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No. VELA is a virtual airline: a community of flight-simulation pilots who fly an airline timetable from Zurich in the simulator, following the procedures of a real airline.

VELA owns no aircraft, sells no tickets and carries no passengers or cargo, and it is not affiliated with any real-world airline. About VELA explains how it works.

Not to a real destination. What you can do is reserve a virtual seat on any flight in the timetable, choose where you sit and receive a boarding pass in your browser. The pass is a keepsake, not a travel document, and it is not valid at any airport.

If you would rather sit at the very front: our flights are flown by pilots in the simulator, and new colleagues are welcome. See Careers.

Nothing. A booking reserves a virtual seat. There are no fares, no fees and no payment step, and you are never asked for card details.

1. Open the flight search and enter where you are travelling from and to.
2. Find your flight in the results and choose “Select seat”.
3. Pick your travel date and a seat on the seat map. Seats that are already taken are marked.
4. Enter the name for the boarding pass and confirm. The boarding pass opens straight away.

The whole booking runs in the browser. You need neither an account nor an app.

Every flight can be booked for its next eight departures. Each flight number operates once a week, so that is about eight weeks ahead. On the day of travel, a flight remains bookable until its scheduled departure time.

Any seat that is still free. The front rows are Business, where the middle seat always stays empty. Economy follows with three seats on either side of the aisle, and the rows at the emergency exits offer extra legroom. On board shows the cabin of each aircraft type row by row.

A booking cannot be edited once it is confirmed. If you would like a different seat or another date, simply book again: the new booking comes with its own boarding pass and booking reference. There is nothing to cancel and nothing to pay, although the seat you chose first stays reserved.

It opens as soon as you confirm the booking and has its own web address. Bookmark the page or save the link: there is no login and no search by name, so this address is the way back to your pass.

The pass shows the flight number, date, seat, gate, boarding time, departure and arrival times, aircraft type, your name and the booking reference, together with a QR code. Boarding begins 30 minutes before departure.

Yes. On an iPhone, open your boarding pass and choose “Add to Apple Wallet” beneath it. The page in your browser remains your boarding pass as well.

Only the name you enter for the boarding pass. A booking needs no account, no e-mail address and no payment details. Our privacy policy describes how data is handled across the website.

To 23 destinations in 13 countries and territories, all of them served from Zurich, with 405 flights a week. Destinations introduces each of them.

The schedule repeats every week, and not every route is flown every day. The timetable lists each flight with its days of operation.

Yes. Every time on this website is the local time at the airport concerned, as it would be on an airport display. Flight times are measured from gate to gate and take the time difference into account. Flight VE4202, for example, leaves Zurich at 06:10 and lands in Lanzarote at 09:05 local time after a flight of 3 h 55 min: Lanzarote is one hour behind Zurich.

Flight status is the departures and arrivals board for our flights, for any day of the week. You can narrow it down by flight number or by city.

For today, the board follows the clock of the airport: a flight is shown as scheduled, boarding, departed or landed according to the timetable. It reflects the published schedule and does not track individual aircraft.

La Palma is flown as a triangle: from Zurich to Tenerife South, a short onward flight of 45 min across to La Palma, and from there nonstop back to Zurich. On the way out you therefore travel on two flights, with 50 min between them in Tenerife and 5 h 45 min from departure to arrival.

The flight search shows both flights as one journey, and you choose a seat on each of them. The return flight does not stop and takes 4 h 10 min. The service operates on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The aircraft type is shown with every flight in the flight search and is printed on your boarding pass. All VELA flights are operated by the Airbus A319, A320 or A321. The fleet pages describe each type and its cabin.

Flight-simulation pilots who know the Airbus A320 family well and want to fly it the way an airline does: to a timetable, with a flight plan for every flight, and on VATSIM, the online network where volunteer air traffic controllers handle simulated traffic in real time.

Applicants are at least 16 years old and have already flown the A320 family at another virtual airline. Careers describes the positions and the selection.

• A desktop flight simulator with a study-level Airbus A320, meaning one that models the aircraft systems in depth.
• A VATSIM account in good standing.
• A SimBrief account, the planning service our flight plans are prepared with.
• An iPad for our electronic flight bag, the app that holds your flight documents.
• Working radio English in standard phraseology.

The full requirements are listed on the careers page, and the application itself is online.

In Standards & conduct. It sets out how we fly and how we treat one another, on the network and within the community, and it applies to every VELA pilot from the first flight on.