Right now, the contract relationships between airport and airline are less complex than they probably should be (no wonder, it’s an Alpha). Airline companies can be big or small and their planes are nicely designed, but most of the time, you do not care about the companies you choose. It would be interesting to see the airlines themselves screw up their operations, like planes coming in late, in a bad condition, badly trained airline staff, bad food or inflight entertainment, lost baggage all the time, etc.
Of course, the airport CEO is not reponsible for running the airline operations and it his not his task to manage inflight entertainment or lost baggage. Those events have to stay beyond his control. But as a part of more dynamic and complex airline-airport business relations (see threads like: Improved contract system/airport-airline relationship - #6 by WindomEarle), the problems of a bad airline might soon become the problems of your airport. Maybe if this airline is currently the only airline that offers flights from your airport or is using your airport as a hub. For example:
- people might link notoriously bad airlines with your airport, which could tarnish your reputation
- a certain airline will get into trouble and your passenger numbers will decrease, if that company is a vital part of your airport operations
- airlines could even go bankrupt and leave you with a big gap to fill from one day to another
- there could be a system that counts the incidents caused by a certain airline and gives you a right to terminate the contract with them without a fee and to avoid further damage.
- airlines could change their business strategy and follow new goals over the course of the business relation, maybe with a change in management there. Maybe they suddenly want to concentrate on longer flights with bigger planes and want to scale back medium-sized plane operations at your airport, etc.
I don’t know how this could be implemented, but the airlines should have a life on their own. They should be more than just a name and a design. Maybe there could be certain airlines in the game that already have a bad reputation, but offer you lucrative conditions for being their partner, so choosing them can be a risk that pays off or not, while other airlines are “solid”, but have very high requirements to fulfill. Or every airline could be a blank slate at the beginning and you do not know when you sign the contract, how their operations might evolve and possibly go down the drain. The first one is more realistic, as in business, everyone who needs to know will know if a company is reliable, shady or at the brink of bankruptcy. But maybe it is easier to implement such mechanisms, more modding-friendly and more interesting, if the solid and the dubious companies are not always the same and there is some random element in it.