swift and VAs - Virtual Airlines

The FSD protocol (which is used by VATSIM and other networks) transfers

• your callsign
• your aircraft ICAO designator
• your airline ICAO designator
• your model string (FsInn extension)
• your livery string (not standardized for VATSIM, hence pretty useless)

Unlike in real aviation there or some challenges regarding airlines

• there are VAs using the ICAO code of real airlines
• people fly ceased airlines (not possible in real world)
• people use wrong airline codes

All that can lead to ambiguous airline codes. Also VATSIM only uses 3 letter ICAO codes. So there is no chance to distinguish a virtual airline from a real airline.

swift however distinguishes VAs and real airlines. In your database we use a 4 letter airline code for VAs, but this works only from swift to swift.

Example:

If you want to add your VA to the swift database you can do so, see Change requests. These airlines will be recognized by swift clients. You can also add the airline name in the FP if you use other clients.

To create a mapping see this article.