Hello everyone,
I would like to talk about cargo transportation using cargo aircraft.
I find it difficult in parts to build up a pure cargo airline. In reality, there are a lot of airports that are served by small cargo planes several times a week or even daily. Unfortunately, this is poorly represented in this game by only 10 freight levels, which are purely based on the tonage, in my opinion. At the same time, I wonder if it would be possible to make the cargo plane transports more attractive and perhaps make the cargo lengths more precise and attractive with a smaller level.
Historically, cargo in AirlineSim is treated a bit a like a step-child. I mean that in the sense that it really should be there as it’s a crucial part of the industry, but the emphasis of the game clearly lies on pax operations.
I don’t want it to stay like that forever and the respective roadmap item exists, along with a bit of a discussion on the subject. The TLDR: A new cargo model for AS would have to take different kinds of cargo and the very much different structures of cargo ops into account, meaning a more or less complete departure from the current “cargo unit abstraction”.
This would be a cool and needed rework. In the past I have tried to use a spare 777-200ER on cargo flights when the AGEX was down. While I would fill the belly I would never be able to make a profit from it. It would be interesting to see higher priority cargo that prioritizes direct flights vs connections. Also cargo that doesn’t care about connections but focuses more on competitive pricing.