Platinum Airways Holds a Great Gig in the Sky

During the summer holidays, Platinum Airways will be holding a Great Gig in the Sky. In July and August, the Open Skies virtual airline will be visiting some of the greatest music festivals around the globe.

The Great Gig in the Sky, a track on Pink Floyd’s historic The Dark Side of the Moon album, is the best description for Platinum Airways’ summer holidays destination of the week series. For nine consecutive weeks, the Open Skies virtual airline will be transferring music revellers and roadie material from festival to festival. The first Gig is the world famous Roskilde Festival on Denmark’s Zealand Island that runs from 30 June to 7 July. This event is serviced by a double runway airfield, Roskilde Airport (EKRK). From there, we travel to TW Classic in Werchter, Belgium, a one day event on 13 July featuring The Boss and his E Street Band, Carlos Santana, Blondie, Keane and others. As Werchter is right under the final approach path to RWY25R, Brussels (EBBR) is the logical airport for this event. Gig # 3 is the Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg on Finger Lakes, NY, with Ithaca Tompkins Regional (KITH) as its feeder airport. From there, we travel to the Fuji Rock Festival held in the Naeba ski resort (and no longer at the foot of Mount Fuji). This means that we’ll fly into Narita (RJAA). We’ll cross into August with Lollapalooza in Chicago, IL. As we have already visited O’Hare in DOTW, we’ll make Midway Airport (KMDW) our destination. Our sixth Great Gig in the Sky is Way Out West, for which we need to travel east to Gothenburg, Sweden, to Gothenburg City Airport (ESGP). We cross the Atlantic again for the farewell party of the World Electronic Music Festival in Toronto, Ontario, which takes us to Toronto-Pearson International (CYYZ). As distance is no problem, we’re hopping over to Europe again, for the Hip Hop Kemp Festival in Hradec Kralowe in the Czech Republic from 22 to 24 August, and its airport (LKHK). We end our Great Gig in the Sky with an unusual festival: a full week’s Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Although a temporary airfield is set up at the festival site, we’ll have Reno-Tahoe International (KRNO) as our DOTW.

DOTW missions qualify for a 5% bonus if completed within the allotted time span. They come with charts, links to scenery files for FS9, FSX and X-Plane if available, and a selection of YouTube videos.

About Platinum Airways:
Keen to deliver on its mission to keep the fun in the hobby, Platinum Airways is probably the only virtual airline to combine an Open Skies policy, allowing its pilots to fly any mission of their choice with the aircraft of their choice at the time of their choice, with a strategic hub network. The carefully selected hubs, Newark (KEWR), Dallas-Fort Worth (KDFW), Vancouver (CYVR), Perth (YPPH) and Brussels (EBBR), should be attractive to a global membership. In addition, Platinum Airways offers its pilots an often cheeky Destination of the Week, Relief, Military and Cargo missions and a soon to be launched Flight Dispatch division. Sticking to the KISS principle (Keep It Straight and Simple), Platinum Airways hosts an active forum and a screenshot of the week competition, with the winner providing the main picture on its home page for the next week.

For more information, please visit www.platinumairways.org or mail info [at] platinumairways.org.