In the very, very early 1990's, I was on Prodigy, then later AOL. We were teens with lots of free time and being completely obsessed with Flight Simulator and a

In the very, very early 1990's, I was on Prodigy, then later AOL. We were teens with lots of free time and being completely obsessed with Flight Simulator and aviation in general. One kid, Geoff, decided it would be fun to start a make believe airline. So, he was the "CEO" or whatever, and as I had extensive experiencing fiddling with aircraft "designs" in flight sim, I became the official aircraft designer. I think there were 3 or 4 of us, on the entire online community, doing this stuff at the time. It quickly spread and got gained members, and eventually split into two over the usual online quibbles. I am still amazed at the online virtual airline community and what's grown around it such as vatsim. It's one of the few things that I can say "I was there at the beginning!", and I'm super proud of it.