Africa Hub - what's your thoughts?

P

Peter Schindler

Founder
Users Local time
Today 7:49 AM
To all pilots:

We thought it's about time to open one more hub - and probably the last for a while. There is still an entire continent not covered by an Air-Child hub, which is Africa. We admit that this is even a bit embarassing for a virtual airline supporting UNICEF ... :S

However, the reason why a hub in Africa was not on top of our list is obvious if you look at the available scenery for this continent. As far as we could see, there's a pretty good coverage for South Africa with both freeware and payware, so it would be easy to start a poll between Cape Town and Johannesburg. But we'd like to have your opinion.
Are there any ideas, wishes, suggestions for other countries apart from South Africa? Does anyone know of other good free- and/or payware sceneries (possibly for FS9, FSX and X-Plane)?

Post everything you know or would like to see. We have a small constraint, though: Northern Africa (i.e. nice sceneries like Casablanca, Sharm El Sheik etc.) would only be second or third choice, being too close to Europe.

Thanks already for your replies.
Norbert & Peter
 
Houari Boumediene Airport - Algeria ?
Scenery, flightsim com: algiers7.zip with photo terrain scenery: algicity.zip

[imgr]http://www.flightsim.com/zview.php?cm=view&fn=/home/flight/files/64/algiers7.zip&an=DAAGRealScenery/DAAG2007.jpg&idx=2[/imgr]
sorry for the size :)
 
Johannesburg or Cape town in South Africa...Aeroworx have a large selection of scenery pakages hosted on Avsim as well as there Web site.(Sorry local bias :lol: )
 
DGAA / ACC, Kotoka International Airport, Accra, Ghana.
Charts for the airports in cetral africa:
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Sceneries are available for x-plane and MFS:
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ATC for the region:
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DGAA seems to be a good choice.
Especially towards the location - perfect for connections to/from Europe to/from South Africa, South America, The Carribean ...
 
Hi Gents,
Reading this post, I thought to DAKAR Senegal which was a step in the Concorde route to Rio de Janeiro.

Sceneries:
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Charts:
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It could be a good place to dispatch flights across Africa and South America. :think:

What do you think about?

Cheers
Pierre
 
Just for info. The Dakar scenery I know of is quite low quality. DGAA and DAAG are probably the best sceneries around Central Africa. There is a superb scenery for Antananarivo (FMMI) with marginal hub location benefits ;)

http://www.avsimrus.com/f/fs2004-scener ... 14605.html

cheers,
tobi
 
Instead of discussing the quality of scenery, I think it would be better to look for a strategic placement of the hub. Algeria and South Africa are both at one end of the continent. Dakar would be marginally better placed but still far away in the west. Kampala in Uganda or Nairobi in Kenya are better placed in central Africa. Perhaps 2 hubs would be best:

Dakar (serving the western Sahel area and a nice stop for traffic for South America) and Kampala (serving Eastern and Central Africa - both with turbulent areas in DRC and Ethiopia/Somalia).

just my 0.02€ worth

Torben
 
I've looked into topic, then took a map. Nothing connected to any flight simulator, just looking for nice place, witch is quite close to everything in central africa...

Noticed one place that suits, and during reading - it suits even better, but didn't checked if there is any scenery available...

Look at Kinshasa in Congo. According to wiki, Kinshasa is 3rd biggest city in africa (tied with Johannesburg). Quite easy to locate in VFR - because it's near Congo river...

About airport - N'djili Airport (IATA: FIH, ICAO: FZAA), also known as N'Djili International Airport and Kinshasa International Airport. One of 4 biggest airports in africa AND its alternate landing site for US Space Shuttle. Single runway over 15000ft (almost 5km) long.


:)

Sources:
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@ Szymon Kurzacz:

Here we go :)
Charts: http://www.simmiles.com/VRC/ifr.php
Scenery: http://flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=107343 (scenery)
http://flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=120094 (AFCAD update)
 
FZAA features only basic scenery at the moment. And I do think, that it is a factor for opening a hub at someplace. But that is just my opinion, I personally like to fly to, where good scenery exists. It's just more realistic if you have the correct taxiways and gates if you're flying according to real charts and procedures. Have a look at
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for a good overview, what Africa sceneries exist.

cheers,
tobi
 
Africa is the major destination as fas as the AIRCHILD VA activity is concerned. My suggestion is, therefore, to have two (2) hubs there, one closer to Europe, to make it more accessible for shorter hauls, and another, further down the map. I belive the purpose of Airchild VA justifies for two hubs in Africa.

But that's just a suggestion. 8)
 
Thanks for the many opinions! This is already more than we were hoping for.

Let me just randomly quote and comment some posts (personally, not officially):
Torben Andersen said:
Instead of discussing the quality of scenery, I think it would be better to look for a strategic placement
Click to expand...
The ideal location would feature both, good situation + good scenery. Hard to find, of course ;)
Andreas Heusner said:
DGAA / ACC, Kotoka International Airport, Accra, Ghana.
Click to expand...
Mario Hirschmugl said:
DGAA seems to be a good choice
Click to expand...
I agree. more and more so.
Szymon Kurzacz said:
Look at Kinshasa in Congo. According to wiki, Kinshasa is 3rd biggest city in africa
Click to expand...
Would be a good place, strategically! I remember the scenery from one of the fsp world tours, and it wasn't very spectacular, to say the least, though ....
Tobias Niederhauser said:
And I do think, that it is a factor for opening a hub at someplace
Click to expand...
Agree. A hub is something you visit quite often. Without a decent scenery, there's not much fun ;)
Rafal Bardel said:
I belive the purpose of Airchild VA justifies for two hubs in Africa
Click to expand...
I believe too! Personally, I'm attracted by DGAA and FACT

I will meet with Norbert on Thursday and think we will work out a final poll for next weekend. Keep on posting until then
:yes:
 
Here's a link to my (pretty old) photo diary of World Tour leg FACT-FAJS.
http://www.vademo.com:8080/world-tour/leg89.php
Both sceneries are freeware, and FACT (including harbour and table mountain) isn't that bad, I think. There's also good payware scenery for both of them.
 
Well, I hear what you are saying - however I don't think a lot of pilots wants to fly all the way to FA* on a regular basis, nice scenery or not.

But perhaps somewhere in our midst is found a scenery designer, who simply cant wait to make a decent scenery (perhaps even with AirChild Hangars with signs etc) somewhere in Africa- AirChild Airport - wouldn't that be something? 8)
 
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