In 2021, Stevens Virtual Airlines celebrated its 20th anniversary. Founded in 2001, the bare metal birds with the black tail and the black nose
circumnavigated the world countless times, pilots from many different nations carried the name through the flight simulation community.

But only a few knew, Stevens was not really started in 2001, actually it was in my head once I watched the Hollywood movie Airport 77 in
1977,where I, as a 12-year-old, was absolutely fascinated by the amazing Boeing 747 and the cool captain, played by the actor Jack Lemmon,
who piloted this big bird in leisure clothes, cool leather jacket just as we would ride a bicycle. Not only was this 747 aircraft impressive,
it was a private Jet! Owned by a businessman Mr. Phillip Stevens. His company was the Stevens Corporation, which name was burned in my
head from this very day on.

Airport ’77. The Stevens Corporation Boeing 747. Hollywood did not put too much effort in repainting the aircraft.
The paint scheme of American Airlines is good recognizable.

2 years later, I still couldn’t forget this movie, this gorgeous bare-metal 747 and the company name. I founded my own fantasy airline, and its
name was Stevens Corporation! Only 14 years old, I knew nobody could start an airline with a 747, so I tried to be as realistic as possible with
the knowledge I had these days, so I started with a Boeing 727-100, which I registered D-ASFA.

But without money I couldn’t start an airline. And by the way, where is the aircraft? Just in my head? Ok, I decided to buy a plastic model
from Revell, a Boeing 727-100 from Lufthansa. I assembled it, painted it in silver, painted the black nose and the black tail and put the LH
logo onto the tail, overpainted the LH bird with a yellow color and then printed the big “S” into the yellow circle. Then the company name
was printed the same way, with Letraset letters. Voila! The first Stevens bird was born. That was 1979. I started to write down rotations,
where the 727 would go. The base of Stevens was Hannover, Germany. Don’t ask me why I picked this town for an airline base. Little did
I know. The airline grew steadily. D-ASFB and FC followed and every time I expanded my fleet, the bird was bought as a Revell model, was
assembled and painted. My mother went crazy to see all these similar looking aircraft and screamed to stop it! After a short while, Stevens
held a proud fleet of 10 Boeing 727's and our house was packed with painted Stevens models. I was not finished with the 727's. Stevens
went big. I ordered DC10's which I loved even more than the 747. Of course, I went to town, bought a model of Lufthansa DC10, assembled
and painted it in Stevens colors. I spent all the money I had. Quickly, 10 DC10's filled up my room. My mother thought about giving me
away. From day 1, the color scheme was set. It must be bare metal, with the black tail and nose. Why did I choose this paint scheme? I
was inspired of course by the movie, the 747 wore bare metal, but also by the early Condor DC10's painted almost exactly like Stevens.
The bare metal was amazing, the black nose was a signature.

The shiny bare metal body. Polished, it looked just like a mirror. Love the nose, Condor later became my employer

Not only Stevens played a major role in my house. In my spare time, I built aircraft with LEGO. LEGO is a type of building-toy created
and made by The LEGO Group, a company from Denmark. LEGO bricks are colorful plastic building blocks that can be joined together easily
to make a tower, house, and more. Of course, in my home the only things built were airplanes. The planes were assembled, but it wasn't
enough just to watch them, they need to fly! I took my Skateboard, grabbed the LEGO plane and hit the street. Our street was downhill,
I painted the runway onto the street with chalk and then placed the LEGO aircraft at the beginning of the runway. It needed to be as
realistic as possible. I guided the plane along the street and started to roll downhill with the Skateboard. The street surface was't
rough. After picking up some speed, the LEGO plane dismantled into pieces quickly, so I needed to redesign the bird to withhold these
forces! My effort was endless. I tried to take off, roll downhill, guide the aircraft with my hands along the chalk-painted runway and
finally it took off in one piece! The boys in the neighborhood realized quickly, what I was doing, and it looked fun. They built their
own LEGO aircraft and joined me on the street airport. Quickly the airport grew with the boys. Sometimes there were more than ten boys
with their planes departing and arriving from the street runway. Luckily, the street was not a through road. It had a dead end and all
cars entering or leaving their houses, patiently waited until an aircraft departed or landed. Sometimes they took a detour over a sidewalk!

Playing aviation this way was a serious thing for me. There were strict rules. You must depart with the LEGO aircraft rolling the whole
takeoff run down the street until you have liftoff speed. If the bird collapses, reject and rebuild! The landings were even more challen-
ging. You approach the runway with your skateboard, holding your LEGO aircraft in your hand and you have to land it on the runway, which
meant you must touch down, release the aircraft and it must roll out on its own. You can imagine, the aircraft would not roll straight,
so often it drifted off the runway and crashed into a parked car. So, redesign, please! It was a mess. We were redesigning more than we
flew, but it was great fun. Years later we changed from the Skateboard to Roller-Skates and didn't release the plane after landing any-
more but needed to brake with the skates down to taxi speed. You can imagine, Stevens played a major role even with the LEGO planes. Of
course, I built my beloved DC10, the scale of each aircraft size was written down and must be obeyed. I had 3 different tails, which I
could change quickly. One was Lufthansa, the second one Condor and the third: Stevens! Black with a yellow "S" built in. We played the
streets for years. At nights, we build bigger and more stable LEGO aircraft and early in the morning, we rolled out the hangar and test
flying it. It was great fun. Of course, the 747 was built also one day, but it was too heavy. One day she slipped out of my hands on
short final. The street was blocked for hours until I had collected all the pieces!

Stevens was always on my mind. Even as a grownup, it was always with me. I remember my first attempts with a computer in school,
where we tried to program simple lines to be output on the screen. I entered Stevens flight numbers and was impressed when it showed
up on the screen. It looked like monitors at the airport! After finishing school, I desperately wanted to become a pilot, but at that time
no pilots were needed, and the Lufthansa flight school was closed for at least 3 years. My attempt to become a fighter pilot with the
German Air Force was vanished after they told me I would never be able to eject without breaking my back due to my body size.

If there's no way to become a pilot by now, it must be aviation! I applied for air traffic control and luckily, they picked me.
I worked in Karlsruhe, Germany, at Rhein Radar, controlling the upper airspace of southern Germany. Guess what? Stevens was with me.
One day I experimented with flight strips. I created a flight, entered it into the system and wanted to see, how the flight strips would
look with a STV flight number. I was eager not to activate it, because it would mess up the whole air traffic. I printed out a strip,
looked at it totally in love and suddenly, an air traffic controller on the other side of the control room shouted. "What the hell is
this? Does anybody know the airline code STV?? What airline is that? I was shocked! I did activate it! It was in the system! I ran over
to the colleague and explained my mistake, but that was not all. If you activate a flight, the flight strips will be printed in all ACC's
where the flight goes through. That means, every sector and every country involved in the flight will get these printed STV strips! And
you can imagine, it was a DC10 flying far away! Many countries involved! I got a big asskick from my boss and it took hours to coordinate
with all sectors and ACC's that this STV flight will not show up! It would not appear on the scope, that's for sure!

I quit my job in ATC years later when I grabbed a chance to become a professional pilot. It was strongly necessary for me to be on the
other end of the microphone. It wasn't enough anymore to do flight simulation, I wanted to be a real pilot! Flight simulation helped me
through all my exams in achieving my ATPL. When I did a flight on the PC, the flight number was always STV. Stevens was always with me.
When I landed a C172 the first time in Hannover, I smiled. I did Flight simulation right from the beginning. ATP, Microsoft FS2, the
only aircraft were C172 and a Learjet. With FS4 I designed hundred of airports, also Hannover. Of course. The airplanes I flew went bigger.
After getting the ATP License in 1993, the job situation was again poor. I was lucky to get a job on a twin engine C421. I flew businessman
around Germany and was responsible for everything. Flight planning, dispatch, catering and during the flights besides flying the aircraft,
serving coffee and sandwiches! I was in heaven! It was amazing. I wanted to fly all day long. I was disappointed when there was a day off.
After one year on the C421 the ATR 42/72 followed and then the Airbus A320.


One day, I touched down in Iraklion, Crete with an Airbus A319. I was First Officer and our handling agent told me about a great simulator
called PS1. I thought, yet another crap sim. I spent so much money for disappointing sims, that I did not really listen to him. He asked me
when I would come to Iraklion again. I said, next week. So, he promised to bring a copy of the sim. I must try it. A 747-400 with amazing
system depth. A week later, he in fact brought a PS1 CD. After returning home, I did not try it out. Several weeks later I finally had a
look at it. I was absolutely flashed! It was indeed amazing! How could I miss that? PS1 changed my Flight Sim life completely. I bought a
legal copy of it immediately and in 2001, I finally launched the virtual airline, which existed already for 22 years in my head. The home
base was not Hannover anymore, I did know better now. Cologne made much more sense. I always thought this airport is underestimated.
Stevens was operating 744's exclusively, because it was PS1 country. A major update was PS1.3, where many features were added. It was
a Hardy Heinlin masterpiece!


Over the years we hired pilots from all nations. Old airline pilots, like Bill Martin, who flew the 727 with Eastern, other pilots learned how it
is to be an airline pilot and some of them really became airline pilots in real life. The flight sim community grew and besides PS1, other
designers like PMDG emerged and the aircraft were getting more and more realistic with great system depth. Stevens was a different virtual
airline because we focused on details. Realism. We acquired only aircraft which exist in real life and were available for sale.


I remember the Stevens freighters D-ASCA to D-ASCD, which were ex Atlas Air. One day I landed with the A319 in Pisa, meanwhile I was
Captain. On the apron stood an Atlas Air B744F and I went over to have a look. The registration matched! It was a Stevens freighter. I
entered the flight deck and talked to the pilots. When I left, I placed a self-bonding Stevens sticker on the Flight deck.


Later when I was on the B767 doing long-hauls, I placed a Stevens sticker at the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. And guess
what..? After all that time (remember, that was in 2010), the sticker is still there!


Stevens Virtual Airlines grew with the years, we operated 14 B744, at least 4 Cargo B744F, later the MD-11F was introduced and the B767. On
Vatsim Stevens was well known and every year a bunch of Stevens pilots took part in the World Flight Australia Event, collecting money for
the Royal Flying Doctor service and more charity. We did that from 2001 on until today.


Not only the Flightsim community knew Stevens well, also the real aviation took notice of Stevens VA. One day, I was an Airbus A320 captain
with a German Airline, I was called to my boss, the director flight operations. I asked about the reason. They told me, they need to investi-
gate about an Airline called Stevens. They heard about it and had some questions. Every important person of the Airline was present that day
and I explained to them what Stevens is about. They were irritated, because I called myself DFO, Director Flight Operations of Stevens. I ex-
plained that this is just fictional. They feared I would run for a DFO job in the airline myself one day. I told them, I never had this on my
mind. I am a pilot, not an office guy.


The airline, the aircraft, the functions and ranks of Stevens are fictional, the pilots not. The reason to run this virtual airline is to take people
out to an airline business as close to the real thing as possible. Real pilots emerged out of it and for those, who could never become a pilot,
had the chance to at least live their dream in front of a screen. After a good hour of talking about Stevens, the DFO and all the others were
convinced and were more an more relaxed about Stevens. After leaving the office, I could not believe that I discussed Stevens matters with
real Airline bosses!



In 2007 I left the Airbus A320 fleet after 10 years and moved on. My destination was Condor. The airline was so connected to Stevens with
the DC10's and 727's. It felt like home immediately. I am in the 14th year of flying Boeing 757 and 767. Over 30 years of flying, over 16.000
hours of flying time in the book. Retirement is getting closer, the Corona pandemic changed Aviation completely. Nobody knows, how Aviation
will survive this, but one thing is clear: Stevens will continue. We can do PAX flights or Cargo flights, no restrictions. In Flight simulation,
the aviation world is clean and healthy.

I am excited about the stories we will have here in the future with Stevens. For now, I salute on 20 years of Stevens Virtual Airlines!


I want to thank all the people who went the distance with me, all the fellow pilots, many of them became close friends.

Stevens saw a lot of airliners over its 20 years of existence. Of course, the 744, but also the 747-200, 747-8, 737, 727, 707, 767, 777,
MD-11, Concorde, A319, A320, A321, A350. I cannot remember how many aircraft I painted in Stevens colors.


Stevens will continue its journey in the future. A lot of miles will be flown in the virtual skies. Keep up with us and enjoy the ride.


Thanks to everyone who took part in the past and will participate in the future. The 20th anniversary on May 3rd 2021 unfortunately could
not be celebrated like we did it 10 years ago due to the Corona crisis. I hope, we all come together one day and can exchange memories.

Until then, stay healthy and always keep the blue side up!

Yours,
Stefan Schweizer, Stevens VA

Some more impressions from 20 years of Stevens VA:


Captain Sim Boeing 727-100


Boeing 737-900 and Boeing 767 which ran the Stevens-USA replica with base in San Francisco.

Busy day at Terminal 2 in Cologne

D-ASSC named after my father.




The Queen of the skies. What a beauty!




Troubled times with Stevens. Several 744 were stored in the desert in Marana Airpark.


2008 World Flight Australia event. Downwind for Runway 05 in Funchal, Madeira.


D-ASCA was the first Stevens freighter.


Spectacular landing at St.Marten.


The Concorde D-ASAP. 6 World flight Australia events and combined 1700 hours were logged.


Stevens also introduced the A320 family. They still waiting to be launched for scheduled flights.


The founder of Stevens at the 744 controls.




Present day. She is back. D-ASFA is doing Cargo now. Built in 1979, MSN 21580. She is a bit thirsty and noisy, but she gave birth to Stevens and she’s still doing the job!


The Concorde was stored in Sydney, Australia after finishing her last World Flight Australia event in 2015. After system upgrades she was positioned to London Heathrow, where she is parked presently. Future unknown. In pandemic times and climate savings, it’s doubtful to get her in the air again.


The future of Stevens. Aviation is seeking narrow-body aircraft with long-haul capability. Stevens ordered several Airbus A321 Neo XLR, who can go nonstop up to Miami from Cologne. Delivery is scheduled for 2023.


The Airbus A350 will be the future wide-body long-haul aircraft. This is the most fuel efficient aircraft in the market.


The next generation of the Queen. The 744F will be replaced by 747-8F


Stevens is everywhere. Here at Lukla and below at the Mt. Everest base camp with the EC135