I have just released some new features for VA Ranks. First, you can now assign type ratings directly to a rank, all pilots who have that rank will automatically be able to book and fly those aircraft. You can still assign type ratings directly to pilots as before and if the type rating is assigned for both the pilot and the rank the training flag on the pilot will take precedence. But if the type rating is assigned to the rank you may not remove it from the pilot.
Second you can now define promotion rules for the rank so that when the meets the qualifications the are automatically promoted to the next rank. The rules you can define are:
- Required number of flights
- Required number of flight hours.
- Adjust flights by sim rate and rating
- Minimum rating (Flights below this rating percent are ignored).
- Flight type (Scheduled, Training, Co-pilot or All
- Return to base: The get the rating only after they fly back to this fleet base.
- Major penalties reset progress: If true and the pilot crashes, runs out of fuel or lands at the wrong airport there progress toward promotion is reset to zero.
- Next Rank:
If ''Adjust flights by sim rate and rating' is selected then the number of flights is reduced by the rating in the flight, so a 90% flight counts as 0.9 flights, and the flight hours are reduced by the sim rate. For flights longer than 3 hours the first 30 minutes would be assumed to be at 1x and then next hour would be at 4x, and for flights less than 3 hours the first 1/6 would be at 1x and the next 1/3 would be at 4 x.
You can also select which count toward promotion, but you can only select the aircraft that the rank has type ratings for. So you can say pilots for this rank can fly the Cessna and the 737 but only flight using the 737 count toward promotion.
Only the flights that happen after the pilot gets the rank count toward promotion to the next rank. And if when editing the rank you select "Reset promotion progress to zero" the progress of all pilots who currently hold that rank is set to zero.
You may not setup an automatic promotion to a rank that has the 'Settings' permission.
Lastly off the page where all the airlines ranks are listed there is a new management option 'Assign Rank'. This page allows you to quickly change the rank of all the pilots in the airline except for those who have a rank with settings permission.
Happy Flying.
This is great!
