General

Before you fly...

Welcome to Dortmund! This small airport primarily hosts airline flights from or to Eastern European cities and also some holiday destinations. Among VFR pilots, it is a favorite due to the low levels of scheduled traffic and simple airport layout, but pilots need to be wary as Dortmund is located partially below the Köln/Düsseldorf TMA, Germany's most complex airspace.
Although the airport has a simple layout and low traffic levels on VATSIM, you should still prepare yourself thoroughly to keep it fun for everyone and avoid mistakes which might lead to delays for yourself and other users.

If you are new to VATSIM, Dortmund is a perfect airport to get started on the network. Controllers will almost always have enough spare capacity to answer questions or quickly explain a procedure to you. It rarely gets very busy, so making smaller mistakes will usually not have a negative impact on anybody else's experience on the network. When flying IFR, however, you may experience busier frequencies during departure and arrival and should already be experienced enough to be comfortable with these frequencies.

Parking position

Please make sure you choose an appropriate stand for your aircraft type.

Passenger flights use parking positions 0 thru 12.
General aviation aircraft park at stands B2 thru B6 or other positions on the elevated GAT in the West of the airport.

Stands 0 thru 4 require a pushback whereas stands 5 thru 12 are used as nose-out parking positions so outbounds don't need a pushback but inbounds require a push-in. Controllers are aware that not all simulators and/or sceneries support the required functionalities, but will generally assume that pilots are parked nose-out but unable for push-in.

Handoffs

When instructed to contact another controller, do so as soon as possible. This will avoid you having to stop moving or level off. Please do not hold your position to switch the frequency, keep moving on the ground!

Be aware that some frequencies in use might not be shown in the controller list of your pilot client, so it is important that you listen carefully to what ATC says.

Auto-handoff

Dortmund utilizes an auto-handoff procedure for IFR departures where Tower will not hand off outbounds to the approach controller. The current airborne frequency will always be noted in the ATIS.

Contact the airborne frequency immediately when airborne unless explicitly told to remain on Tower frequency.