Continuation !
- Pushback.
- More runway and taxiway building freedom.
- Airport attendance based on location.
- Additional flight type, classes system and airline specialization/requirements.
- Accidents and incidents.
- Runway care and maintenance/fuel schedule.
- Tower control, ATC chatterer, radar.
- Information windows/popup.
- Multiple object and taxiway selection, copy and paste.
- Additional.
Pushback
Also about vehicles, we should have two pushback trucks, a small and a big one, and there are also the recent electric unmanned pushback tugs and another one here.
Those unmanned ones can pushback the A320 and 737 families and are inexpensive.
Also note that most small aircraft (mostly GA) simply have manual pushback performed, even bigger small jets, there is a video of a Sukhoi SuperJet 100 and another of a CRJ1000 being manually pushed back by several marshallers.
Also note that some aircraft used (probably not anymore) thrust reverse to back off the ramp.
Three example here with a MD80, here with a 727 and here with a DC9.
But I just showed the thrust reverse pushback for fun, not as a feature to implement, this is loud, burn not of fuel and hazardous.
More runway and taxiway building freedom
Possibility to orient the runway in 360° (with dynamic taxiway entry/exit to accommodate) with runway number corresponding to the heading and efficiency depending on the average wind direction, crossing runways, taxiway crossing runways, service vehicle road crossing taxiway and diagonals taxiways or even freely adjustable orientation ones.
Airport attendance based on location
Could be a difficulty option, airport attendance depending on map location, though I am not the first one to talk about this, but what about it also affect the weather ?
Additional flight type, classes system and airline specialization/requirements
Other type of flights like Cargo flights and cargo terminals and Business jets (corporate owned) but also personally owned private jets and VIP airlines.
Having class system (eco, premium eco, business, first and first luxury), each depending on the airline (Charters often don’t have first class, the distribution of class might change depending on the company) and having passengers number (and aircraft weight) depending on that.
Also having some class related infrastructures like first and business class waiting room/lounge and other accommodations required to unlock those high tiers companies.
Company should indicate their minimum required features (as it is already the case with the stars system) but also some might have special requests, like a longer or wider runway or more safety features, marshallers for more operations, systematic aircraft inspection, refueling, ramp rater than ladder truck, parking guidance (marshaller or VDGS), but more importantly, when reading the contract, we should be able to see, based on our installation (runway usable length, width, taxiway width, aircraft stands size) what aircraft of their fleet is compatible, with several levels : Non compatible, compatible for flight with low weight, fuel and cargo, compatible with higher weight and compatible at max operating weight.
Having a windows where we can check what aircraft are compatible with our installations, and why not little information about those aircraft would be nice, a sort of mini ingame wiki about the aircraft.
Accidents and incidents
As for incidents and accidents, there is a lot of things which can potentially happen.
Lets divide them into 4 category (not anything official, just easier for a game to implement that way) :
-
Incidents which affect operations (prevent takeoff/startup, rejected takeoff, need to land back or unplanned flight requiring emergency landing, forced back to the ramp) can be any technical issue, malfunction during the flight, engine failure or birdstrike, sick passenger requiring medical assistance, etc.
Those usually can affect schedule (or not depending on our schedule density) causing small potentials delay and possibly cancel the affected flight. -
Incidents which require (immediate) cleaning, like tire blow up, part of the aircraft becoming loose and dropping (landing gear doors, engine covers, pieces of equipment and tools forgotten on plane and who fall off during takeoff), dead animals (through this isn’t a seductive idea and I doubt it should be implemented in the game), other objects which may be carried by the wind, etc.
Those might require to hold any operations on that runway and immediately remove the FODs. -
Incidents/accidents which require aircraft to stay on the runway/taxiway/ramp for some time and may require firefighters (often the case) and other emergency to be deployed, this can include a simple tire/brake fire, other type of fire (more dramatic), engine fire (more dramatic too), engine overheat, cabin conditions (low oxygen, smoke, high level of CO2), this can also include runway overshoot (landing or rejected takeoff gone wrong) or runway excursion, both often result in the runway closing as the aircraft is too close to allow for traffic, except emergency landing I guess but this would be a hell of a coincidence.
-
Accidents which require runway (but also taxiway and stands) to be closed and result in a need of maintenance, it can be a belly landing, have a landing gear failure/collapse, crash landing or earthquake or lightning can damage a runway, if the runway condition aren’t good (just before planned maintenance/repair) a hard landing could even damage it and render it inoperable, pavement blasted out (watch out for Vampire taking off
).
Runway care and maintenance/fuel schedule
We should be able to plan how regularly runways, taxiways and stands/parking are maintained, cleaned and repaired, letting us choose between safety and economy, the less we do, the more likely a related incident/accident can happen, at first we have to plan manually, but once we have a COO, the repairs are scheduled between flights, of course if we have multiples runways the COO should be smart enough to not do it for all at once as it will halt all operations.
Same with fuel, we should have control over at which percentage the fuel get delivered to us, fuel trucks should have a similar option too as when they refill themselves, as it is annoying when one goes to refuel an aircraft and don’t have enough fuel.
Also, vehicles should too consume fuels on top of having need for maintenance/repair, and we should be able to set a certain maintenance/repair and refuel threshold.
Talking about fuel, we should have the possibility to transfer fuel between fuel depots, this can be particularly useful if we want to empty one to upgrade it for example (to avoid wasting fuel which is expensive even on small fuel depot).
Talking of which, apparently additional fuel tanks aren’t compatible with the small fuel depot, but there isn’t any indication about that, at first I thought it was a bug, it should be informed.
Tower control, ATC chatterer, radar
The control tower should be reachable for employee, and those parking slots should actually be functional with service cars.
Talking of tower, some nice features could be ground and approach radio chatterers (random would be nice, but related to the activity on the game would be even better).
Also, like the weather, tower should open a windows where we see aircraft on our airspace, some random aircraft passing near, but also those incoming, in the waiting/landing pattern and on final approach, same with departing aircraft, it would be awesome.
Information windows/popup
The small popup information windows when we click on objects and aircraft/vehicles, it should be draggable, pinnable, and also it goes down too far into the screen when the object is off camera.
Multiple object and taxiway selection, copy and paste
A great feature would be to select multiples objects of the same type at once, for example selecting multiples stands, runways, taxiways, taxiways exit/entry, and change their settings at once.
Taxiway should be selectable from a point A to a point B, allowing for all possible upgrade along this path, designate a section as one way or name it, or repair/maintain it for example.
Move and rotate objects without deconstructing them should be a thing too !
And a great feature would be to be able to copy and paste an entire section of selected objects, from a room to a service vehicle road, stands and taxiways section.
Additional
Gamespeed could use a faster setting if our computer permit it, like the fast forward to 4 feature, but continuously.
I think I said it all, it took me time to write, I hope this isn’t too hard to read as this is quite a big wall of text.
Also I am aware that some idea I write about were already proposed, but in those case I often give more details/features about them or talk about them to justify other possible features/mechanics.