[Oct 27 10-23z] Cross The Pond Eastbound 2018

[Gunnar Lindahl]

 

Cross the Pond Eastbound 2018

 

On Saturday 27th October 2018, VATSIM is excited to bring you the latest edition of Cross The Pond!

 

Cross The Pond has been a bi-annual tradition on VATSIM for well over 10 years. The eastbound edition sees pilots depart a selection of airports in North America and fly transatlantic to European destinations. Full ATC, including Oceanic, is provided throughout. All our recent connection records have been broken during Cross The Pond, making it VATSIM’s busiest regular event.

 

Departure slots will be available between 1100z and 1500z from the following airports:-

 

John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK/KJFK)

Logan International Airport (BOS/KBOS)

Denver International Airport (DEN/KDEN)*

Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ/CYYZ)

Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD/KIAD)

 

* Departures slots from Denver will run from 1000z to 1300z due to the increased distance.

 

We will be landing aircraft across the evening in Europe at the following airports:-

 

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS/EHAM)

Frankfurt Airport (FRA/EDDF)

Manchester Airport (MAN/EGCC)

Zurich Airport (ZRH/LSZH)

 

We’re excited to welcome a new airfield to this event, giving pilots opportunities to partake in this event in a new and hopefully enjoyable way. Over 500 slots will be made available, with bookings opening on Saturday 20th October at 1700z at the new Cross The Pond website. While you’re waiting, the site contains plenty of information, including FAQs, if you are new to this event, or if you need to brush up on your Oceanic procedures!

 

We are looking forward to another enjoyable event and thank the partner airports, ACCs/ARTCCs and divisions for their hard work.

 

See you in the skies!

 

On behalf of the CTP Planning Team

[Patrick Weineis]

Just to confirm, only 4 Destination?

Aren't there normaly 5 to 6?

[Alessandro Buscaglione]

I'm also curious as to why only 4 arrivals have been chosen

[Andre Almeida]

Hello Gunnar,

 

Event has been added to VATSIM event calendar: https://www.vatsim.net/events/cross-pond-eastbound-2018 .

[Gordon Zhu 1182053]

Hi Gunner,

Could you please confirm only 4 destinations were selected in this event?

[Eric Dziura]

Gunnar,

 

Thanks for all your contributions to VATSIM and this event.

 

I have requested this before and never received a reply. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more...

 

Could you please publish a briefing guide for how to use the booking page? I'm tired of flailing about trying to figure out where to click for the departure/arrival airports and times I'd like as the slots rapidly disappear. Very frustrating.

 

If you need help putting this together, I'd gladly offer my [Mod - Happy Thoughts]istance.

 

Thank you.

[Ryan Geckler]

Only 4 destinations have been selected for the event.

 

The booking system this year is entirely new, so hopefully these issues don't occur.

[Sergejs Jakubovskis]

Again the same Airports.. Nothing new....

[Riyad McCollin]

Is Heathrow or Gatwick going to be one set standard fields? As was true with last year?

If so, would you be able to vote on it?

[Don Desfosse]

Again the same Airports.. Nothing new....

Denver as a departure airport is most certainly new.

 

Each year some few people complain about "same airports". However, the "same airports" submit their applications, are verified to have enough space for the event aircraft and enough controllers to work the event (although there were a few new ones this time also!), and are voted upon by US, the membership. It is US, the membership, that votes on the "same airports". So please don't complain to the CTP committee about "same airports". WE are VATSIM, and WE do it to ourselves.... If WE feel it is an issue worth changing, then WE should become controllers, increase the staffing and popularity of other airports and make them more interesting and exciting for US to vote on...

[Ryan Geckler]

Most of the airports that won, especially on the arrival side, won by very large margins. Clearly, people do want to continue to fly to these places.

[Eric Dziura]

Ryan,

 

Thank you for responding to my post, and thank you for all your effort. You wrote

 

The booking system this year is entirely new, so hopefully these issues don't occur.

 

This is good to hear, but I am still of the opinion that there should be a guide to how to use the new site before having to do it in the heat of battle, so to speak.

 

Thanks again.

[Matteo Gosnell]

Good evening, Gunnar.

May i ask you why only four airports have been chose? It would be nice if we can push Rome, LIRF into the arrival list so we reach 5 airports departing and arriving. (seeing the amount of effort we did this year in our division)!

 

Looking forward to your reply.

With kind regards.

-Matt

[Alessandro Buscaglione]

Good evening, Gunnar.

May i ask you why only four airports have been chose? It would be nice if we can push Rome, LIRF into the arrival list so we reach 5 airports departing and arriving. (seeing the amount of effort we did this year in our division)!

 

Looking forward to your reply.

With kind regards.

-Matt

 

It is not up to Gunnar to decide which airports participate. They are voted by the VATSIM community, and if the majority wish to fly to the same 4 airports each time there is not much we can do about it now.

[John McLaughlin 927319]

Lets do this!!!

[Zachary Jaglo 1322646]

Three minutes

[Zachary Jaglo 1322646]

I tried to get a slot but when I entered my flight number in it just redirected to home page and now bookings arent visible to me anymore

[Matthew Cianfarani]

I just watched ~60% of all slots go in 3 minutes

 

Give the system a few more to catch up

[Zachary Jaglo 1322646]

rip I think the site is down now

[Matthew Cianfarani]

rip I think the site is down now

 

Negative, I'm in - So are others

Still watching bookings fly through

[Zachary Jaglo 1322646]

Maybe its just logins.

I tried logging out and going to log back in to see if I could see the bookings tab anymore and now it won't let me, rip.

I'll just wait for the sites traffic to die down to see whats going on.

[Matthew Cianfarani]

~140 slots left

[Matthew Cianfarani]

~125 left

[Christopher Spencer 102404]

Can't log in to the CTP website here. The login page just returns 500.

[Zachary Jaglo 1322646]

Same, 500. It did let me try to log in just now but gave me a 503.