Sup stalking is not really appropriate. Presuming we are asleep without cause is tantamount to guilty until proven innocent. If a user is not responding to controller calls, that is one thing, but looking for users on long trips and asking them for proof of life is annoying. 7+30 into an 8-hour flight in airspace without controllers does not mean I went to the bar or went to bed. Are the sups so bored that they need to go looking for trouble?
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They are doing their job. The Code of Conduct applies at all times. Have you been a SUP? Are you aware how many pilots leave their connections open for many, many hours after landing? And how many pilots are holding over their last waypoint or are paused at ToD, for hours? And how many pilots fly beyond their destination (last waypoint in the FMS), for hours? A lot!
Thereās no stalking, itās just monitoring active connections in excess of x hours and making sure someoneās actually there. All you need to reply is āI am here, have a nice day. And thanks a lot for donating your time for the network!ā.
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It should be about targeting the issues that impact the network users not the easiest to prove. They should try seeing who isnāt tuned to 122.800 perhaps.
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Concur
Why making an issue of being contacted by a SUP? Is that really that intimidating?
Checking if a pilot is tuned into 122.8 is not enough to check presence.
@861112 i donāt think that @935198 is complaining about the SUP intimidation! I could be wrong.
I was definitely not suggesting that radio frequency is a way to check presence, but perhaps a more suitable use of a SUP time and more beneficial to the actual network users.
I used to be a SUP for many years, I am aware of this. As a SUP you run on a thin line - especially on these attendance checks - because on one hand you want to catch sleepers and on the other you do not want āupsetā our honest members who operate their aircraft according to the rules.
I do not know about the current technology used by our SUPs, but back in the days we had a tool with a list of flights that got flagged for being online in excess of x hours (I think 6 or 8 hours), who were stationary in the air for more than a few minutes (suspected flight freeze function used) etcā¦
We then used our judgement what cases to attend to and only if nothing more urgent was happened, such as enquiries from ATCOs for unresponsive or misbehaving pilots.
Before contacting someone from the above mentioned list you would first have a quick look at the members activity on the day and if someone was operating his 4th sector in his 6 hour session, you would assume that the pilot was at his controls would skip him, we could even delete them from the list of flagged flights so no other SUP would have to spend time to check.
During my times I have seen pilots having āforgottenā to logout in excess of 8 or 10 hours, after landing. I would then lookup their history and see a history of this very same behaviour, just to accumulate hours for whatever statistic/logbook of them. This would earn them a stern warning by a SUP or even higher up. I usually left the longhaul guys to themselves, when they were in the middle of their flights within remote airspace.
The more interesting part was whether longhaulers would acutally start their descent in the area of the normal top of descent or if their addon aircraft would pause them automatically at ToD or if their LNAV would make them hold over the last waypoint or revert from āNAVā to āROLā and then keep on flying until running out of fuel.
And again: these kinds of flights usually get checked on only when thereās nothing more urgent going on.
I agree that a SUP should not check on a pilot who was 7.5 hours into a 8 hour flight, but wait a few more minutes and see whether he is acutally at the controls and perform the approach and landing.
So, to the OP: if you have such strong feelings about your case, send an email to the VP Supervisors and provide him with factual feedback so he can remind the SUPs to be a bit more considerate.
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@935198 As Andreas already mentioned, the code of conduct applies at all times. Supervisors are not ābored and looking for troubleā - there is always good reason behind spot checking connections which have been open for long periods of time. Thereās nothing worse for ATC than logging on and finding 50% of the pilots in their airspace are away from their keyboard. 1 message for a long haul flight isnāt what Iād consider āstalkingā.
@870618 ātargeting issues that impact the network usersā - Iād say weāre targeting the issue of people leaving their connection unattended which causes problems for ATC and in some cases, other pilots. Do you like flying through people who have set pause at top of descent at the start of a STAR at a busy airport? Iād imagine you probably donāt, and walloping someone at that stage is already too late because theyāve already caused problems for other users.
From my own personal experience as ATC Iāve seen a lot more people over the last few weeks using pause at top of descent, and flying overnight whilst theyāre sleeping resulting in them crashing into other people, or disrupting traffic going into busy airports.
I personally would prefer that pilots donāt leave themselves connected to the network for hours on end whilst not at their PC, so connection checks become unneccessary, but since people continue to do it, itās a neccessary step unfortunately.
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@810809 it is good to see that common sense is applied. Perhaps if the SUP group had a list of priorities to ātargetā which I hope they do already. A Pilot not responsive for 31min in not controlled airspace on a long haul in my view would be almost the last on the list of priorities.
For me, I see pilots not tuned to 122.800, pilots sitting on the ground for 10hrs, flights 100M past their FP destination still at cruise level, planes in extended circuits over the FP destination, and not getting any response to a .wallop as much higher priorities.
In this day, surely the system is able to be interrogated to see whether any text or voice transmission has been logged. Everything must be time stamped, PTT, and text.
We need you back in the SUP supervisor role to give some guidance.
It would generally be interesting to get a bit more information on how SUPs work. From an ATC perspective, I essentially never wallop anything except for unresponsive pilots (in this regard these check-ins with pilots who have been connected a long time hopefully already reduce the amount of wallops I have to send so the SUPs can concentrate more on other stuff) because either itās calm and I can simply help the pilot myself, explain how whatever they are supposed to do works, etc. (plus they are usually not going to cause problems for other pilots in this situation) or itās busy and the workload of having to deal with a SUP would most likely be higher than just dealing with a disruptive or incompetent pilot (and even if I do wallop someone in this situation, the airspace here in central Europe is so densely packed, by the time a SUP takes action, the aircraft will often be one or two sectors downstream causing problems for each of those controllers, significantly increasing their already high workload, ā¦).
I know VP SUP once said they donāt disclose the SUP SOP (I suppose they donāt want people to figure out ways how to outsmart the system), so I guess nothing will happen here, but it would certainly be useful to know what info should be in a wallop so SUPs donāt always have to ask follow up questions, can take action more quickly, etc.
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Nowadays as a ācustomerā of SUPs, I found them to be rather quick in taking action when the information provided to them included the following information:
- full callsign of the pilot in question
- approximate position in relation to an airport or other station and flight level
- nature of the problem
- action taken already, especially with a precise timestamp
- urgency of the case, potential short term hazards
For example
- BAW47C
- 20NM East of COA VOR, FL380
- unresponsive
- contacting requests sent 3 times at 1905z, 1910z and 1920z
- needs to descend soon to EGKK, otherwise he will arrive way too high and create issues in the active downstream London CTR and APP sectors, action sought for as soon as possible
This gives the SUPs as much information as possible and also the fact that you have been trying to get that pilot to respond for more than 15 minutes. When within active ATC-airspace, pilots do not get 30 minutes response time, but merely minutes.
I found that usually this helps and SUPs take rather swift action and from my experience in 70% of cases those pilots get shaken up by SUPs and contact ATC. Only a few need to be booted off the servers.
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There is a Supervisor handbook with a hard set of rules (especially regarding data security and privacy) and guidance how to approach cases. I do NOT know the current version of these instructions, but I guess there will also be information of how to prioritize cases. Those longhaul attendance checks were - back in the days - at the bottom of the list.
Thanks for your trust, but I do not have the time and motivation to spend time on this. But I can tell you, that - at least from my experience - I usually have good responses from SUPs. Even when somebody reports me for flying around as D-ILDO 
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Sean, you also have to consider the precedent that is set by letting pilots consistently get away with leaving their connections unattended. What happens next time ATC is online and this pilot is non-responsive?
As for no response to wallops, thatās an unfortunate aspect of an all volunteer network. I can guarantee whilst supervisors are on, we are prioritising active wallops over checking pilots in uncontrolled airspace. In my personal experience, at least 66% of pilots Iāve contacted have been non-responsive. Imagine controlling and only one third of the aircraft in your sector are actually there.
We are enforcing the Code of Conduct equally. If youāre there, say youāre there, and thatās the end of the exchange. If youāre not, then this apparent āsup stalkingā might just be necessary.
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I do not believe we want SUP to stop checking, I certainly donāt. My concern is that I see so many code violations that I think targeting should be much easier and given a priority.
We need SUP and more of them.
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Easy fix. Ban all unattended long hauls. Then the āsupsā can move on to more important things.
Option two. Institute a ādead mans switchā into all VATSIM clients, and if a pilot doesnāt respond to an automatically random generated alert every 30 to 45 minutes, then they get automatically disconnected.
So, how āeasyā is it to āban all unattended long haulsā? How would you detect an āunattended long haulā? The only viable solution would be the ādead man switchā that you have mentioned in your second paragraph.
It is much easier, in my opinion: āunattended long haulsā are not really an issue, as long as those pilots are aware of their route and the probability of ATC being active along it. If they do not return to their cockpits in time or do not react to ATC contact requests, then they need to be booted off the network quicker. In theory pilots can be disconnected from VATSIM within minutes after not reacting to ATC requests, the current CoC covers this clearly. SUPs usually allow a few more minutes for pilots to āfinish their choresā, or whatever they are (not) doing at their places.
To sum it up: unattended connections in remote and inactive airspace are not the end of the world. Unattended connections and inattentive pilots in busy, active airspace are a problem and must be dealt with in good time. I feel that our SUPs do this quite well, when there are enough of them online.
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Gotchaā¦so apply a double standard. Follow the CoC when itās convenient, and in an arbitrary manner. 
Thatās about the most VATSIMY thing Iāve read in a while.
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Maybe you should read the CoC: outside active ATC airspace you can leave your cockpit unattended for up to 30 minutes at a time.
Within active ATC airspace you may not leave your cockpit unattended at any time, unless it has been approved by ATC.
But anyhow, you are one of those characters who enjoy twisting words, but thatās your problem, not mine.
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Iām not sure how this became a double standard. Rules are for the guidance of wise men and strict compliance of fools. Policy, rules etc are guidance for how the organisation is intended to operate. My reading of what has been said so far is that there should be some priority put into things.
I was a naive traffic cop for 15yrs, and believed in what I was doing, until I saw how society is changing. Why have traffic police when there is more important chickens to catch.
VATSIM code of conduct is clear, and I donāt believe anyone is asking for double standards in my reading of the posts.
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The Code of Conduct, under section B Pilot Conduct, states āB3(b)** If it becomes necessary to leave a pilot connection unattended, the account holder is encouraged to disconnect from the network. Notwithstanding anything in this Code to the contrary, no pilot connection is permitted to be unattended for a period of longer than 30 minutes.ā