Pre-flight risk card

Watch the video: Safety checks before you fly

When your airline has the Pre-flight risk card on, your booking page (and the Flight tab of the EFB) shows a Pre-flight risk card. It puts together, in one place, what Vaeroly already knows about your flight, and gives one answer: Go, Caution or No-go, with a line for each check and its reason.

It is advice only. It never stops you booking or flying, it changes no score, and it is for the simulator, not for real-world flying.

How to use it

1. Book your flight and open the booking page.
2. The card fills in a moment after the page shows, so the page never waits for it.
3. Read the top line first, then any line marked Caution or No-go.
4. Look again shortly before you leave the gate: the weather it reads is at most ten minutes old.

What it checks

• Departure weather and Arrival weather: the latest weather report. Thunderstorms, freezing rain, heavy snow, very low cloud or visibility, gusts of 35 kt or more, and the wind on the best runway: 25 kt of crosswind or more is Caution, 35 kt or more is No-go, 10 kt of tailwind on the best runway is Caution. At the arrival it also reads the forecast (TAF) for thunderstorms and freezing rain.
• Icing: icing on the ground at your departure (the same check as the de-icing card), and icing reports (SIGMETs and AIRMETs) along the straight line of your route.
• Weather on the way: other SIGMETs and AIRMETs along the route today, such as thunderstorms or turbulence.
• NOTAMs: closures and cautions from Vaeroly and your airline, and the runway notices of your SimBrief plan.
• Curfews: only when your airline keeps night windows. Landing inside a curfew is No-go; leaving in one, or landing in a quota period, is Caution.
• Alternate: the one you chose on the booking or in your SimBrief plan, and its weather. When the arrival weather is poor and you have no alternate, it says so.
• Controllers online: who is on VATSIM and IVAO at either end. This is for your information and never changes the answer.

What the answers mean

• Go: nothing we know of stands in the way.
• Caution: you can fly, but read the lines marked Caution first.
• No-go: something would keep a real airliner on the ground. You can still fly it.
• Unknown: a source can't be read right now, for example no weather report for an airport. The card never guesses: when the departure or arrival weather is unknown and nothing worse was found, the whole card says there isn't enough data yet. It asks once more by itself a few seconds later.

The wind figures are our own round numbers for airliners, not the limits of your aircraft. Check your aircraft's limits too.

For staff

Turn it on under Staff → Airline settings → Optional features → Pre-flight risk card. New airlines start with it on. It only reads data Vaeroly already has: the weather, your NOTAMs and curfews, and the online networks.