(6)2 Years with you!
And these had been wonderful...
Yes, Adria airways would celebrate its 62's birthday this year. However, we started our story a bit later. It was evening on the 24th of January 2021. Months of preparations, years of planning and dreaming. And the time had come, the moment of big announcement. It was the moment of joy, and moment of relief at the same time. There were 2 of us, who handled it all - and handled it well!
vADR's stuff was lucky enough to operate in the environment of virtual simulation in a local aspect, full of profesional and collaborative enthusiasts, who provided tonns of information, skils and experience in the years before. vADR was built on the Virtual Adria roots, a predecessor, which had terminated its operations few years afore. When Adria Airways (RL) ceassed its operations in 2019, it gave us even bigger motivation to continue this story. With moto "Adria4Ever" in our minds, we pushed full thrust and dedicated lot of our free time to the project. There were years of trying with different approaches. Finally, we succeeded with one.
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"Being full of ideas, it was difficult to evaluate about the most appropriate approach sometimes. There were different opinions sometimes, but with time, we learned that what's important is to listen to eachother, to be patient and the good results will come" - vADR co-creator
Day of opening, 24th Jan 2021 - PhotoArchive vADR Fb
Early logo prototypes from 2019 - PhotoArchive vADR Fb
"Frankly, when I look back now to those early designs and ideas, I can say thet lots of them were a bit off. We needed time and experience of flying for other virutal airlines, to get the idea of what's appropriate and what's reasonable to implement. It was difficult to balance the input of realistic immersion on one hand, which has always been our priority, and listening to various wishes and try to accomodate as many as possible, on the other." - vADR co-creator
Full of various ideas, some were realized, some are still to be - PhotoArchive vADR Fb
In first two years of running, vADR has more or less been following it's planned path. Starting its operations in main hub at Ljubljana, the virtual airline sucessfully extended its operations to all other origina Adria's bases - Prishtina, Tirana and Lodz were oppened with summer schedules 2022, and Paderborn was added with winter ones for 2022-23. Beside that, our fleet also got bigger. With retro/memorial events in December 2021, Maddog has joined our charter-operations and is still available as such. Our Airbus fleet got new sharklets members in spring 2022, when vADR also introduced renewed livery. VAA, VAB and VAC were the first "sharkies" to join the team, followed by various dry-leased 319s and even 321s, being occasionaly operated.
Victor-Alpha-Alpha was the first sharklet with new vADR livery to join the fleet in March 2022 - source: vADR VirtualAirline Fb
Beyond "conquering" European cities via new bases, our base managers and coordinators kept interest of our clients on the top-flight level, by constantly arranging various unique attractive destinations. May it be from winter's snowy wonderlands, to hot summer-fever exotic strips in Africa or Cannaries. Frankly, our team never fails to amuse with their originality.
"When I commanded that first delivery flight, Toulouse-Ljubljana sector back in 2021 on the left seat of Alpha-Siera, I knew we're entering into something big, something amazing. Expectations were big and now, as I look back on these first two years, it was a bumpy, but joyful ride. I'm proud of our team and our results. We've managed to establish community of dedicated pilots, who enjoy to be part of the story." - vADR CEO
Yes, it's been a joyful and quiet bumpy ride, as the captain says. Stats and impresssions have proven that things are managed well. But let's leave the numbers, what counts, is the feedback of happy clients and pilots, who are aboard with us and who help us to develop and maintain this beautiful story, the story of once-and-forever great Adria Airways. Adria, which was a motivation for every single young Slovene aviation-fan, many of who have later succeded in real-world aviation as commercial pilots. But for those who haven't, here we are, vADR is there for you and with you, on every nautical mile from 2021 onwards!
vADR, Happy birthday and to many more!
-ADRIA4EVER
