Your Crew Pad, explained

The operational heart of the pad. A vAMSYS booking becomes a rotation, a flight sheet and a live briefing, without you typing anything twice.

• My Flights — rotations with turnaround, layover, aircraft, registration and the leg that is current now.
• eDesk — Inbox, Preflight, Weather and NOTAM, grouped by current, operational and previous flights.
• Check-in arms one flight; the briefings that follow belong to it.
• Report — actual times and fuel after the PIREP, which closes the sheet.
• Profile — your rank, hours and standing.

Tip Hover any time on the sheet and it tells you where that figure came from: your report, an extrapolation, SimBrief, or the original booking.

Your SimBrief OFP as an EFB: seven pages that each answer one question, instead of a thirty-page PDF you cannot page through in the cockpit.

• Overview and Times — the numbers you want first, with plan, A-CDM and your own reported times side by side.
• Flightplan — every waypoint with its planned figure, and a field for what the tank actually says.
• Route — terrain, airspace, precipitation radar, SIGMET and only the ATC stations on your route.
• Runways, Weather, Briefing — both ends with live wind components, and the pages you read once.

Tip Three buttons, three deliberate acts: Uplink brings the plan in, Refresh asks again and says whether anything changed, Unload throws it away.

The kneeboard for online flying. One sheet, filled in the order things reach you on the radio — and writable wherever the network cannot help.

• Callsign, route, levels, SID, STAR, squawk and the runway in use.
• Frequencies, ATIS, QNH and transition level from the network you configured.
• Live PDC / DCL and CPDLC logons where a staffed station publishes them.
• Taxi notes and clearances by keyboard — or with a finger, straight onto the sheet.

Tip It refreshes about every two minutes on its own. What it cannot source, it leaves blank for you rather than filling in a guess.

GSX Pro from the pad. Everything you would otherwise pull up the simulator's menu for in the middle of a turnaround happens here — and your eyes stay outside.

• The board shows the turnaround at a glance: what is running, how far boarding and refuelling have got, what is still outstanding and who is handling.
• One tap requests a service, another sends the jetway away again; the tile says whether it is on the aircraft right now.
• Your flight sits alongside — the detected SimBrief plan, the off-block time that counts with a running clock, and the A-CDM target times once they are issued.
• When GSX asks which handler to use, Ground picks the airline's one for you, visibly and interruptibly.
• The invoice at the end, on its own tab.

Tip This is the one app on the pad whose data does not come from us: it talks to GSX on your own network, on this computer or on the one you fly on. Its remote server is on by default — the address is in GSX under Settings → Network. Without a connection Ground shows nothing and says why.

Every filed report, drawn back out. Nothing to enter — the trail writes itself, and it is the one app on the pad that is purely yours.

• Totals, routes, aircraft types and history at a glance.
• Planned against flown track on a real map, with the altitude profile beneath it.
• Runway use per airport, the approach, and which main gear touched first.
• Archived weather for the day you flew it.

Tip No Face ID, on purpose: your own career is not company data. Contrail also tells you when it had to leave something out, and how much.

The fleet library: operating manuals per aircraft type, organised by chapter, with full-text search across the whole shelf.

• OM-B material per type, chapter by chapter.
• Search the complete library and jump straight to the matching chapter.
• Behind Face ID, like everything that belongs to the operation.

Tip The icon is already in your dock and the app opens — for now it only announces itself. It goes live when the manuals are signed off.

A quick-reference library for line operations — figures, procedures and tables, one tap away.

• The one app in the catalogue that is a third-party site in a pad window.
• It stays visibly separate: it is not LH Virtual data and never claims to be.
• It brings its own sign-in. That account belongs to the site, not to us — the pad neither creates it nor knows about it.

Tip The window belongs to the pad, the content belongs to its author. If the site is down, the window says so.

The whole VATSIM network on a map the pad draws itself — no third-party service in between.

• Every flight and every staffed position, with flight plans, progress and ATIS.
• Search by callsign, airport or VATSIM CID.
• Group traffic flies in its airline colours and stays readable above everyone else.
• Your own flight wears a ring and opens its route by itself.

Tip Your flight only lights up if your VATSIM CID is in Settings → Sim Connections.

The same idea for the other network, deliberately dressed differently so the two are never confused.

• Flights, flight plans, staffed positions and ATIS straight from IVAO.
• Search by callsign, airport or IVAO VID.
• Same map craft underneath, different source and different identity on top.

Tip It reads the IVAO VID from the same settings page as everything else. One entry, every app.

The airports on your roster appear by themselves; anything else you add. The scene is built from the live report, and the raw METAR stays one tap below it.

• METAR and TAF for your booked airports and any station you add.
• Cloud, rain, visibility, wind and daylight shape what you see.
• Severe weather can reach you as a notification — but only for a flight that is still ahead of you or under way.
• Where you are right now gets an alert too, quietly: only while the pad is open, and gone when the warning is.

Tip Widget, app icon and app all read the same source. If they ever disagreed, one of them would be lying.

The VA training platform as a pad app: type courses, flight preparation, chart reading and getting started on the networks.

• Lessons, diagrams and answers use the full tablet width.
• Start at your desk, carry on here — it is the same record, not a copy.
• Checkrides and badges count exactly as they do in the dashboard.

Tip Your progress lives in Academy itself. Whatever you answer on the pad shows up in the dashboard immediately.

Short sessions for the quiet part of a flight: language, aircraft knowledge and city recognition.

• Seven language courses, 150 words and phrases each, plus a Swiss German bonus course.
• A320 and B777 questions taken from the Academy material.
• A 150-part city quiz: landmarks, capitals, urban patterns, runway layouts, IATA and ICAO codes.

Tip Progress stays on your device record — no leaderboard, nobody watching.

Five aviation targets every day — aircraft, tower, cockpit, engine and wingtip — as a coarse mosaic you buy your way into, tile by tile.

• Open a tile, or sharpen one you already opened; you choose where to spend.
• Answer step by step: stop with partial knowledge, or go all the way to the exact variant.
• Two wrong answers cost the round; every aid costs points.
• Daily and weekly standings, listed by pilot ID only.

Tip Everyone gets the same five targets each day, so it is worth comparing notes in Discord — after you have played.

Which airports get a scenery worth flying to? Your votes weight the catalogue behind our future focus airports — and you cast them by swiping.

• Right for yes, left for no, up for a superlike, down for don't know.
• One vote per add-on for 90 days — from the pad or from the dashboard, it is the same vote.
• Cards say clearly whether an add-on is FREEWARE or PAYWARE.
• A finished streak is worth 100 points on your next accepted PIREP.

Tip One superlike per day. Spend it on something that really is outstanding.

What the community posted in Discord, arranged like a photo library.

• All Photos, My Shots and Favourites as separate albums.
• Open one for paging, information, zoom and a favourite that lasts.
• New images appear after a two-hour review period.
• Anything removed in Discord or the Social Studio disappears here too.

Tip Only published community images appear — the pad does not read private channels. Empty library? Post a screenshot in Discord and it turns up here.

Everything the group and its partners publish, in one vertical stream. Swipe up for the next one.

• Developer trailers, creator videos, network events and the simNews feed together.
• The order is reshuffled every time you open it.
• Every post names who it came from and opens the original.

Tip If a channel says not set up, that is honest reporting — it means a key is missing, not that the partner posted nothing.

Short stories about add-ons, sceneries and platforms, collected from public sources several times an hour.

• Every item names and links its source.
• A calm reading view, native to the pad.
• If the source hiccups, the last good feed stays readable.

Tip simNews is not ours. The pad shows it as what it is and never dresses it up as VA news.

Color the Sky: the HUES livery catalogue and its release feed, in one app.

• Search liveries by airline, aircraft, registration, painter or simulator.
• The liveries of the airlines we fly sit at the top, fleet packs first.
• Release stories come from the HUES developers themselves.
• Downloading happens in HUES Hub, one tap away.

Tip Get it from the Partner tab in the App Store. Nothing is installed onto the pad itself.

The partner's complete scenery catalogue: thirty airports from Keflavik to Adelaide, Zurich, Dusseldorf, Rome and Helsinki among them.

• Search by airport name or ICAO, filter by simulator.
• Images, feature lists and two gallery views per product.
• The way into the right shop, straight from the detail page.

Tip The catalogue is generated from the partner's own source, so new releases do not depend on somebody remembering to type them in.

Your company inbox: crew notices, polls, the automatic operational post — and the welcome letter you got on your first sign-in.

• Personal and role-based post, in proper letter form.
• Attachments such as the monthly duty-hours sheet open as documents.
• Write back to Ops or Crew from the same place.
• Read state stays in sync with the dashboard.

Tip There is no second mailbox and no second password — the vAMSYS session is the identity.

Short service messages as ordinary conversations — including the roaming welcome when your simulated location changes country.

• Contact image, country flag, structured text and a link where there is one.
• Delete what you have read; unread items feed the badge on the icon.
• Delivered through the same notification layer as everything else.

Tip Confidential text is never rendered on the lock screen, whatever your preview setting says.

Company dates and your own plans in one calendar, without becoming one data source.

• Your booked roster, weekly and special events, HQ dates and anniversaries arrive by themselves.
• Day, week and month views with a now-line; overlapping entries sit side by side.
• VATSIM and IVAO network events can be laid over the top — limited to airports we actually serve.
• Switch individual calendars off when they get in the way.

Tip Flights are read-only and keep their real flight number. Your own entries can carry several reminder stages.

Zulu is always in sight, and the world clock is built for people who keep changing time zones.

• City cards with local time, UTC offset and where the daylight is.
• Alarms can follow local time or stay pinned to Zulu.
• Stopwatch and timer, as expected.

Tip Alarms survive closing the app — they come back through the system notification layer.

The system calculator, immediately there, dark in every appearance — like the one on a real tablet.

• Standard arithmetic with a readable running display.
• Keyboard and touch drive the same state.
• No server call at all.

Tip A small tool, deliberately instant. It is the fastest thing on the pad.

Everything that belongs to this pad. The sidebar has a search field — use it before you go hunting.

• Sim Connections — SimBrief, VATSIM, IVAO and SayIntentions IDs, entered once for every app.
• Display & Brightness, Wallpaper, Home Screen — how it looks.
• Notifications — which apps may reach you, previews, and web push permission.
• Software Update, iPad Storage, About — versions, installed apps, and what is on the device.

Tip SimBrief wants the numeric pilot ID, not your username. That one mismatch is the most common reason flySmart! finds nothing.

Where apps arrive, leave and update. There is no store server behind it — what ships with the pad is the newest there is.

• Four tabs: Today, Airlines, Apps and Partner.
• Release notes explain what changed before you install.
• Open an installed app straight from its card.
• Your account, top right, collects the pending updates.

Tip When it updates itself, the interface reloads afterwards. That is expected — it just swapped out the code it was running.

When it comes, it will be a start page of the VA services that can honestly open inside the pad.

• One clear tile per supported service.
• Sites open in the pad only where the window can tell the truth about where you are.
• No decorative address bar pretending to steer a page it cannot read.

Tip A window with a fake address bar would be the first place the illusion gave itself away. That is why it is not there yet.