Restructure?

[Andy Hatcher]

As opposed to closing the VA, I've been giving some serious thought to completely restructuring the VA from the ground up. What I have in mind is starting over strictly regional at first, create some sort of career database that would track hours, pay, vacation, and so on. What I can't decide on is whether to mix passenger and cargo service or just stick to one area. Also, would we stay charter-based or would we try to establish routes? Just some ideas I'm throwing around. There are so many VA's in operation today that it's hard to come up with something original.

[Nick Baumer]

I do like that idea. I'm not sure about the mix between passengers and cargo, though.

[Randy Culp]

We/you could always keep one hub as a charter operation as well, and allow transfers between hubs if pilots get bored of schedules and/or want some more structure than charters.

Same thing with passenger/cargo.  Perhaps the charter hub could do both, but then have one cargo hub and one passenger hub as well?

But then...what do I know.
I'm still a relative newbie to this VA world....
 

Randy
 

[EGC230 John Fowler]

Andy,
What I'm thinking is instead of closing Hubs, that we go to something a little more along the lines of staff restructuring.  Instead of individual hub managers we go to regional managers.  The hubs would basically remain the same with pilots flying out of the main hubs.
The difference would be that the regional managers would also manage a number of regional hubs.  If you split the U.S. into 5 regions,
(Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, Southeast and Central).  Based on the Hubs that are already established, regional managers would be responsible for a number of different hubs within that region.
A regional managers would be in charge of setting up routes, and assignments and approving PIreps within their region.  A Flight Services Director would be responsible for setting up routes, assignments, and approving Pireps between regions.  This would allow free flights with some restrictions.  It would also allow routes, while keeping the special assignments alive.  It would also allow the cargo assignments to remain intact.
You would need to add a field in the Pirep section called Regional with the 5 regions to direct pireps to the right regional manager and one additional pick called IR for Inter regional to direct those Pireps to the Flight services Director.
One other thought that I have experimented with is to allow pilots to fly either the IVAO or VATSIM flight assignments.
I have one pilot who flies on IVAO and right now he is flying the 7 wonders tour in IVAO.  Not only is he my most active pilot but he
is really enjoying himself.  This is a win win for everyone.  It allows pilots to fly and receive double credit for their flights.  They receive credit from IVAO/VATSIM and from Eagle.  For these pilots it cuts down on the amount of time managers have to spend on thinking up and assigning assignments.  I have had several pilots fly assignments but they seem to lose interest fairly quickly.
I check my pilots by taking the number of miles, type of aircraft they are flying and checking the flight hours and fuel usage on my E6B
flight computer.  If they are close I will approve the pirep.  If they are way off (and I have a few) they either have to refly the assignment or they only get credit for the number of hours that the flight should have taken.
Anyway I realize that this is a rather long post but I wanted to throw it out there so that other could comment or possibly add their own ideas to what I have already come up with. 
For those that do not belong to either of the flight networks, you still have the option of routes and flight assignment.