Remote Stands bus bug and delay bus + taxi

[Demongornot]

I made a test airport to check how some features work and experiment a little with remote stands, and I experienced some issues.
Everything is setup fine as in all stands, parking, desks, baggage belt and things etc are connected properly, there are enough employee and service vehicles so this isn’t an issue caused by a mistake I could have made.
Here is the save :
Test Airport.rar

First issue, you can see SA594 on the Medium Stand “Medium A” that a bus without passengers is blocked here and prevent the aircraft from leaving (though I can still dismiss it) as the boarding process is waiting for non existent passengers.
And two other aircraft stands “Small C3” and “Small C4” have an issue where their passengers not getting into the bus (those aircraft have been stuck here for an eternity), and the MP310 and SA830 passengers are basically in the terminal, inside the secure zone, but they won’t get to the bus, saving and reloading or restarting the game don’t help, they aren’t really stuck as they move around and sit on different places, I can only dismiss those two aircraft as there is nothing else to do.

Second issue which isn’t that big, on the Small Airside Shuttle Bus Stop (the second one when counting from runway to map border) there are two bus at the same place, one for the MP310 and another for the MP502 flights.

The third issue is regarding timing, in the same save you can see when the passengers of the MP502 flight which have its aircraft located on the stand “Small C1” getting on the bus and boarding the aircraft, but they are really late, causing massive delay to the aircraft, if you look at my airline reputation, they are really bad, because of this as it caused massive delay…
The flight have a planned departure time of 19:45, they start passing through the boarding desk and getting on the bus at 19 (considering the long time they need for getting on the bus which isn’t realistic because of the game timescale and the time the bus need for getting to the Stand + doing his loop to park, it should start way earlier), it finished at 19:12, the bus departed at 19:14, reached the stand at 19:40, it took him 10 minutes to maneuver and park next to the aircraft (again, because of the timescale of the game where something that take less than 30 seconds IRL take 10 minutes here) making it 19:54, and the boarding was completed by 19:54, almost 10 minutes late already.
Then the aircraft started to turn to taxi out of the stand at 19:58, reached the active runway and turned on its landing lights at 20:17, took until 20:22 to align with the runway, and at 20:26 (4 full minutes after the takeoff roll has started) the aircraft was airborn.
Those time can varies a little but regardless how many times I reload the save, they are similar and the flight is always really late.
The bus boarding should be earlier to make the actual boarding taking place around the same time baggage are loaded, we all know we often wait, potentially long time, before the aircraft leave the gate.
Passengers aren’t loaded at the last minute.
Also the aircraft should take into account the taxi time (based on distance) to the active runway, and if ready, should leave the stand no latter than departure time - taxi time.

What is the exact definition of Taxi Time?

For some reasons the next flight, the MP530 have a correct boarding time and begin its takeoff roll only 15 minutes late (and on time on other tries) and the last flight SA594 (only available if you dismiss previous, stuck SA594) have more delay with almost 50 minutes late.

Bus shuttle for passengers to the stand is always the reason why I got delayed flights, one could also happen because of errors (forgot to connect a baggage belt or we messed up our taxiway), lack of workers/service vehicles, or simply because of traffic, but bus is the most occurring reason, and the delays aren’t small, it make it impossible to squeeze flight with a 15 minutes separation as some have over an hour of delay.

Additionally in this save, the ramp agents have some troubles finding their way toward the baggage bay, originally I only had two doors on the terminal near the bay, but I had to build a pathway from the parking area to the bay because they couldn’t navigate to it.
There are also multiples other pathfinding errors (which always resolve themselves apparently).
And the top runway which is set as arrival only, aircraft can’t exit using the taxiway on the end of it, but they can no problem use the diagonal ones.
Ps : Yes I know that my Sofa on the left part of the terminal are backward, but this don’t change anything for the 3 stuck flights.

Here I made a slightly fixed version with more bus, baggage vehicles and a 90 minute separation of flights, we can see they all are still running late and 90 minutes is barely enough.
Test Airport 2.rar
I also had another aircraft where passengers did not get into the bus and which was stuck.
The remote stand passengers transport is broken.

[Demongornot]

An update, one of the stuck aircraft have a weird status of “Go to gate” even though it is already parked, inspected, refueled, baggage were unloaded and loaded and passengers disembarked.

[dewitjur]

I’m thinking your airport staff will be under way to the boarding desk.

[Demongornot]

Possible, but I have 38 Passengers Service Agents, and even after days the situation don’t change.

[Titule]

Haven’t tried your save yet, just read your post.

First issue: Sounds like there are more than one problems here: traffic jams? Did the bus go to the stand empty? (It happened to me some times, I think). Passengers don’t go to the bus…What is the root cause? IMHO it’s the pathfinding again. They don’t find their way in time and the fallback-timeout procedure does not really help…
This is one if not the major problem in ACOE atm.

Third issue: not sure if faster pathfinding would also solve this problem, bit it would surely mitigate it.
Timing could be better, I suggest an individual setting for stands etc that is determined on previous measures (i.e. the program should learn how long it take to go there) and should be manually settable by the CEO (that’s me), not for necessity but just for game-play fun.

[Demongornot]

Even when there is a single aircraft waiting this can happen too, passengers bus air aircraft are literally eternally waiting.
In some occasion the bus goes to the stand empty, but in other case it wait on the terminal on the passenger bus stop.
I see no pathfinding error on the notification related to this (but I see other which are always resolved after a second or two).

You mean a timer for how much time before departure time the boarding process take place ?

[Titule]

@Demongornot

In some occasion the bus goes to the stand empty, but in other case it wait on the terminal on the passenger bus stop.
I see no pathfinding error on the notification related to this (but I see other which are always resolved after a second or two).

I noticed the same effect. My guess is (I haven’t verified it) that there are some pathfinding problems leading to timeouts and the pax get teleported to the bus stand (outside the terminal).
Therefore, they need to go though security again and are too late to get the shuttle bus, which leaves at “schedule” but empty.
Just a guess…

@Demongornot

You mean a timer for how much time before departure time the boarding process take place ?

Yes, and also for when the check-in process starts. Maybe also other processes (catering etc, baggage).

[Demongornot]

I am trying to find out right as I write this reply.

I only had pathfinding error for peoples wanting to go to the bathroom in the secure zone and who were unable to, I redesigned the bathrooms a little by adding a door, now peoples use them and I haven’t seen any error since except a passenger who could not check in but the queue was full.

I have a lot of late aircraft by a combination of traffic jam (bus waiting an eternity for the boarding process to take place on the remote bus stop, passengers requiring lot of time to come to the boarding desk, traffic jam because of bad AI traffic rules, passengers not passing through the boarding if there is no bus available).

Even cancelling all flight and closing stands which share the same passenger shuttle bus to avoid jam and made a staff room for only passengers agent to be close of the boarding desks, plane still depart late, and as always the boarding is what cause the delay.

I found another empty bus, here are all the data I can gather :
Desk is working

Bus status

Aircraft status

Stand status

Flight monitor (the flight don’t show up)

Flight planner

Employee status

Vehicle status (nothing on boarding)

Vehicle status 2 (bus show up in debording, it may be the issue ?)

Edit :
Here is an example of peoples not getting through the boarding desk if there is no bus available :
Desk was opened here.

Now that the bus is here, super late by the way, they start getting through the desk.

[Titule]

I observe the same things, except I never checked WHEN they finally go to the bus.
However, I have no clue what the root cause is (it’s just my guess that they are not there when they should be, might be caused by slow/interrupted pathfinding).

Your last observation could help mitigate the problem if the people would go outside and wait for the bus… (which is not per se a legal boarding procedure AFAIK… people must not stand around outside unobserved where they could start wander around apron).

[Demongornot]

One sure thing is that based on this save (just enable the auto flight planner) where each stand have its own dedicated bus stop and service car stop, there is no problem anymore of ever waiting or empty bus, so I guess this have to do with multiples stands per bus stop…

I did not know that, I thought it would be like public bus stop where peoples wait there for the bus, I don’t know what happen IRL if a bus is late, does passengers still pass the boarding desk and wait before going outside or are they waiting the bus to open boarding desk ?

[Titule]

@Demongornot

I don’t know what happen IRL if a bus is late, does passengers still pass the boarding desk and wait before going outside or are they waiting the bus to open boarding desk ?

That’s my observation in airports (but I never read the regulations). PAX board (i.e. present their boarding pass at the desk and get registered as “boarded”) and if the bus is not there yet, they wait at the still closed door.
Maybe there’s someone else here in the forum with some more knowledge about passenger handling who could clarify that, it it’s of interest.
Same happens when one bus left and they wait for the next.

[dewitjur]

It is best to let each medium stand have its own bus stop. Only with small stands shared bus stops are interesting, with a maximum of course.

[Demongornot]

Well the thing is, I don’t remember seeing any medium stand having trouble with empty or froozen bus, only at small stand, and even if it happen at medium stands, it is way more common at small ones, so this is the other way around that we should to because of this bug…

[maniac77]

Hi… Can I run the save file? I want to see what problem you have…

[Demongornot]

Of course you can, this is literally why I uploaded it, do whatever you want with it, it is a test airport in sandbox mode anyway.
You’ll need to drop the content of the rar archive file into :

C:\Users"your windows user name"\AppData\Roaming\Apoapsis Studios\Airport CEO\Saves

[maniac77]

Well… I can see that you have 2 remote bus stand that connect to 3 and 4 different remote stands. I try to put the flight schedule very tight between flights. If you have two different flights (Flight A & Flight B) which utilize the same remote bus stand.

Bus A, the bus that pick up the passengers for Flight A, is the first one to arrive on the bus stand to pick up the passengers; and then Bus B, the bus that pick up passengers for Flight B, arrives on the bus stand. However at that time, Bus A has not finished pick up the passengers, so Bus B wait for Bus A to complete the job task

As the bus B queue and wait for the bus A that is doing the job picking up the passengers to board the flight. It create a traffic jam on the service road as the bus queue blocks the baggage trucks that are on their way to the baggage bay. For the traffic jam I solve it with the F10 menu so that the baggage trucks can continue their way to the baggage bay area.

Also the place where you build the remote bus stand is on the opposite roadside from the way thr bus come. This make the bus to navigate a u-turn

My suggestion

1. Make sure each stand has their own bus stand and service car stop
2. Build another service road to minimalize traffix jam

Hopefully, this can help you solve the delay problem

[Demongornot]

Well I did try with one bus stop per stand and the plane still depart late, always because of the passengers boarding phase, there is less delay obviously, but there are still continuously on all flights delay.
Also there is a bigger issue with empty bus on the stand blocking the aircraft and bus stuck on bus stop and no passengers going in.

And the layout isn’t particularly thought about, this is just a test to try remote stands.

[maniac77]

So far, I have not encountered on your save the empty bus problem.

But I did encounter the problem where the bus stuck on the bus stand with no passengers going in on my airport and somehow it solved the problem on its own when I played again.