Last synced from the pilot handbook · August 2026
The one rule
Respect others. That is the rule the whole airline rests on, and the one that never bends.
There are no caste systems here. No gatekeeping over aircraft knowledge, no scoreboard of real-world credentials, no treating rank as status. Rank exists so the operation has structure, nothing more. A pilot who has flown for twenty years and a pilot who soloed last month are owed the same respect, and owe it back.
Respect governs how we treat each other. It is not the only thing we ask. Flying with us also means showing up, logging your flights honestly, and meeting the hour requirement, and those commitments live in the sections that follow. The difference is in how we respond. Break the respect rule and you will not stay. Fall short on the rest and we work through it with you.
Accessibility comes first
We are an accessibility-first community, and many of our pilots are neurodivergent. This shapes how we run, not as an afterthought but as a starting point. If something about how we operate is a barrier for you, tell us. We would rather change how we do a thing than lose a good pilot to a fixable problem.
No one is ever required to disclose anything to fly here. The door to accommodation is simply always open.
What comes standard
Some of what other virtual airlines treat as an accommodation, we just build in from the start. No one has to ask for these.
- Health and maintenance enforcement is off. Nothing grounds an airplane automatically. Treat your aircraft kindly, but you cannot break it by accident.
- Our minimums are the lowest we know of on this side of the Mississippi. We cannot prove that, but we have not found anyone lower yet.
- Social requirements stay light. Show up when you can, check in on Discord once a month, and that covers it.
- Promotion runs strictly on flight hours logged. No evaluation flights, no politics, no favorites.
- Endorsements stay low-barrier all the way up, Captain and Cascade Heavy included. Fly the requirement, log it honestly, done.
- The rank ladder goes all the way up. Executive Captain sits at the top today, currently just one person, but a C-suite built from pilots who want to grow into it is very much on the table.
Who we are for
We are a regional carrier for sim pilots who want something that feels real. Structured enough to mean something, relaxed enough to be fun. We are not a beginner-only VA, and we are not here to impress real-world aviators. Pilots of every skill level are welcome, as long as the respect rule holds.
We are probably not the right home for pilots who want fighter missions or zero structure whatsoever. That is not a knock on anyone. It is just honest.
The world we fly in
Every airline operates somewhere. Ours operates in a world that was built on purpose, and it helps to understand it before your first flight. Physics is real here, but it does not punish you. The work is real. The stakes are not.
Physics still applies. A stall is still a stall and a bad approach is still a bad approach, and learning to fly an airplane well is the whole point of being here. What does not happen is the part where a mistake costs you something you cannot get back. You can go around as many times as you need and taxi in with your dignity intact.
Our passengers are easy to carry. The people in the back are patient and glad to be aboard. No one is timing your taxi or filing a complaint about the bump on rollout.
In-air incidents resolve themselves. If something goes sideways in flight, you can assume the crew handled it professionally and the situation is already behind you. You do not have to script an emergency to belong here. The flying is enough.
ATC will always clear you. Weather does not ground us, and the clearance is always waiting when you want it. If you would rather sit out a storm for the realism of it, that choice is yours, but the sky is never closed to you.
A certificate here is a strange and wonderful thing. Hold a pilot certificate with Cascade and you simply know how to fly whatever you choose to fly. Step out of a single-engine turboprop in the morning and into a narrowbody jet that afternoon, and your hands already know the airplane. There are no type ratings to grind and no gatekeeping over who is allowed in which seat.
Everything makes sense, until sense would break the spell. We keep the world realistic wherever realism makes the flying better, and we let it go wherever realism would only get in the way.
Realism with us is a thing you reach for, on the days you want it, at the depth you want it. It is never something the operation clamps onto you. That is the whole design.
Joining: the hour requirement
To join, we ask for 60 hours of sim time and a short application.
This is not a skill gate. We do not care whether those hours are pretty. The requirement exists so we know a pilot is genuinely devoted to the hobby rather than passing through. Joining CAT costs nothing, and it never will. The only thing we ask of you is your time. Air Blue Ridge is our sister airline for pilots who want payware-forward equipment, live-ATC requirements, maintenance, economy, and a tighter operating standard. Neither airline outranks the other; they are built for different pilots and different moods.
The 60 hours runs on the honor system. We hold an application until a pilot reaches the number, and we are trusting them to tell us the truth about where they stand. If someone is not there yet, we would rather know than have them pad the count.
If we turn an application down for any reason short of a respect violation, that pilot is welcome to apply again once. Two honest tries is enough for anybody, and we do not hold a first miss against a second attempt.
Sims and aircraft
Our home sim is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 remains fully supported. Other civilian flight simulators are welcome too, including free ones, as long as they can report the flight through FlightLinq. The only platform we do not build around is DCS.
Our fleet is fixed, but not frozen. We fly the aircraft currently assigned in FlightLinq, and new types can be added when they fit the network. Because Cascade does not run an aircraft economy, expanding the fleet does not create a purchase or maintenance burden for the airline.
Aircraft access is tied to rank. PPL pilots fly our turboprops, the PC-12 and Cessna 208B, while they build their hours with us. First Officer through Senior Captain get everything in the active fleet except the widebodies. Chief Pilot, Executive Captain, and anyone holding the Cascade Heavy endorsement have the whole fleet open to them, heavies included.
Every route offers at least one aircraft that is free, whether that is a base-sim aircraft or a quality freeware option. No pilot is ever forced to buy payware to fly a route they are cleared for. We do not require any particular airport add-ons either.
How flying is tracked
All active flying is tracked through FlightLinq. It is our single source of truth for what gets flown.
Flying on the record is the point. FlightLinq logs the rough flights alongside the clean ones, and that is by design. A hard landing that gets logged honestly is worth more to us than a perfect flight that never happened.
Air traffic control through SayIntentions is encouraged and adds a lot to the experience, but it is not a requirement to fly with us. Using a different ATC utility, such as BeyondATC or even MSFS default ATC, is allowed, but our instructions and policies may not be the same for pilots that do not use SayIntentions.
Discord is the office
Discord is where the airline actually lives. Interviews, the pilot lounge, and day-to-day hangout all happen there. The respect rule applies in the office exactly as it applies in the cockpit.
Life comes first
Showing up here matters. We are not a VA where you can vanish for a year and expect your seat warm. But we are also not a VA that punishes pilots when life gets in the way. If you need to step back, tell us, and the door stays open.
We would rather have a pilot who flies honestly when they can than one who burns out trying to hit a quota.
The monthly minimum
FlightLinq enforces activity on its own, so we keep our number matched to what it actually checks. Three things, every month.
- One flight, logged honestly.
- Four hours of flight time. However you get there is fine.
- One check-in on Discord. Just enough that we know you are still around.
Miss the minimum and we reach out before anything else happens. Life comes first, always.
Recovering from a bad flight
Things go wrong in the cockpit. Systems get into strange states, approaches fall apart, landings get ugly. None of that is a problem here. Logging the flight anyway, learning from it, and flying again is exactly the kind of pilot we are built for. Quitting mid-flight every time something breaks is the only habit worth unlearning.
When it doesn't work out
We do not run a demotion ladder. If a pilot's conduct is bad enough to act on, we would rather work it out directly, and if it truly cannot be worked out, we part ways.
For most things short of a respect violation, we work on a three strikes basis. A quiet word first, a clearer one second, a decision on the third. Break the one rule and none of that applies. Respect violations do not get three strikes.
How we talk on the radio
We sound like calm, friendly people who happen to be flying airplanes. That is the whole policy, and the rest is detail. The goal is uniform phraseology across every Cascade flight, so a controller hears us once and knows the next Cascade call will sound the same.
We keep it short. Say what the controller or the other pilot needs, then stop. No filler, no narrating our own flight, no commentary nobody asked for.
We read the room. If another aircraft is busy, or someone is working a problem, the frequency is theirs and we wait.
We sign off the way a decent person would. "Thanks," "good day," "see ya," "later," "appreciate the help." Whatever fits the moment and gets the Cascade callsign out cleanly.
Every aircraft flies under its Cascade flight callsign. How we say numbers depends on who is listening. VATSIM and live human ATC expect digit-by-digit, so a flight number there goes out as "Cascade One Zero." SayIntentions parses common pronunciation instead, so there we group the numbers, "Cascade Three Eleven," not "Cascade Three One One."
A full flight, example: Cascade 612 out of Spokane
We do not read back wind or headings on takeoff clearance. The one exception is wind that sounds ridiculous, like gusting 35, which we read back so we both know we heard it. The arrival mirrors this in reverse, with descent callouts and full check-ins the same way.
This is the house style. If a controller tightens up, or we move to a network like VATSIM where the standard is stricter, we tighten with them. The point of keeping it uniform is so that wherever we fly, we sound like one airline.
When the radio goes quiet
Lost comms happen, usually a dropped connection or a frequency typo. If you cannot raise anyone, squawk 7600, keep flying your last clearance or your filed flight plan, and try the frequency again every minute or so. If you still have not reached anyone by the point you would normally be handed off, move to the next expected frequency and try there instead. Land using the published procedure for the runway in use, and once you are back in contact, stay off the controller's back, they saw the squawk and know what happened.
A real emergency gets a real response. Say "mayday" and give souls on board if something is genuinely going wrong, and ATC on SayIntentions treats it as real and dispatches emergency vehicles in-sim.
Cascade Heavy
Cascade Heavy is our megabus. It is an optional track for pilots who want to fly the big widebodies on a busy corridor, and it means nothing beyond itself. It does not change your rank, it does not unlock anything else, and skipping it costs you nothing.
The track runs the KGEG and KPDX corridors into KSLC, on our 9000-series flight numbers. Anything in the 9000s is a Cascade Heavy run.
The fleet for the track is a widebody class, not a fixed list of airframes, kept current on FlightLinq. There is always at least one free way into the class. No one is ever required to buy anything to fly Cascade Heavy.
To earn the track, a pilot reaches Captain, then flies one qualifying heavy run on the corridor, logged on FlightLinq. That is the whole requirement. No written test, no quiz on systems. Once earned, the heavy endorsement is yours for good, with no currency check and nothing to keep renewing.
The landing on a qualifying flight needs to clear FlightLinq's red tier. Rough is fine. Ugly is fine. Red is the one we ask you to try again for.
The endorsement sits beside the rank ladder rather than on it. A pilot who holds it does not outrank a Senior Captain who never wanted it.
Flying the heavy
Qualifying for the endorsement only happens one way. Fly the KGEG or KPDX corridor into KSLC, either direction, and clear FlightLinq's red tier on the landing. Every qualifying flight gets a manual look from us rather than an automatic pass.
Once you hold the endorsement, a set of routes are yours to fly as part of the normal rotation. KGEG to KSLC is one. Any seasonal heavy route, like the KGEG to KGJT summer and winter block, is another. These are career routes, no extra justification needed.
Flying a heavy without the endorsement gets the PIREP rejected. We will point you at the qualifying run and ask you to take it.
Taking a heavy somewhere off the career list, just because you want to fly a heavy there, is allowed, and it is honestly a little fun. Put a reason in the flight notes. We will take almost anything, and we mean that.
This handbook is a living document. As the airline grows, the policies here will grow with it, and we will keep saying plainly what has changed.