So I have been enjoying this game for a couple of months and at several points I wished there was a possibility of 5th Freedom traffic rights between ones holding country and at least one or two aiports in other countries. For example I operate Pakistan Indus Airlines from Karachi (Stapleton) and after about 6 months of playing I feel the routes are moving towards saturation. I really wish there was the option of purchasing/leasing a secondary hub solely for 5th freedom traffic. For instance I would have liked to have a secondary hub in Manchester and/or Tokyo to operate trans-Atlantic/Pacific flights with a single stop (as is done by PIA as well enroute KHI-MAN-JFK or KHI-BCN-ORD or previously KHI-MAN-YYZ and KHI-SNN-JFK). It would make the game even more exciting. Either the 5th freedom agreements could be pre-decided before a game server is launched OR the option could be made available to lease secondary hubs on current servers.
Just thought it would improve game quality so wanted to share.
You are always able to transport passengers from your own connecting flights further, meaning you could open a secondary hub for example in MAN and fly KHI - MAN - Canada/USA. even if you do not have the 5th freedom for the MAN - Northamerica part, you can still transport your own passengers coming from KHI onwards to northamerica. And on the return flight its exactly the same: you cannot transport passengers from Northamerica to MAN, but you can still take them from there to KHI via MAN. It does not matter if the PAXes have to change plane in MAN or not.
I am quite sure, that AS will never change the system they have right now concerning the traffic rights, since they are organized in a similar way in RL. Afaik the only possibility (in RL) would be codesharing, as it is done on the Singapore Airlines flight from Munich to Manchester (SYD-MUC-MAN and retour).
Thanks for your reply Sarn. Yes, I am doing so, using one or two bar airports in EU for transatlantic flights, because when I did that with bigger ports such as LHR, the majority pax would deplane in LHR, sending a nearly empty bird across the pond. So it was always running in the red. I know that PIA in real life, has 5th freedom rights to book passengers from MAN-JFK, MAN-YYZ, BCN-ORD, AMS-IST, and many many more flights where they can pick new passengers at stopovers. I have myself flown on Philippine Airlines from KHI-DXB (the flight originated from MNL) back in the 80s, and that would certainly count as 5th freedom traffic. Lufthansa was carrying 5th freedom traffic from KHI-DXB, KHI-BAH, KHI-KTM, KHI-AUH in the 90s as well enrote to FRA, as were Swissair (KHI-DXB-ZRH), Turkish (KHI-DXB-IST and KHI-AUH-IST), KLM (KHI-DMM-AMS) before the global situation became what it is today and all major airlines pulled out of KHI. Air Blue of Pakistan has just started Islamabad (ISB)-IST-MAN with 5th freedom rights throughout. Turkish Airlines are flying IST-KHI-DAC (Dhaka) these days with 5th freedom traffic rights.
I was suggesting and hoping the game does it too, because while I can have stop overs at one or two bar low traffic ports (because only then I can ensure no passengers get off and instead continue onward) but firstly its very tricky to maintain good loads on both legs of such flights (esp when non stops are available on the same route by competitors) and secondly the real fun of it is in the idea of having a second hub where new pax can be picked up and taken on the second leg. I do realize implementing this would be tricky, but it sounded too good not to be mentioned in case future development work is done.
So what you are suggesting is, that VIA-flighs should be able for have 5th freedom rights for the "second" leg, which originally does not have these rights? Well if that is the case in real life, than i don´t see why we should not introduce it here. This also gives us huge possibilities if we are outgrowing our home country´s market.
yes, exactly, THANK YOU am glad to have at least one person see how exciting this possibility can be. i am certainly not implying that ALL VIA flights should have 5th freedom rights, I am suggesting like it is between some African countries and within the EU, 5th freedom rights should be established between specific countries AND only to specific airports. For example between UAE and UK, so air carriers from both countries can use one airport from each other’s country as a point of stopover and 5th freedom traffic. So if Abu Dhabi and Manchester (second largest in each country) are designated as the points of 5th freedom, airlines from each could start VIA flights using these points to continue further. So an airline from UAE could fly from Dubai to Manchester and onwards to Boston and carry traffic on all legs. Similarly a UK based airline could fly from London or any other UK airport to Abu Dhabi and onward to Bangkok or Tokyo etc and carry traffic on all legs.
i do realize it would take significant programming and planning (a one time sitting for planning though, to pair up countries and designate airports), but i think game quality would really improve, and would add a new and exciting dimension. PIA used to fly KHI-FRA-AMS-JFK and KHI-CAI-CDG-JFK (and some of these were even extended to YYZ) on a 747-200 at one point for several years (with 5th Freedom rights on all sectors from what I recall), and I wished I could take the route but it was dropped in favour of a single stop by the time I was able to travel overseas.
Anyhow, i think this would cause such intense programming, that maybe it would be easier to just allow any VIA flight the 5th freedom on its second leg.
DEAR AS TEAM: Since we haven´t heard anything from your side concerning this yet. Could you please at least comment it??
5th-Freedom rights are usually based on tri-lateral agreements between the countries involved. As such they are easy for us to implement when they are granted by a large and well communicated treaty like the ones we have implemented in AirlineSim already. All the other countless agreements between all of the almost 200 countries in the game are hard to research though, especially because they are usually bound to further restrictions like capacities, frequencies and amount of destinations…all stuff that it impossible for us to realistically model in AS.
In reality, an airline wishing to fly a certain route and having the right amount of influence would simply call up it’s local embassy and ask them to pave the way. If we implemented something like this in the game, we could just as well do away with traffic rights altogether
Unless your flying a route with no competition and a strange demand that won’t fill up an aircraft with the range but provides enough profit to merit a refueling stop then there’s almost no point. The 777-200LR can reach pretty much everywhere.
In real life, there are not very many flights per airline that have 5th freedom rights… so maybe AS could implement a system whereby you could designate 20 one-stop flight numbers (=10 roundtrips) as full 5th freedom flights, so you could pick and choose some.
Myself, I have currently flights with refueling stops on Nicosia - one is CDG-ZNZ-DZA on a 73J - and it works well, picking up and dropping off passengers at both island ports - profitability is not great, but it makes a little money and fits into my strategy; the other is LHR-PLS-GCM, also on a 73J, which I just started and will have to see how well it works.
could you introduce a government section similar to the alliance page. in this page it would display the traffic rights for the country of the holding.
you could also have an option to apply for rights to fly between a second country to a third. for example, an agreement could be applied to an australian airline to have rights to fly from bkk to the Eu.
it could have a system of voting etc before this is approved. i dunno i guess more thought is needed.
The problem we see with a feature like this: who is deciding if this shall be approved or not? So on the one hand it has to be a rule based automatic decission but on the other hand this would mean (like open market access in some countries) only the big ones might afford this. Or let the rule be if there is no other airilne in this country is might be appoved - but what would be your reaction if you would like to start in a country where no airline is based and starting the first route you see all the big global players coming and catching the passengers away.
How about having a code share agreement for specific flights.
For example-
Airlines A- Sydney
Airline B- UK
Airline A flies SYD-SIN-LHR. It has no traffic rights for SIN-LHR. You set up code share with airline B for this flight eg QFA6 is also BAW9000. Therefore the QFA6 flight will get pax from LHR to SIN and SYD. Would this work. I guess you would have a code share page similar to the IL page where you can see the code share flights that you are taking part in.
am glad to have at least one person see how exciting this possibility can be. i am certainly not implying that ALL VIA flights should have 5th freedom rights, I am suggesting like it is between some African countries and within the EU, 5th freedom rights should be established between specific countries AND only to specific airports. For example between UAE and UK, so air carriers from both countries can use one airport from each other’s country as a point of stopover and 5th freedom traffic. So if Abu Dhabi and Manchester (second largest in each country) are designated as the points of 5th freedom, airlines from each could start VIA flights using these points to continue further. So an airline from UAE could fly from Dubai to Manchester and onwards to Boston and carry traffic on all legs. Similarly a UK based airline could fly from London or any other UK airport to Abu Dhabi and onward to Bangkok or Tokyo etc and carry traffic on all legs.