Crews,

We've "officially" been underway now for few weeks and just wanted to post a message addressing a few items and my opinions on the current state of MidCon.

First, a big THANKS needs to go to Jeff Stewart for investing a considerable amount of time and money into ensuring we had a functional website again so that MidCon could grow into a new operation.

Secondly, I know many of you have had some issues with VAFS, but it appears that fixes are underway to correct these items.

Lastly, I want to address some issues I feel we have with our operations in general. The first and biggest issue is our flight dispatch program and release procedures. After having used the Flight Operations Center (hereafter referred to as FOC) program for the last several months, I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not liking it very much, and it's causing us considerable limitation. My primary complaint with it is that it's centered primarily around European/JAR rules vs. US/FAA. I'm finding it a little hard to stomach advertising that we're "FAR 121 compliant" when our release products aren't. Secondly, since this system is not web-based it's really putting a damper on when I can get releases out, and that's directly affecting our operating efficiency.

After some discussion I think the solution is going to be to discontinue the use of FOC as our flight planning system. I've been in contact with a friend and former MCA pilot who is pretty handy with programming. The intent is to develop another in-house system that at least complies with basic FAR 121 flight release requirements. The sacrifice here is that it will likely NOT include some bells and whistles like a detailed long form nav plan, but again, would be a product that I could feel a little better about distributing to you, the line pilot.
Another advantage to having our own system is that we can distribute the program to others that are interested in flight dispatch.

For as much as this goes against the spirit of what we've always done at MCA, we're likely going to revert back and allow some "free flight" at MCA in order to keep you guys flying and operations going until such time as the new flight planning system is ready to go.

That's about all the news we have at this point. Stay tuned and we'll advise (most likely very soon) when we decide to shut off FOC.

M. Collier