Fake Airlines, Planes, and Pilots: the Parallel Universe of Virtual Aviation

Larry Mott has spent more than 15,000 hours inside a cockpit flying over the last 15 years. He's flown to Kathmandu, Nepal; from Los Angeles to Tokyo; and he frequently flies from Phoenix to San Diego. But if you asked him to land a plane, he's not confident he would be able to stick it.

That's because Mott isn't a pilot, at least not in real life. He is one of more than 200,000 people around the world, according to one estimate, who devote their spare time to flying virtual planes in their basements, garages, and living rooms through the use of flight simulation software.

"It's not really advertised, but it's a die-hard hobby," Mott said. "Some people can never become a pilot, for one reason or another, they just can't. So this gives them another route. They can experience being a pilot without having to do it in real life."

Aviation enthusiasts can purchase basic flight simulation software like Microsoft's Flight Simulator X for as little as $60 and become a virtual pilot using just their keyboard, with no internet connection required. But for those who want to take the hobby a step further, a virtual universe of pilots, airlines, and air traffic controllers has been growing online.

Mott, who works a day job in tech support, moonlights as the CEO of Delta Virtual Airlines, an online "company" for virtual pilots that models itself after its real-world counterpart, Delta Airlines. The virtual corporation, which is run by volunteers, is one of more than 2,000 virtual airlines in the world. Other airlines model themselves off of actual airlines as well, like Southwest Virtual Airlines, American Airlines Virtual, and United Virtual Airlines. But for copyright reasons, most virtual airlines are adamant they have nothing to do with the real-world counterparts.

Every day, hundreds of Delta Virtual Airlines pilots sign into a tracking system and fly routes out of virtual hubs that emulate those of the original company. These virtual airlines can connect to one of several virtual flying networks, platforms that track pilots' flights and allow them to connect with one another in an elaborate simulated universe.

Virtual aviation has been around for decades, starting with the creation of the first flight simulation program by an electrical engineer and aviation enthusiast in 1979. In the 90s, the internet introduced the first multi-player options to the simulation community, and from then on, the simulated flight world began getting more and more life-like and elaborate.

Virtual pilots who don't want to fly alone can plug their flight simulators networks like VATSIM (Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network). VATSIM is one of the largest virtual flying networks in the world, with more than 100,000 members. It was founded in 2001 by a group of virtual aviation hobbyists who wanted to allow pilots to share the same, structured online world.

"VATSIM was formed years and years ago by eight or nine folks who thought it would be fun to create a virtual world in which you could fly," Justin Friedland, a volunteer spokesman for the network said. "VATSIM is completely volunteer-based and cost-free. It doesn't cost to join or to fly, and everything is crowdsourced."

Friedland said the hobby took off quickly from there, with participation increasing in the years since. Other air traffic simulation networks exist, including paid networks and International Virtual Aviation Organization (IVAO), another free network.

"It's an amazingly immersive experience when you get down to it," Friedland said. "There's the added pleasure you're no longer sitting in your basement flying by yourself, you're hooked up to someone else sharing the flight."

Friedland said VATSIM follows the same procedures and has all the same positions one would find in normal aviation, including technically-trained air traffic controllers. Pilots using the system have to file a flight plan and call ground control for permission for startup, taxi and take off, all online. After that, they can fly anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the route.

"Everything happens in real time, so if you're flying from New York to Chicago, it will take you two and a half hours to fly from New York to Chicago and you'll be sitting at your computer watching the world go by," Friedland said.

Most pilots start with the basic software, one of the most common being Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, and pay for add-ons like bigger planes or more realistic scenery. Some companies offer software with photorealistic scenery for purchase, which is built using aerial photos of different sections of the world. Other software is even weather-responsive, so virtual pilots get to see in real time the weather actual pilots are experiencing at different airports around the world.

"Depending on the level of complexity, you can end up with an airplane that is pretty much a dead copy of the real thing," Friedland said. "All of the systems, all of the flight computers and all of the flight dynamics are made to be like the real airplane. You can couple that with some hardware like a yoke and rudder pedals and you can get a pretty complete experience of flying."

The basic cockpit set-up for a virtual pilot can be as little as $100, but dedicated hobbyists spend thousands on increasingly sophisticated software and hardware to make the experience as real as possible.

"You can fly over Chicago or Detroit or Denver or New York City, and depending on what you buy and its level of depth, you can almost see your own house," Friedland said. "It's a pretty cool experience."

People can spend more than $10,000 to build full cockpits in their homes with rudder pedals that "steer" the aircraft, multiple monitors, and advanced software for the most realistic experience possible. Although that cost may sound steep, it's a far cry from the $60,000 or more it costs to go through flight training for most major airlines. Even a private pilot license costs around $10,000, and many aviation enthusiasts don't have the funds to purchase their own planes and fuel beyond that.

"I've looked into getting a pilot license myself, and it's not a very cheap thing to do," DVA CEO Mott said. "A lot of people have another job they do that they really enjoy but they like to do this too. We've got police officers who do this, we have people who have jobs that they love but want to be a pilot too, so they'll do this as a hobby to quench that thirst of being a pilot without having to do it in real life."

Many people also get into flight simulation for the camaraderie. Not only do flight simulation platforms allow pilots to virtually coordinate flights, some also allow them to co-pilot trips from the same cockpit. VATSIM and other networks also hosts events in which thousands of virtual pilots coordinate their flight routes to get as many people in the virtual air as possible to reflect actual flight traffic.

Although the pilots in the virtual industry are overwhelmingly male, Friedland said more and more women have been taking up the hobby in recent years.

Matthew Dobbs is a virtual pilot with more than 4,200 hours of flight experience. I tuned into one of his video streams to see what it's like when virtual pilots hang out "together."

Dozens of virtual pilots were plugged into the chat room for hours, some flying together and others flying separately and chatting throughout. Dobbs drank a beer and led the hangout as he took off from Charlotte, North Carolina.

The users in his stream offered various reasons for taking up flight simulation. Many had long-term aspirations but no concrete intentions of getting into real aviation. Some of the users had pilot's licenses or were working to get them.

"I would like to be a pilot someday," a user named testflight357 wrote.

"I'm a certified private pilot in the USA," another user wrote. "It's very expensive, so I haven't done much in the last 5 years."

Dobbs' chatroom and live videostream.

Friedland said it is fairly common for people from the actual aviation world to come fly online after their real-life work is done.

"We have lots of real-world pilots who also fly using VATSIM, and we have real-world controllers who like the VATSIM world and who join us and some cases will give us help and training, and in other cases just come on and control for fun," he said. "Maybe they don't get enough during the day, they'll come to VATSIM and control for a few hours."

Some people use the training they get through online flight simulation and apply it to real-life schooling, eventually leaving the virtual world for a career in aviation.

"We've got a number of young members who got their start with VATSIM who got trained to be air traffic controllers in the virtual world and have gone on to get jobs as real world traffic controllers, taking what they learned from us as a base," Friedland said.

Friedland said a lot of people in the virtual flying world try to make the experience as accessible as possible. Airlines have varying requirements, but most call for pilots to fly at least two routes a month. One of VATSIM's few rules is that users have to be 13 years old to begin.

"There are certain rules you have to adhere to, like you can't go around crashing your plane into other people's planes or taxiing in front of people," Friedland said. "Other than that, it's as intense and immersive as little or as much as you want it to be."

He said in his seven years at VATSIM there has only been one incident of having to block someone's IP address from the VATSIM servers for behaving badly.

Mott said at Delta Virtual Airlines, they use scoring to keep pilots on track, docking points for rough landings and crashes and increasing users' scores for successful landings, especially in poor weather.

"Normally we tell people you need to maintain a 85-90 percent rating on here," Mott said. "We are number four in the world right now as far as ratings go. If you have a bad pilot it will bring your rating down. So once you get below a certain percentage, you will get virtually fired."

The ratings he refers to are kept by Virtual Airline Financial Systems, a service that tracks the expenses and profits of virtual airlines by calculating fuel prices, labor rates and other categories in real time. Dozens of real-life airlines have virtual airline counterparts, including American Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa, and FedEx, and many of them virtually compete in simulated stock markets.

"There is a lot of competition between airlines because everybody wants to be the top airline," Mott said. "But when it comes down to it, we're all after the same thing, we're all just hobbyists and that's what it's all about. It's a big community, and it's pretty tight-knit."

The scores also give pilots motivation and a purpose behind their flight simulation. They can ascend the pilot ranks by hitting a certain number of flight hours, or taking tests. The higher virtual pilots go, the more virtual money they make in many airlines.

"You can buy things to increase pilot performance, like houses and cars with the virtual money you make," Mott said. "It's all virtual, otherwise I'd go broke because I fly so much."

Many outsiders think flight simulation is like a video game, and Microsoft even markets its software Flight Simulator X under the "games" section of its online store. But people in the flight simulation community are adamant it's much more than that.

"Let's clarify that: This is not a video game," Mott said. "A video game is when you get on Xbox and play. This is not a game, it's a simulation. You're actually simulating real flying with a virtual airline."

Perfect Worlds is a series on Motherboard about simulations, imitations, and models. Follow along here.