Do I have to have the 3 day period activation plan?
If not, does it cost extra to just execute the flight plan?
Why is there even an option to have a 3 day activation period?
Tahnk you
From the blog (author: yukawa):
You can activate "right away" or with a 72 hours delay. "Right away" means the earliest flight booked into the system will depart no earlier than 24 hours from now. This makes the flight available to one booking cycle. The same flight on the next day would obviously get two cylces, etc. If you activate with a 72 hours-delay, all flights would get the maximum of three booking cycles. (some special conditions can reduce those numbers by one, but that's not important at this point. you can find plenty of information on that on the msg board).
Which one to choose depends on whether you expect the flights to book full with one cycle. in competitive markets, that's usually not the case. If there is no competition, chances are good. And worst case scenario, you could still cancel the empty flights. Keep in mind the costs for pax compensation, so accepting the loss from a half full flight might still be preferable to cancelling. Also, you won't be able to fly the return flight, so do the math before cancelling.
This system of pax distribution also requires you to be patient before you decide whether a route is going to work or not. Since only connections that reach their destination within 72 hours are being considered. so if part of the connection is longhaul (either because you operate that or you have an interlining partner that does), they might only become available with the second booking cycle. Also, directly after introcuding a new flight, the potential feeders and connections might have already booked full by other connections. Only beginning with the fourth day, the new flight actually has the full potential of being booked. So don't judge a new flight before that.
What is the exact time of the booking cycles? And is it true that seats are only booked at the exact minute the booking cycle occurs?
The booking cycles are relative to each airport and game world.
For any itinerary (not flight) there is an origin. Booking cycles will occur every 24h at the designated time on the airport page for passengers originating at that airport to any destination. In this regard, passengers originating at another airport (ie inbound connection) will book seats on your plane at their airport times, regardless of that specific leg’s booking time being different. This phenomenon usually explains why you get 2-5 pax onboard before the airport actually books.
Let’s take the classic Stuttgart to Amarillo example.
So we’ll call this three legs. STR-FRA, FRA-DFW, DFW-AMA. Say you operate the FRA-DFW and DFW-AMA (let’s say it runs on a CRJ-700 with 65 seats).
So the passenger from stuttgart will book all three legs at the STR time. All pax originating in FRA (let’s say 4) to go to Amarillo book at the FRA time, and all pax from DFW (we’ll say 30 book the first day) will book at the DFW time. Let’s also throw in 5 pax from JFK, which will book both legs (JFK-DFW and DFW-AMA) at the JFK Time.
Say STR’s booking time is at 0000, FRA’s is at 0400, JFK at 0625, and DFW at 0930 (again these are made up numbers and in UTC for comparison).
So when you see the DFW-AMA flight a few minutes past 0000, you’ll see the STR pax in there (considering no other flights feed this, of course). After 0400, the 5 FRA pax + the STR will be there. After 0625, you’ll see 11 pax (5 FRA / 1 STR / 5 JFK), and after 0930 you’ll see 41 (5 FRA / 1 STR / 5 JFK / 30 DFW). If this cycle isn’t altered (trust me it is), you’ll have a full plane in 2 days.
I think like how aircraft ferries take about 10 minutes to begin, flights are entered about 10 min after the activate button. For the flights that are entered in the booking cycle to book, see the Flights tab of that flight plan.
Your latter question is indeed true.
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One thing to note, bookings only occur for passengers whose trip is completed (arrival at destination) within 72 hours of the booking time.
Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed response. Completely clear to me now.
Thanks alot for that. I wasn’t getting bookings on some flights but now I notice that they are more than 72 hours away. Thanks for the nugget of wisdom.
Haha, love that this has become canon 
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