Hi guys,
Not sure if this one would be categorised as Airport Operations, or as Economy, but i could only pick one, so there it is!~
Loved the 3rd gameplay video, the game looks super solid for a pre-release version. The one thing that stands out for me is contracts and how they work.
From what I’ve seen, contracts are a little different from what I might have expected, that being, a contract is for a set number of flights arriving and departing your airport. (Noting that contractors are contracted on an open ended contract). In real life, I’m sure ‘some’ airline contracts are similar to what has been shown in the gameplay, but I don’t think it would be considered the norm. From my perspective the ‘norm’ would be an airline wanting to set up scheduled flights to and from your airport, either daily, bi-daily, or any other number of times per week - there could even be multiple flights a day to and from your airport to a destination (for example, in NZ there are at least a dozen flights a day between Auckland and Wellington, or 3 flights a week between Auckland and Houston, both on Air New Zealand.)
Will there be any airline contracts which are ‘ongoing contracts’? That being, an airline wants to fly the same route on a regular, ongoing basis (or at least for a substantial period of time, like a game year) Further, we saw that the contracts which were signed had no preference as to the time of the day of the flights, will airline contracts ever dictate or request ‘morning departure’ or something to that extent? I dont think its common for airports to dictate when flights arrive and depart, for example what about morning commuter flights between 2 centres? An airline doesnt want the airport telling it when its flights can arrive and depart because the airline wants to make sure its flights are arriving at the destination at the best time possible. Really keen to get feedback on this.
Secondly, will airlines be able to rent gates from your airport, to guarantee that the airline has a gate it can pull up to for its passengers? Further to this, what about entire wings of the airport? It’s really common for airlines to ‘own/rent’ entire swathes of gates which all of their flights arrive and depart from (and yes there are entire terminals in some large airports dedicated to single airlines)
Lastly, check in services. Based on the gameplay video, these are managed by the airport, that being, they are staffed by the airport. Looking at the 3rd gameplay video we saw the long queue for the larger flight, but only 2 check in desks in operation where i think there were 6 or 8 in total. Why was it that these desks werent used to assist the larger flight? Was it because the airport didnt have the required staff? Or was it because a single flight (with the 119 passengers) can only be checked in by a single set of check in desks? If it is the latter i see a massive problem arising with say A380 flights with >400 passengers all trying to process through a single check in queue. Grateful for some clarity on this.
