It's a waste of time to replicate the schedule to the other six planes!!
You have to do anywhere between (20 - 30)*6 = 120 to 180 useless flight schedulings!
Not to mention that in the interval it takes to schedule the main plane and then to replicate the schedule (which may easily take 30+ minutes) slots may become blocked at busy airports.
And God forbit that one of the filler (or main) flights is not profitable! Changing the schedules takes obviously an eternity.
Please, this shouldn't be so difficult to prog but it would bring a significant improvement.
It’s frustrating. I agree. Seven is too odd of a number for scheduling an outbound and inbound, while maintaining a daily schedule. Fourteen is nicely even, but it doesn’t make sense unless we start thinking “okay, this is week B.” I had to find four extra cities to fly to so I could schedule the one flight that I did want.
Could we just get rid of Mondays altogether? It’d give us a nice 6-day cycle, and it’s the most horrid day of the week.
Well yeah, similar to that, but since I always strive to obtain a maintenance ratio at around 120 - 140% on these planes I have many shorthaul "filler" flights, for a total of around 25 flights [I can see how that wouldn't be possible for you if you try to fit the existing waves... but even there might be solutions... build redundant multiple - 2 or 3 - local waves and then fit each LH to connect to one or more of these, based on the LH flight's duration... of course if you try to connect LH destination to LH destination then it's tricky].
But yeah, I wrote the OP after programming yesterday two 7-plane sets - it took me FOUR hours! (and trust me that I've procedurized the schedule replication so that it goes very fast, but still... it feels like a waste of time) (OK, other things may have contributed to the four-hour duration of the exercise, such as working generally with slot-challenged destinations and the need to reprog planes that were... khmmm... savingprogrammed earlier as to be able to conveniently provide slots at the hub for these flights).
Edit: here is the schedule of one of these planes, showing the 34 flights allocated to it. [Blur introduced for competition deterring purposes... even though someone with determination could easily figure out the whole schedule]. So, just for this case, I had to uselessly program 34 * 6 = 204 flight on other aircraft!
While the recent improvement which permits typing the first (which in the case of large companies are usually four) digits of the aircraft identification number does help, it's still a lot of work... I leave it to you to calculate the number of clicks and keystrokes needed to prog those 204 flights. Now imagine that you are on a mobile slow internet connection...
I still wait on a POV from someone on the AS team on this.
We've read your and the other comments and we have some improvements in planing (flexible flight times, flexible turn-arround times etc.) - but these need a lot of programming and we do not expect this to be released within the next few weeks or months as this has to be tested very well. Having a look on your schedule screenshot (which is blured so not really readable), I can not see the necessarity for a 7day schedule.
from kenmuir's example, I don't think a 7-day schedule is needed for that plane...3/4, 5/6, 31/32 can easily do a mix and match on the schedule...
3/4 can do daily rotation on one plane, 5/6 and 31/32 can do alternate rotations on two planes (i.e. 5/6 day246 + 31/32 day1357 on one plane, and the other way round on another plane)
@morefocus ... the way AS is currently set up, it's really not made for 7-day scheduling (AWS? :) )
If/when they decide to implement "switching schedules" between aircraft (at least A/C with the same speed and turnaround time) it will become possible.
Being able to switch from 737-700 to 737-800, or between 737-700s should be possible by one-click change.
I would even advocate switching schedules to aircraft with the same speed BUT faster turnaround time (downgrade only) so 60 min turnaround aircraft with 830 km/h should be able to switch to 40 min turnaround time aircraft with the same 830 km/h speed. The only difference would be that the schedule would present small gaps in turnaround places.
And require different slots that might not be available
If you have same speed no different slots required. Start and end of the "flight" would be the same even if the new (switched-to) aircraft has faster turnaround time (again faster turnaround means smaller plane, so downgrade). But if speed is the same, it only creates gaps between flights, but does not affect slots.
Faster turnaround affects "block time" as seen on schedule screen, but flight time from arrival to departure is same whether you use
Example: let's say you are downgrading a route from 767-300 (850 km/h) to 737-700 hgw Winglets (or 737-800 hgw Winglets) which also has 850 km/h speed.
Provided both aircraft operate same range routes, you should be able to switch schedule from 767-300 to 73GW with absolutely no problems.
E.g. A-B, and B-C
767-300
A: departs 07.00
B: arrives 10.00
B: ready for departure 12.00
B: departs 12:05
C: arrives 14:25
switching such schedule to 73GW would result in:
A: departs 07.00
B: arrives 10.00
B: ready for departure 11.00
B: departs 12.05
C: arrives 14.25
Arrival/departure times would be the same ...you are moving schedule, which for slot reasons takes into consideration ARRIVAL time and DEPARTURE time, not ground time after arrival.
Both planes would be able to depart B at 12.05, with the only difference afters switching the schedule would be the ground time "gap" on 73GW between 11.00 and 12.05, instead of the previous gap on 763 between 12.00 and 12.05
As I say, this would work for switching schedules between planes with same speed, and same OR LOWER (faster) turnaround time.
For long haul, I used to divide into 2 groups for that 7 planes. With 4 planes, you can fill up a 7 day schedule already. Unless I am changing the filler route that is common in all 7 planes. Whenever I want to change a schedule, most of the time I am affecting 4 planes only,Â
For long haul, I used to divide into 2 groups for that 7 planes. With 4 planes, you can fill up a 7 day schedule already. Unless I am changing the filler route that is common in all 7 planes. Whenever I want to change a schedule, most of the time I am affecting 4 planes only,
Yes, in some cases...
But if your run long-hauls *and* have constricted arr/dep times *and* both 'origin - hub' and 'hub - destination' are long hauls *and* for both directions you have costricted arr/dep times *and* the hub in question is not really a hub, but just an airport you use to organize LH to LH connections (i.e. it doesn't make it worthwhile to run any other flights from the 'hub' but the above mentioned LH flights), then you clearly cannot use 4 planes.
But if your run long-hauls *and* have constricted arr/dep times *and* both 'origin - hub' and 'hub - destination' are long hauls *and* for both directions you have costricted arr/dep times *and* the hub in question is not really a hub, but just an airport you use to organize LH to LH connections (i.e. it doesn't make it worthwhile to run any other flights from the 'hub' but the above mentioned LH flights), then you clearly cannot use 4 planes.
Sorry I can't comprehend your message. You can use 4 planes for two long haul routes at the same time period, provided that there are slots. The only problem is that you will need to find another route for the last scheduled plane (which you shouldn't be able to use all of its time). So most of the time it is 7 planes in total anyway.
