Dear VA Partners/Associates,
we have just published our updated VA Partner Policy, which will be in effect starting January 1st, 2023.
For the time being, these changes will only affect VATSIM Virtual Airline Partners, and will have no effect on VATSIM Virtual Airline Associates. VA Associates should expect similar changes for their respective policy in the near future, as we are working towards that as well. The current VA Associate Policy can be found here.
Most notable change in our policy update, is the Website Requirements. Starting January, Virtual Airline websites will be required to pass all traffic through the HTTPS protocol, instead of HTTP, which requires having an SSL certificate. Current partners and associates will have 6 months (or more as needed) to meet this requirement, and any new applicants will be required to meet it upon applying.
On this forum post, you will find most important changes written down below, and you can find the PDF document on the bottom that includes the full policy, that will be in effect starting January 1st, 2023, 0001z at Virtual Airlines Partner Policy.
3.2 Requirements.
Added:
3.2.9 Website requirements. In most cases, websites are used as gateways for pilots to interact with their VA accounts, which includes private data. We require all VAs to meet the following website requirements:
3.2.9.1 Websites are required to pass all traffic through the HTTPS protocol, instead of HTTP. This requires the website to have an SSL Certificate. Using an SSL Certificate on a website adds an extra layer of security and helps protect against attacks such as man-in-the-middle attacks, where an attacker intercepts and potentially modifies the data being transmitted between the client and server. It ensures that the data transmitted between the client and server is encrypted and cannot be intercepted by third parties. As a free alternative, we recommend using https://letsencrypt.org/.
Added:
Upon submitting an application, the applicant states that they are authorized to submit the application as a representative of the Virtual Airline in question.
Violating this term may result in disciplinary action against the applicant.VAs may be eligible to have the activity requirement waived, if their Virtual Airline has >80% of their total flights on VATSIM.
5.0 BENEFITS AND RIGHTS.
5.1 Benefits.Added:
5.1.7 Right to submit VA hosted events on our discord server, to have them publicized via VATSIM media, which includes advertising them on our events twitter, https://vatsim.net/events, and 700+ discord servers, including the official community server.
5.1.8 Right to submit up to 15 aircraft liveries to be included in the FS Live Traffic Liveries project. More information about FSLTL can be found here: https://www.fslivetrafficliveries.com
As always, any and all feedback is very valuable and appreciated.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding these changes, feel free to express yourself in the replies on the post, or on our Discord Server , where you can discuss the changes with us and other VA Staff Members. Alternatively, you may email a.dujmovic@vatsim.net or vpvas@vatsim.net.
Thank you for your time.
Policy URL: https://vats.im/vap
UPDATE: After going through provided feedback, we have decided to remove the subdomain/static ip requirements, and have decided only to keep the HTTPS (SSL) requirement from this policy update. The forum post has been edited, policy document replaced with the most up to date one, and the policy still goes live on the 1st of January, 2023.