As of Experimental 35, we have international/domestic flights, real airlines in the workshop, regional airlines and lounges. A lot of these ideas probably would only work with a lot more airlines in game or with many reality-based airlines downloaded from the workshop.
Domestic/Foreign Airlines
Add a home countries/cities/airports property to airlines. Comparing it to the country the airport is located would classify it as a domestic or foreign airline. Domestic airlines would fly to other airports in the country, as well as international destinations (if the airline has the appropriate aircraft), while foreign airlines would only have flights to airports located in their home country (if they have the appropriate airplanes).
Regional Airlines
It seems like ACEO started implementing this by adding regional affiliates as new airlines. Maybe allow airlines to be assigned as regional affiliate of a parent airline. This would allow the regional affiliate to be scheduled under gates assigned to the parent airline, while restricting the regional airline’s flights to only domestic flights. Alternatively, this could be accomplished by having a regional airline flag for airlines, which would restrict it to domestic/short distance flights, and allow assigning multiple airlines to a gate.
Similarly, lounges could be assigned to multiple airlines, simulating allowing passengers from airlines, their regional affiliate and their airline alliance affiliates to use the lounge.
Focus/Hub Cities
Allow setting airport as a focus or hub airport for a particular airline. Designating focus city status would increase more domestic flights to be generated from the airline. Hub cities would receive more domestic and international flights.
Why it should be implemented:
For those of us with airlines off the workshop based on real airlines, this would make airport operations/scheduling appear more realistic, domestic hubs with dedicated gates (or even terminals) for just one airline and international flights to correct cities based on the airline.
Realism doesn’t account for everything. This game is a tycoon, not a simulator. This would add a lot more time to the loading time (on top of all the other loading time accounts for) Also, it would get annoying for modders to test their mods when they are in a place where the certain airline is based.
In conclusion… no.
One or more of these elements have been requested before and will likely be implemented somehow at some point. The problem with ‘realistic’ airlines with hubs is that the game only has 20-ish airlines by default, which, even if all airlines are massive and have 3 hubs, still only provides 60 hub airports. Spread those 60 hubs out over the globe and you will be left with little demand. Using mods from the workshop could alleviate the problem but the game has to work standalone as well.
I do believe hub-airports and destination airports would be of added value for workshop items and I can’t imagine that not being on a to-do list somewhere, looking at how often it is requested.
Hi sprint113, I’m generally supportive of the implementation of allocating multiple airlines to use selected stands and lounges. Particularly as the base game is starting to include regional affiliates, it makes to sense to allow the regional affiliates to share resources with the main airline. I also don’t see it as being a feature that would be too hard to implement.
While this is rather a cosmetic change, I’d strongly prefer a little bit different schedule mechanism.
Rather than having a flight scheduled for a few cosecutive days, I’ld like to have something like:
WAW-LHR 1—5-7 at 17:00 local time. Then it’s up to US to assign a free stand, check for slot and so on. Much more fun and should not need a calendar overhaul since we operate on the week only.
I quite like the idea that airlines have hubs and focus cities. At the moment, my airports’ route networks are incredibly random. Akureyri Airport always seems to be a favourite destination for some reason.
I know that the game has tried to avoid tying airlines to specific countries in the past. But most airlines do operate a hub-and-spoke network. I think it would be quite nice to give airlines a number of hubs from which they operate, which would be used to generate initial destinations that would be served by that airline from the airport. It need not necessarily be based on countries (we don’t have enough airlines for one per country), and it need not even be realistic (eg you could have something crazy like London, Los Angeles, Beijing, Dubai and Sydney). The hubs could be randomly generated to inject a bit of variety. But instead of a dozen random destinations, an airline could have regular frequent flights to their hubs which is far more realistic.
Maybe some airlines would not adhere to this model (like Ryanair in the real world; they operate far more hubs) and continue to offer the more sporadic services.
As the game progresses and your relationship with airlines builds, then your airport can maybe become a hub, and then that airline would start serving more destinations as a spoke from your airport (and connections would become a thing).
Something simple that would be nice and “hub” like is to just allow you to boost your relationship/satisfaction with an airline to serve a lot more flights. To have a real hub system you would need transfers/connections.
I agree. In the game, Airline Empires - Home (a game I play on the side) if you set up a hub at an airport, you need to pay more if you want that airport as your hub. in that game, you pay x2 amount of operation fees. Here in this game we can build things to meet the criteria or need to do something to make an airline want to open a hub at your airport. It won’t be easy as it should not be, but it would really make a challenge and gives a purpose and achievement to the airports you build.
