Passengers
Passengers should arrive at least two hours early for their flight, as is recommended by most (US) airports. With the CIO, you should be able to increase this time as your airport grows. Thus, all passengers are around the gate area when it is time to board.
Vehicles
At least in the United States, vehicles are pre-positioned at the gate (stand) before the aircraft arrives. Baggage loading/unloading belts almost never leave the gate area, and baggage trains are waiting for the aircraft when it arrives. The pushback tug is also present at the gate when the aircraft arrives. The only vehicles which should have to drive to the aircraft from somewhere else are: fuel trucks, catering vehicles (not yet implemented), busses for bus gates (not yet implemented), and aircraft maintenance vehicles (not yet implemented). This cuts down on the amount of time the aircraft is waiting for the service vehicles to arrive, and is more realistic.
However, this will require some micromanagement, vehicles would have to be scheduled similar to commercial flights, potential delegation to the COO could mitigate this.
I like the idea of the turnaround vehicles being more responsive. I would suggest they be dispatched at touchdown when possible - the taxi time is long enough and this would have the vehicles on stand before or not long after the arrival (assuming you have enough, of course).
The problem with having them on stand all the time would be that there’s not all that much room in the game. A real airport may have space beside the terminal, but the game doesn’t. With a lack of collision detection, it would look bad. But yes, this does happen at many locations IRL.
It’s having to go back to the depot every time which could be done away with. The infield should have vehicles waiting around. Instead of a building the depot could be a zone placed on tarmac that vehicles wait at when idling. That zone could be assigned to gates (Think of how we assign a baggage pick-up area to a baggage bay).
Good idea! To avoid micromanagement, when a flight is planned all services needed would be planned automatic. Also, to make sense CEO role you can delegate this task to COO and he would have a office team like a command center officers who will be in charge to book all services needed for the flights.
How about vehicles only have to go back if they fall below a certain repair status but otherwise they can go from job to job and not need to return to the depo
@Stu Also in order to reduce potential delays when a fuel truck is idle an idea might be to have the option to send it for refuelling at your choice. It can be a button on the vehicle popup info where there are the other options like “locate”, “depot” etc. This way you could prepare for example at night your team to handle the aircraft the next day without risking running out of fuel miday and having to visit the fuel depot. Of course the auto refuel option should remain for people that don’t want to micromanage.