Cross the Pond 2011 and ACH booking: a question

[Svilen Vassilev]

Hello folks! A few weeks ago I booked my slot for the upcoming CTP event. The CTP booking system requires a callsign to be specified, so I made a booking on our website for a charter flight that matches my CTP origin and destination airports and used the callsign from that booking (ACH7155) in my CTP flightplan. So far so good, but the problem is my booking here on ACH website expired, as it was made weeks in advance and if I make a new one now, I won't get the same callsign.

So my question is: if I fly the event and record the flight with FlightKeeper, will I be able to submit a pirep in the end even if I didn't have an active booking on ACH site?

Or alternatively if I make a booking on ACH website for the event flight will somebody be able to kindly ammend my callsign for that flight to match the one registered for the CTP?

If it's not possible, then no big deal, I just won't log the flight
Thanks in advance!

 

[Martin Von Dombrowski]

Why don't you just use your Air Child Pilot ID for the CTP Booking? Mine for example is ACH181, so I'd just book ACH0181. Thats the easiest way...

 

[Svilen Vassilev]

Why don't you just use your Air Child Pilot ID for the CTP Booking? Mine for example is ACH181, so I'd just book ACH0181. Thats the easiest way...

Because I didn't know if this approach would let me track the flight and log a pirep without a booking on the ACH website. Will it?

 

[Peter Schindler]

Hey Svilen,
it's always possible to use different callsigns on Vatsim (including slot bookings) and in FlightKeeper.
Since you already booked your slot with "ACH7155", use this for your Vatsim flight (obviously). Before the flight starts, make a new booking (on the ACH website) and enter that new number in FlightKeeper.
For future slot bookings you can also use your PID, as Martin suggested. Or any other random callsign, like "ACH55SV" or whatever you like.

Usually it's a good idea to use the same callsign for Vatsim/SB and the pirep reporting. Just because we can verify on vataware in case something went wrong with the report.
But sometimes it's better to have different callsigns. For example online group flights where many pilots start from the same place with almost identical charter callsigns. Can be quite confusing for both controllers and fellow pilots

 

[Svilen Vassilev]

Hey Svilen,
it's always possible to use different callsigns on Vatsim (including slot bookings) and in FlightKeeper.
Since you already booked your slot with "ACH7155", use this for your Vatsim flight (obviously). Before the flight starts, make a new booking and enter that new number in FlightKeeper.
For future slot bookings you can also use your PID, as Martin suggested. Or any other random callsign, like "ACH55SV" or whatever you like.

Usually it's a good idea to use the same callsign for Vatsim/SB and the pirep reporting. Just because we can verify on vataware in case something went wrong with the report.
But sometimes it's better to have different callsigns. For example online group flights where many pilots start from the same place with almost identical charter callsigns. Can be quite confusing for both controllers and fellow pilots

Thank you for the great explanation, Peter, it's all clear now! Very convenient to have this kind of flexibility!