Chapter 9 of 10
Awards, seasons and goals
Three kinds of recognition — and two of them come with money
Recognition comes in three kinds, and they are worth keeping apart: awards are badges for personal milestones, seasons are quarterly competitions with prizes, and community goals are one shared monthly task that pays everyone who took part.
Pilot awards
Twenty-two badges. They are granted automatically the moment a flight report is accepted; they cannot be requested or bought.
- Milestones — first flight, then 10, 50, 100 and 500 flights; 100, 500 and 1,000 hours logged.
- Landings — a smooth touchdown (between 20 and 150 fpm) and five of them in a row.
- Skill — a perfect flight (grade A with a score of 95 or more) and ten A-grade flights.
- Exploration — a leg beyond 5,000 km, 10, 25 and 50 distinct airports, 5 and 10 distinct types.
Seasons
A season is a calendar quarter, and it closes itself on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October. Pilots are ranked by hours flown in the quarter, airlines by passengers carried. The top three take the prizes.
Community goals
Once a month the whole platform shares one task: carry so many passengers, fly so many flights, log so many hours or kilometres. The bar is taken from what the community actually did last month, plus 15% — so it competes against itself.
The contribution threshold is low — three flights or three hours in the month, for instance. It filters out people who dropped in for a minute, not regular pilots. If the goal is missed, nobody is paid.