What a tour is
A tour is a numbered series of scheduled flights that belong together. The legs are ordinary flights from the network schedule: you book them, dispatch them and file them exactly as you would any other flight. What makes them a tour is the tour code they share and the leg number each one carries.
Tours are listed on the Tours page in the main menu. Each one shows its difficulty, how many legs it has, the total distance, and the dates it runs between.
The three groups
- Airline Spotlight: a single carrier's real route network, hub to hub.
- World Explorer: region-hopping journeys across continents, coasts and islands.
- Special & Challenge: themed and skill-testing tours for seasoned pilots.
The legs are flown in order
This is the part that catches pilots out. Legs are numbered from 1 upward and must be flown in that order.
Completion is worked out by comparing the tour reports you have filed, in the order you filed them, against the leg numbers. Leg 1 has to be the first tour report you file, leg 2 the second, and so on. File leg 3 before leg 2 and the sequence no longer lines up, so the tour will not complete even once you have flown every leg on the list.
Two things follow from that, and both are worth knowing before you start:
- Fly each leg once. A second report for a leg you have already flown takes its own place in the sequence and pushes everything after it out of step.
- Going back for a leg you skipped does not repair the order, because the reports you filed earlier stay where they are in the sequence.
If the order has gone wrong, write to occ@jetstreamvirtual.com with the tour and the flights concerned. Staff can detach a report from the tour, which lifts it out of the sequence so you can fly that leg again cleanly. The flight itself is untouched: your hours, pay and statistics stay exactly as they were, and only the link to the tour is removed.
What counts as a flown leg
- The report has to be accepted. One still waiting on review, or one that was rejected, does not count yet.
- It has to be filed while the tour is running, between the start and end dates shown on the tour.
- It has to match the leg: the same departure airport, the same arrival airport and the same leg number.
- On an Airline Spotlight tour, the leg has to be flown with that airline. The same city pair flown under another carrier does not count toward it.
- A few tours set their own dates on individual legs. Where that is used, the leg counts only if it is flown inside its own window.
Because acceptance is what counts, a leg you fly today may not show as complete until the report has been reviewed.
Following your progress
Open any tour and the page shows Your Progress with the legs you have flown so far, and You are at, which names the next leg in the sequence. Legs already flown are marked off against the route, so you can see at a glance where you stopped. The page also lists the pilots who have finished the tour.
The badge at the end
Every tour has its own badge. It is awarded automatically once the final leg has been accepted, it appears on your profile alongside your other awards, and the completion is recorded on the tour page under your name.
Tours run for a fixed period. Once a tour has ended its legs stop counting toward it, so a tour you are part way through is worth finishing before its end date.