Currently, AS only simulates line maintenance with the maintenance ratio. In real life aircraft also need from time to time some heavier maintenance (C and D checks) that takes days or even weeks.
So, why not introduce this into AS ? Eg. every 10.000 flight hours/2000 cycles a plane (or the amount of cycles/hours could vary depending on planes) needs to have a heavier maintenance for say 3 days to 1 week (again, depending on the plane).
So during that time the planes schedule would not be entered into ORS, and the plane would be grounded till the maintenance is done. Slots would be hold on that plane so you can’t lose them.
That way the aspect would be modelled with reasonable accuracy. Also no flights would be cancelled, just not entered into ORS in the first place. So no penalty for a player who doesn’t monitor his airline. Of course reports or views would be needed to spot which planes are about to hit the maintenance, so that if a large airline has spare planes he could rotate the schedule to spares while a plane goes through the maintenance. That would of course require a possibility to trigger the pending maintenance once the schedule is freed up. Exact specifics would be up to designers of course
Maintenance is one of the conceptional oldest components in AirlineSim. We have this on our to-do list and considering a change in the maintenance system into this kind. But this will take us some time as we want to have it in a comfortable way for larger airlines too.
While it would add realism, it would also increase micro management. And yes, the way you propose it, you wouldn’t have to act but having an aircraft grounded for a week would require some action.
I believe the team’s focus for this game to be a strategic one.
This is a little bit out of context. I hope we give some more detailed explanation so it will be clear. We currently think of a change in the system which may lead to other way of operating it. This would benefit a lot of long time requested changes and also would allow to update the maintenance to a more realistic way without have to much work with large airlines.
While it would add realism, it would also increase micro management. And yes, the way you propose it, you wouldn't have to act but having an aircraft grounded for a week would require some action.
I believe the team’s focus for this game to be a strategic one.
PS looks like sk was faster and I was semi-wrong
But that is exactly what real airlines do. For heavy maintenance they either have or lease spare capacity, or take it into account by not scheduling flights during the maintenance, ie offer less capacity. Bean counters usually figure out the optimal option.
But that is exactly what real airlines do. For heavy maintenance they either have or lease spare capacity, or take it into account by not scheduling flights during the maintenance, ie offer less capacity. Bean counters usually figure out the optimal option.
That is because you only have less than 100 aircraft at the moment.
Try to figure out users with 1,000+ of aircraft in their fleets...they're gonna plan this maintenance like crazy. I think AS has included those maintenance ratio as a part of "heavy" maintenance as airlines in real world only do this "heavy" maintenance once in few months, but they seldom have daily "light" maintenance. Other things like fueling, ground checking of wings and whatsoever should be considered as part of ground handling but not "light" maintenance. So, "heavy" maintenance is considered carried out weekly in AS.
Well users with 1000+ aircraft could simply ignore the whole thing. They would simply not be flying during the maintenance, and flights would resume automatically after maintenance is done.
It would only effect their bottom line, no revenue during maintenance. Just like in real life.
The maintenance ratio does not cover heavy maintenance, only line maintenance (such as changing tires, repairing clogged toilets, fixing faulty escape lights, fixing broken IFE etc.) Real airlines also need to schedule slack in their daily schedules to allow for these things. Also AS does not consider the hours people like to fly, in reality airlines do not schedule 20 hrs/day/7 days a week schedules for their aircraft.
All the airlines that I know, have a way of handling this. Typically they reduce capacity during the maintenance, just like I proposed in the initial suggestion.
Well users with 1000+ aircraft could simply ignore the whole thing. They would simply not be flying during the maintenance, and flights would resume automatically after maintenance is done.
It would only effect their bottom line, no revenue during maintenance. Just like in real life.
The maintenance ratio does not cover heavy maintenance, only line maintenance (such as changing tires, repairing clogged toilets, fixing faulty escape lights, fixing broken IFE etc.) Real airlines also need to schedule slack in their daily schedules to allow for these things. Also AS does not consider the hours people like to fly, in reality airlines do not schedule 20 hrs/day/7 days a week schedules for their aircraft.
All the airlines that I know, have a way of handling this. Typically they reduce capacity during the maintenance, just like I proposed in the initial suggestion.
Then, AS should apply this with automatically each few months to reduce hassle to players for changing airports and whatsoever.
