email errors when sending pilot removal notifications (VAMSYS-1DQ)

• Prevented system from sending emails to deleted user accounts (VAMSYS-1CZ)

• Fixed live flights display errors

• Fixed errors when accessing routes with invalid IDs (VAMSYS-1CB)

• Fixed background job errors when restoring pilot accounts (VAMSYS-AF)

• Fixed errors when generating route callsigns

• mproved system performance when loading activity history (VAMSYS-1DH)

• Improved error messages when Discord authorization is denied

• Fixed errors from outdated statistics data

• Improved error tracking and reporting system

Converted 3 more Event related maps to our new map arhitecture;

Converted Orwell Airport map to the new map architecture;

1 more map remains - the My Profile flight map.

Known issues:

• Book Flight, Available Destination and Live Flight Maps have interactivity issues in iOS devices - iPhones and iPads; We are still investigating cause of this issue;

And to think it was 5.3.10 ~48 hours ago.

New Scorers:

• On-Time Route Departure

• Missed Route Departure Time

• On-Time Route Arrival

• Missed Route Arrival Time

Similar to the previous Booking time scorers, but these are based on the VA populated route departure and arrival times.

With 5.3.15 Route Departure and Arrival times must now be entered in UTC:

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For the VAs who chose to enter these times in Local timezone - after convering to UTC (manually, via Export/Import or API) - you can enable ‘Show Local Route Times’ setting in Orwell → Settings → Booking & Dispatch → Dispatch Functions

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When enabled, Route tables will list the ETD and ETA in Local time, with hover revealing UTC:

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Route table filters will filter in Local time as well, Dispatch page will also show local time.

Thrice in 24 hours; Tackling some of the low hanging fruit from Featurebase suggestions:

• Changed - PIREP Filter in Orwell to use Select field in Departure/Arrival Filters

• New - Preparations for vAMSYS-wide notification of Pegasus v2 once v1 is shut

• New - Added Shared Cockpit information in Takeoff/Landing message sent in Discord

• Changed - In Airport Setup in Orwell, changed maximum container count in select to 500

• New - Redesigned Login, Register and similar pages

• Changed - PIREP pages now have a bullet point list of triggered AutoRejects

• New - Aircraft Resource Page in Phoenix - Added links to tracker websites for aircraft registration; Only shows tracker services enabled for dispatch page

• New - Added Updated column in Airport Resource table in Phoenix and Orwell

New - Stabilzed Approach Criteria at Altitude Gates Scorer - in BETA

See documentation for it here.

It is a Beta scorer - there may be errors or issues - our recommendation is to set it up to your liking and set point rewards/deductions to 0 during testing so that pilots are not affected in case of issues;

Another good idea would be to set up the rules and then go over some of the already filed Pegasus v2 PIREPs (you can easily tell them apart by the presence of G value in said column in PIREP table in Orwell) to test if it works as you expect.

Please report all issues regarding the scorer to Featurebase Bugs. Thank you.

Small update to assist VAs migrating from FPM to G only scoring; Currently, FPM and G landing scorers will be applied to Pegasus v2 PIREPs.

If your plan is to migrate to G only scoring and you do not wish to apply FPM scorers to Pegasus v2 PIREPs - there is a temporary setting in Orwell → Settings → Reward Settings

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Pegasus v2 Landing Scorer - G Only - once enabled, it will not apply FPM scorer on Pegasus v2 PIREPs.

This toggle will go away by 1st November - giving you ample time to remove FPM scorer from the scoring groups if you wish not to keep FPM based rewards.

Additional Autoreject and Scorer options added:

AutoRejects:

• Liftoff Roll Excessive - Triggers when the aircraft roll magnitude during liftoff exceeds acceptable limits.

• Liftoff Pitch Excessive - Triggers when the maximum aircraft pitch during liftoff is outside acceptable limits.

• Takeoff Above MTOW - Triggers when takeoff weight exceeds the Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) from SimBrief plus tolerance.

• Landing Above MLW - Triggers when landing weight exceeds the Maximum Landing Weight (MLW) from SimBrief plus tolerance.

Scorers:

• Liftoff Pitch Outside Range

• Liftoff Pitch Within Range

• Liftoff Roll Outside Range

• Liftoff Roll Within Range

• Takeoff Weight Outside MTOW

• Takeoff Weight Within MTOW

• Landing Weight Outside MLW

• Landing Weight Within MLW

All MTOW/MLW scorers and autorejects require a SimBreif OFP dispatched via vAMSYS or imported prior to flight.