Confluence Air CONFLUENCE AIRSPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS · KSUS
NEW PILOT

Your first flight.

From sign-up to a logged flight in an afternoon. Here's the whole path — eight steps from creating your account to filing your first report out of St. Louis. No entry test, free tools, and you can do it the same day.

  1. Register on the crew portal

    Create your account on the crew portal. You'll get a pilot ID and land straight on your dashboard. No entry test, no waiting on approval — you're a pilot the moment you register.

  2. Join the Discord

    Our Discord is where the community lives and where every flight posts in real time. Drop into the welcome channel and say hello — it's also the fastest place to get help on your first flight.

  3. Install smartCARS

    Our flight tracker is smartCARS — free. Download it for PC, Mac, or Linux from smartCARS Central. On first launch you can skip the TFDi login, then choose “With a community,” search Confluence Air, and sign in with the email and password from your crew portal account. It tracks your flight and files your report automatically — nothing else to buy.

  4. Plan with SimBrief (recommended)

    SimBrief is built into the portal. Generate a flight plan for your route and you'll get realistic fuel, routing, and payload for your aircraft. New to SimBrief? You can skip it for your very first flight and just fly — but it's worth setting up early.

  5. Choose how you'll fly

    Three ways, and all of them count: VATSIM for live human ATC, SayIntentions.AI for AI ATC any time of day, or fully offline on your own schedule.

    Flying SayIntentions? Open its Settings and select Confluence Air as your virtual airline. If you skip this one step, your callsign and the branded cabin announcements won't fire — nothing will recognize you as Confluence Air. It takes ten seconds and only has to be done once.

  6. Fly CFE100 — St. Louis to Chicago

    Your first leg is CFE100, KSUS → Chicago O'Hare (KORD) — about an hour in any of the CRJs. Bid it in the portal or load it straight into smartCARS, then fly it like the real thing: brief it, fly the procedures, talk to ATC if you're online.

  7. File your report

    When you park and end the flight in smartCARS, it files your PIREP automatically. It's accepted automatically too — the only thing that bounces a flight here is a landing harder than about 1,000 ft/min. No check flights, no waiting on a reviewer.

  8. You're a Founding Pilot

    That first accepted flight makes you one of our Founding Pilots — a permanent mark on your record reserved for the people who got in at the start. Your flight posts to Discord, your hours start counting toward your next rank, and you're on the line.

WHAT YOU NEED

You probably already have it.

A simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 or 2024, or X-Plane 12. X-Plane pilots are full members — we don't lock you out.

Free ACARS

smartCARS Community tracks your flight and files the report. No cost, no subscription.

The extras

A free SimBrief account for flight planning, and our Discord for the community. Both optional to start, both worth it.

Ready to fly the line?

Register, install smartCARS, and fly CFE100 out of St. Louis — you can do it today.

Register & fly CFE100