GETTING STARTED
Your first flight, start to finish
From signing up to a graded sector in your logbook: what you install, what you do once and never again, and what happens the first time you push back.
This is the whole path from nothing to a graded sector on the record. It takes an evening, and most of it is done once and never again.
Join, and pick where you live
Sign up, choose the city you want to wake up in, and the airline posts you there. Your base is where your flying is drawn from, so it is worth a moment’s thought: a base of short coastal hops and a base of long trunk sectors produce very different months, even though both are drawn to the same hours.
You confirm the address by email, and the account exists.
Redeem the key
Career Mode is unlocked by a licence key, redeemed once against your account. The key is single use and binds to the pilot who redeems it, so sharing one does nothing.
What is licensed is the account, not the download. We do not protect the installer — an application like this unpacks in one command, and any secret compiled into it is not a secret. The server is the part nobody can copy, so a pilot without a licence can install everything and still not be paid for a sector.
Install the recorder
The SkyHub Companion App is a small Windows application that watches your simulator while you fly. Download it from your crew profile and install it.
One honest warning: the installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows may show a SmartScreen notice the first time you run it. That is a certificate we have not bought, not a judgement about the file.
It reads your simulator and writes nothing back to it. Which simulators and which aircraft it works with is its own briefing.
The joining checklist
The portal walks you through the things that have to exist before a sector can be flown: create your pairing token, take your first roster, get a uniform, sign the contract, and file a flight plan in the Operations Management Centre.
None of those are ticked off by hand. Each one is a question the portal asks about the state of your account when the page loads — a roster exists or it does not, a contract is on file or it is not — so the list is always right, and it repairs itself if you undo something.
Then fly it
Pick a sector off your sheet and file the plan for it. The Operations Management Centre builds a real operational flight plan for that leg: routing, winds, fuel, weights and a navigation log. It is included, and it is yours to fly by.
Start the recorder, load the simulator at your departure stand, and wait for the Inflight Management Panel to see the aeroplane. Then press Boarding.
That press is the one thing on this page you cannot skip. It is what starts the sector: the recording, the clock and the block time all begin there, and until you press it the panel says STANDBY and nothing is being kept. It is the same button that deboards your passengers and files the flight at the other end — one control, both ends of the sector.
After that, nothing else is asked of you during the flight. When it ends, the client files the sector, the server grades it from the recorded track, and the logbook fills itself in — hours, the grade, and what it paid.
That entry is final and cannot be amended. It is also the first hour of the hundred and sixty you need for a command.
If something goes wrong
The recorder carries a diagnostic capture, and it is the fastest route to an answer: it says which value your simulator or add-on reported differently, which is usually a small fix rather than a mystery.
The one failure worth knowing about in advance is losing your connection to us mid-flight. The airline pays for sectors it watched happen, so a flight we could not see is a flight we cannot pay for. It is the strictest rule in the product, and it is there so nobody has to wonder whether the pilot above them on the board flew it.