I love and really enjoy Airport CEO. But I struggle to effectively manage a BIG airport.
My latest airport has 48 middle size gates and 16 big birds gates (all with jetties)
Now, I believe I have enough staff to run at 40%. However, 95% of planes never leave on-time. From my experience it seems that boarding is the problem. It starts way TOO LATE, which just creates this massive red ink board when I type G. Constantly.
I wish I could operate at least at 40% capacity.
I think, overall - boarding should begin way sooner. I guess, one of the problems is staff allocation. Sometimes it feels like the game pulls a staff that is at the other end of the airport, when next to the gate there’s a staff room with plenty of staff available).
What’s your experience? Do you have a tip or comment about running large airport?
YES! YES! YES! YES!
I have the same problem with boarding. Even if all turnaround processes are completed, it takes a good 40-50 minutes for boarding to start. Most of the time its because staff take a long time to reach the boarding desk. Even if I build staff rooms nearer to the gates, it has very little effect as the majority of the staff still occupy the first staff room that I built.
@Olof@Fredrik I had made this thread a few months ago and you said that you’d consider it in the upcoming gameplay sprint. Please tell me you have this in mind as well for Alpha 34.
You can try to build a tiny staff room next to each gate and assign it only to (I never remember the exact name) passenger service staff. The other thing is to exaggerate with the boarding desks, build at least three (even four!) per gate so when staff will eventually decide to show up the boarding process will be super quick.
@ilios21that’s actually a great idea! What will make a permanent fix is a room minimum occupancy value. If I have 3 boarding desks, I need 6 (passenger service) staff in the staff room next to the boarding desks.
Not super realistic but I think it will fix the problem. Another thing could be to decide how early staff can be assigned (by the system) to a specific job. If I have a big airport, I want a staff member to start going to the boarding desk 3 hours before. I think this one might be more difficult to achieve and will add another level of complexity to the player.
I haven’t thought about that idea. Will try later today with multiple boarding desks.
I thought about that idea too of choosing how many staff with minimum room occupancy. But that doesn’t help if the game pulls a staff that is at the opposite end of the airport (sometime I have that feeling).
I believe that the way forward is to assign staff to areas, which shouldn’t be so difficult based on the actual grid system (something like the RCT game, where you assign staff to certain areas/regions). Of course, each staff should have access to a staff room. This way the staff knows only about his/her area, and prioritise job positions in the assigned area.
There’s always a limit right? Even in real life. When I started with the game last year, I only built 1 staff room. I didn’t know I could assign a staff room for certain type of staff. So all my staff; around 290 of them, crammed themselves into a fairly medium sized room. I do not know if this has changed as I have not tried that since. But honestly, there should be a limit. And people should not have to stand in the staff room to take a quick break. If the game counts, the number of available seats in a staff room, it can automatically assign the maximum limit to the room. I think that would be better.
@DocDesastro’s point here is also noteworthy. Coupling these ideas together might do wonders to improving turnaround and boarding times. At least, that is what I hope this will achieve.
I do agree, staff allocation for boarding desks happens way too late. The problem is usually not the boarding time itself as it is set hours before the departure time, but with a fairly big airport, allocation of pax service agents happens too late and they don’t arrive timely. That system does need an overhaul and just as we can do with vehicles I would like to be able to assign individual staff members to certain staff rooms too. I have noticed that with about 150 Pax or more, boarding starts more than 2 hours before the departure time. With half as much or less, boarding time moves too close to the departure time which causes huge delays as already described above with the current task allocation system. I already submitted a bug report about this saying that no matter how many pax are on a flight, boarding should start no later than 1 hour before the departure time or 1:30 if it’s a remote stand. Additionally the allocation of pax service agents needs an overhaul to allow for bigger airports.
I don’t think boarding itself is the issue here. Actually boarding is very fast in the game. It is more like the staff goes much to late to their jobs. When Boarding should start at a specific time (let’s say 12:00) it is to late when the staff get assigned to this job at this time (12:00). They should be there at this time but not start walking then. Right now the set boarding time is to early, because when the staff get’s fast to the stand, passengers may sit about 2 hours before pushback in the plane. So, late boarding is not the issue, it’s the result of a bad staff assignment.
I guess it should work when the staff get assigned to their boarding desks as soon the plane lands or arrives at the stand and not only when the plane is ready for boarding.
I tend to go for big airports. Currently my airport has 16 gates, but I run with 12 full time, and sometimes enable the last 4, but I find that once the gates get too far form the terminals, airport staff turn up way too late and boarding is late, but with 12 gates, semi close, it becomes more manageable. And I’m running with 100% pax and all large gates with no medium flights to them.
