Who are "vAMSYS Staff", and why are they in my VA?

[George Peppard]

I see strange members with a badge, who are they?

[George Peppard]

When browsing your VA's member list, or leaderboards, you may come across some members with a  badge.

This badge exists to help you identify genuine vAMSYS staff accounts, and provide some explanation about why you cannot perform certain actions to these accounts.

Who are ?

The vAMSYS team is made up of several sub-teams that perform different roles across the platform. The  badge is shown on the profiles of members of the team who have superuser access to the platform. Currently, this access is given to the vAMSYS platform development team, and the vAMSYS Community Support team.

Accounts bearing this badge may have a normal pilot ID, or they may have a strange-looking ID such as "RYR-George". No matter the pilot ID, only people with the  badge are vAMSYS platform superusers.

The vAMSYS team members act independent of any VA, and we never make decisions on behalf of your VA management team. We don't reinstate pilot accounts, maintain the VA in any way, or review PIREPs.

What is a superuser?

vAMSYS superusers have access to every page of every VA, and this extends to VDS (the route management area) and Orwell (the VA back office and management area). They also have access to Aeolus, which is the vAMSYS platform-wide administration panel, and contains details on airlines and users. When a superuser logs into a VA, the things they can see and do (pretty much) model that of the VA owner.

Some data needs an even higher level of permission to view or edit. If this is the case, then the data can only be seen or edited by a database admin (referred to in some places as a platform administrator, or a platform manager). Not all DB admins are , yet some  are platform administrators. There are currently only two members of the vAMSYS team with DB admin access. They can be contacted via the support desk if necessary.

vAMSYS team members only access your VA's data where there is a need to do so. They will never share the data with anyone outside the vAMSYS staff team. If vAMSYS team members choose to fly for your VA, they will fly as normal pilots do, will be subject to normal scoring and PIREP approval/rejection rules, and will not manually override decisions made by the automated system. If you would rather a team member did not fly for your VA, you can either contact them directly (e.g. via Discord or email), or you can raise a ticket with vAMSYS Customer Services.

Who are these strange accounts in my new VA?

Superusers are added to your VA when it is created so that they can automatically see and log in to the VA, for example to provide support or investigate a bug report. Superusers added to your VA will have the badge automatically too. It is not possible to remove a superuser from your VA - this is similar to how it is not possible to remove staff from a VA without removing their staff permissions first.

Can I become a superuser?

Superuser privileges are only granted if a member of the team's role requires them. We recruit members for these roles directly, so it is not possible to apply for these roles.