How Airlines Schedule Flights (Wendover Productions Video)

First of all, if you haven’t watched Wendover Productions yet I highly recommend his YouTube channel, here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/user/Wendoverproductions
He has produced a number of view-worthy aviation videos!

Here is the specific video I want to discuss in this thread:
https://youtu.be/dGXahSnA_oA

I thought this video was really interesting and wanted to post about it. Another forum user, @salqvist, posted about it in another topic but I think it would be interesting to discuss it on its own as well.

When the game has had a few updates and it’s time to flesh out the simulation I think it would be really cool to be able to sign contracts with airlines that specifies that certain flights need to land and depart together so that passengers can change between them, as is the topic of the video. This really seems like a IRL thing that would work well as a game mechanic as well!
I’m really curious what @Olof and @Fredrik thinks about it and if you guys think that it could be implemented into the game.

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I really liked this video, as all of their videos very simple but full of content.

Basically airlines operate flights from a HUB to the destination, turn around and come back (sometimes with a bigger turn around for time matching purposes). So in ACEO, it would be nice to have airline relations, if you are able to be in good terms with them they are likely to implement a HUB in your airport, with all the risks and benefits related. This has been discussed many times, but the video helps us to imagine it in a more realistic and operational way.

Airline relations, HUB’s and gate assigning are realism features that I’d like to see in ACEO.

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Good info on how airlines operate.

This may be helpful when connecting flights are implemented. An airline may mention in their contract that certain flights have to be within fixed time of each other. To enforce, maybe when you drag/move 1 flight on the planner, other flight/flights clubbed to it move as well as a group.

Edit: I am getting way ahead of myself putting this much effort for a feature far in the future, but this is how i visualise it being implemented:

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I have never thought about connecting flights! It totally makes sense though, of course some passengers would need to catch connections via your airport!

Thanks for making the animation, it certainly helped me to clearly understand and visualize this. :grin:

  • I can’t believe I didn’t think of this! :airplane:
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I concur with @CanadaCEO about the visual you created @vikhattangady , a very elegant solution I think.

I love Wendover Productions’ aviation videos and this one was excellent. It would be nice to see that kind of scheduling diversity in the game for sure, but I think that it would either have to be a mod or much later in the development process (or even DLC). I do definitely think that hub operations would a great level of replayability though :slight_smile:

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Diving further into the video where they talk about banks of flights, we might see something like this in the future.


Ofcourse MP983 will pay you parking fees for the entire time, but will hold up one of your stands(at a gate or remote stand, depending on how features are implemented in the game). You will have to find a way to deal with it if you choose to accept the contract.

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Interestingly enough, the devs have already implemented part of the code to handle this.

So basically, unloading but not loading after the plane lands at 0700, and only loading before plane takes off at 1545.

About this, and as mentioned in the video, it is very common for airlines to leave their planes in South American airports. Depending on how much time the plane stays in the airport, it is tugged to a remote stand, sometimes not even a stand. This picture is from São Paulo Intl.

image

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I was having a think about “W-Pattern” flights as well recently. Flights going A-B-C-B-A, operating using an aircraft based at A. This is something that could be quite nice to introduce as a stepping stone to having a based aircraft, having your airport be the “B” in the above scenario.

In practice, you would get two flights. Flight 1 would arrive from A and depart to C. Flight 2 would operate later in the day, arriving from C and departing to A. There would be a mandatory minimum separation between the two flights to represent the time taken to fly to and from C, giving the impression that the two flights are operated by the same aircraft. Movements like this do happen in the real world and might be relatively simple to introduce if you have some simple rules for scheduling (e.g. Flight 2 must arrive at least 5 hours after Flight 1 departs).

Going back to the video, airlines could build up banks through use of similar rules on the contracted flights. “Must arrive between 9am and 11am” could be one, with another rule “must depart between 12noon and 2pm”. This potentially has the aircraft sitting on the tarmac for several hours if that’s how it has to work in the schedule.

Gotta say, all of this solves the multiple terminals problem too because you then know which stand the aircraft will be on…

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NB MP983 would not block an airbridge… you deplane, tow to remote stand dump there and tow back on 90-60 minutes before departure

… but we don’t have remote stands yet.

In practice the plane would probably just be on a remote stand rather than towing unless the aircraft was very large - something that won’t yet be an issue in Airport CEO.

At a later stage of the game, there would be remote stands, maintenance hangars, parking spots, so a lot could happen to the plane during the dead space.
If implemented right now, one of your stands would be occupied. And assuming features like hangars, remote stands might need to be unlocked by user in some way, if not unlocked, even then player would lose a stand.
Kind of what I was hinting at when i said the player will have to find a way to deal with it.

We don’t have remote stands that passengers can board, but for this purposes any stand that work in a similar way of the GA stands, which are not connected to the terminal, will do the job.

Awesome input and discussion! I imagine that this can be implemented into the game at a later stage, once the flight planning has been a bit more fleshed out!

I’ll bump this once since it would be nice to have @Olof and @Fredrik’s input on this discussion, then I’ll let it die :wink:

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