A simple solution to slots chaos-two day scheduling

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
1

Hi everyone,

    In later stage of one server, we all find it is very difficult to schedule to add flight in busy airports since the slots are always irregular. I find the slots problem is mainly resulted from the scheduling of  flights last for more than 12 hours.

    Most of us want their schedule to be regular, that is, we want the flight of ICN-BOS depart at 16:20 everyday, the flight need 27 hours to get back. To utilze it in daytime, I schedule ICN-SIN daily. So we need three aircrafts to run a daily flight. As a result, plane 1 runs 1,3,5, plane 2 runs 2,4,6, plane 3 is need to fly on Sunday only.  After the scheduling, plane 1 and 2 all have some time left. I will put two ICN-NRT flight in plane 1 and 2. And plane 3 is left, I have to put some other flights in plane 3. 

    If I have only two planes, I have to change the depart time so as to put the Sunday flight into the plane 2.

    So the slots become irruglar in ICN, what is worse, the airports the plane 3 fly to is also irregular. And the problem will pass to other airports, too.

    In real world, Thai Airways need only two 747s to run BKK-MXP daily(need around 29 hours to get back) and BKK-PEK daily. To reflect the real world, we can find ways to solve the problem. 

    My solution:

    Requirement, need two identical aircrafts, two airport have regular slots in certain time. For instance, ICN 16:20, 21:10, BOS 20:25 22:50. If all the regular slots are taken and no regular slots exist, this method can't be appied.

    When scheduling, the scheduling page only show day 1 and day 2 of plane1, all irregular slots are red and regular slots are available.  The ICN-BOS-ICN occupy the time 16:20  of day1 21:10 of day2. After that, the ICN-SIN-ICN can be scheduled the same way, plane dapart day 2 night and return day1 noon time. Plane 2 occupy the the rest.

    For slots in ICN,BOS,SIN, the slots are occupied daily.

    After the scheduling, the two planes' schedule can be only appied or terminated at the same time.

    I believe this method will make the scheduling process easy and the slots problem is solved in a practical way.

    Best regards,

    

2

This is quite complicated and would be quite difficult to implement. In any case, aircraft usually does not do a single route every day in real life

http://www.flightradar24.com/reg/ec-lzj

You can see this aircraft departs from Madrid to Miami, Chicago, Caracas, Santo Domingo, New York, Panama City, etc. all in the rage of Feb 20 - Feb 27.

There is a better way to what you suggested, and can be done right now. It is called 7 day scheduling. you will need 7 aircraft for that, but with some time invested into the scheduling you can have neat routes departing at the same time every day. You can even use Matth's long distance network planning tool: http://www.asroutemap.info/updates.asp

In simple terms, the pattern of flying in 7-day scheduling is as follows:

Plane 1: A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Plane 2: B-C-D-E-F-G-A

Plane 3: C-D-E-F-G-A-B

Plane 4: D-E-F-G-A-B-C

Plane 5: E-F-G-A-B-C-D

Plane 6: F-G-A-B-C-D-E

Plane 7: G-A-B-C-D-E-F

3
 

This is quite complicated and would be quite difficult to implement. In any case, aircraft usually does not do a single route every day in real life

http://www.flightradar24.com/reg/ec-lzj

You can see this aircraft departs from Madrid to Miami, Chicago, Caracas, Santo Domingo, New York, Panama City, etc. all in the rage of Feb 20 - Feb 27.

There is a better way to what you suggested, and can be done right now. It is called 7 day scheduling. you will need 7 aircraft for that, but with some time invested into the scheduling you can have neat routes departing at the same time every day. You can even use Matth's long distance network planning tool: http://www.asroutemap.info/updates.asp

In simple terms, the pattern of flying in 7-day scheduling is as follows:

Plane 1: A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Plane 2: B-C-D-E-F-G-A

Plane 3: C-D-E-F-G-A-B

Plane 4: D-E-F-G-A-B-C

Plane 5: E-F-G-A-B-C-D

Plane 6: F-G-A-B-C-D-E

Plane 7: G-A-B-C-D-E-F

I have done some development work on apps and I believe this method is simple compared to other suggestions.

1. We need to build a new scheduling page.

2. Slot is not a big issue: we have two  identical aircraft each time and we only need to search for a regular slots(For instance 16:20 everyday) and occupy it(16:20 slots -1 each day). This would not affect the current slots system.

3. Write the flight in to the ticketing system. This is different from the current one, but is practible.  

I understand the example and checked flightaware again. Some company change the plane of particular flight number according to the orders. For instance, Air China fly B77W on PEK-SYX  route during the vacation and the plane will not flight this route again next week. Some company use cycles but not 7 days. These methods are not practible in the game. The scheduling system we are using today is simpler than Air China.

I have think about the method of 7-days scheduling but it is hard to some extent. Aircrafts need to by delivered one by one. If we schedule one or two aircrafts each time, the first two rows are finished. But after three days we get two aircraft and it is time for the third and fourth row, maybe the slots for A is used by other players. If we wait until the 7 aircrafts arrive, it is a waste of money. If change schedule all time, the transfer flight is another issure since I can't schedule one transfer flight 2 am tomorrow moring.

Two days scheduling is simple for players. What we need is get two aircrafts and find a long-haul and a mid-haul route whose time consumption can fit each other. 

My another suggestion is schedule transfer flight in a certain time.

4

We already have some ideas, but this would work another way - a bit more to reality - creating a schedule and another department (can be more or less automaticly) is doing the tail assignment.