About us
"Austrian virtual" is a virtual airline (VA). As such, it does not operate real flights. It is operated by "Austrian Virtual Airlines - Verein zum Betrieb virtueller Fluglinien", a "Verein"/registered association (ZVR-Zahl, registration number 384356996) in Austria in accordance with Austrian federal law Bundesgesetz über Vereine (Vereinsgesetz 2002). As member of Austrian virtual you are becoming a formal member of the Association. Our pilots are classified as "außerordentliche Mitglieder" (associate members) in accordance with our "Vereinsstatuten" (Association's by-laws). No membership fees arise from your membership.
Virtual flight operations are handled on the platform "vAMSYS". A separate registration, independent from us, is necessary on this platform (link see below). In order to reduce your effort, registering at vAMSYS will automatically register you as member at our Association, thus you only have to register once. Please note, vAMSYS has separate privacy policies, terms and conditions which are independent from ours. Technical problems and questions concerning the use of vAMSYS will be handled directly by vAMSYS.
To facilitate communications with our members, we operate a forum, which serves as primary and central communication platform of our VA. Furthermore, we have a presence on Facebook and have organised topic-based channels on Discord for quick and informal exchange. (Please note Facebook and Discord are services which are not operated by our Association. Using these platforms is subject to their respective terms.)
By applying for a membership with us (by registering at vAMSYS) you accept and obey our rules.
Our history
FlyAVA 1998 - 2009
Austrian virtual was founded on December 1st, 1998, as "Austrian Virtual Airlines" (AVA) by Michael Mrak. In those times, virtual airlines were not comparable to virtual airlines nowadays. Only a few destinations were offered and the quality of the available aircraft was not too high. The first intercontinental flight available for submission by our pilots, Vienna - New York, was available in January 1999.
Some months later, Franz Sauer, who was an experienced programmer, became member of Austrian Virtual Airlines and commenced the development of FlyAVA. This piece of software became the core of Austrian virtual Airlines. It offered to our pilots a logbook and other innovative features.
In 2003, the well-known and until then used Yahoo mailing list was replaced by a forum and the website was redesigned. Primarily Philipp Bauer and René Billiani have been accountable for this redesign. At that time, flights of Tyrolean Airways and Lauda Air have been included into the schedule, leading to a renaming into "Austrian Virtual Airlines Group" (AVAG).
With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 "A Century of Flight", many features of FlyAVA could not be used any more. Rainer Meisel took over the development of FlyAVA and thanks to him the software was usable until 2009. He started working intensely on "FlyAVA-Connect", which should have supported Microsoft Flight Simulator X, but finally never has been released.
Headquarter 2009-2016
Thanks to a cooperation between Rainer Meisel, Michael Mrak, Patrick Hrusa, Werner Angerer, Christian Gullneritz, Reinhard Branter and Markus Griesslehner, in June 2009, the new Austrian virtual Headquarter software was going operational, thus concluding the era of FlyAVA. On pilots-side, XAcars and FS Flight Keeper were supported as client software. Also a new flight simulator was supported, X-Plane. Since then, the Headquarter was constantly being extended and developed further, adding features like achievements, fleet simulation, tours and so on. In 2015 the "Headquarter" software was renamed in "Headquarters".
Establishing the Association 2016
For several reasons, Dimitris Arvanitis, Christian Gullneritz and Markus Griesslehner established the association "Austrian Virtual Airlines - Verein zum Betrieb virtueller Fluglinien" on February 1st, 2016, and the now renamed "myAustrian virtual" was being run by this association.
Headquarters 2016 - 2020
For flight operations, the Headquarters software by Markus Griesslehner continued to be used. For pilots, some new features like support of smartCARS were introduced, but further development primarily concentrated on improving the basic technical structure.
vAMSYS 2020
After intensive thoughts and discussions, the Association's Executive Board decided in summer 2020 that Austrian virtual will use vAMSYS for virtual flight operations, thus concluding the era of the Headquarters software.
As of the begin of 2022, Christian Gullneritz, after serving the virtual airline for many years as CEO, resigned from his post and handed over to Steve Burckhardt.