Airport Expansion and slots

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
1

In aviation, airports do expand to meet more demands. In the game world, lack of slots prevent new companies from sharing the market.

So it is necessary to figure out a good way of working this.

Firstly, the airport could have land available for expansion or not. It is reasonable that airports faraway from city all have some land to use.

Then, a player can choose to start a program of expansion. For instance, he can choose the categories of runway, whether building a taxi way. Then the serve calculate the new slots available and the budgets. For instance, after building a new runway without taxiway, 24 new slots per hour is available. And the project cost 24 million As. Players can pay at least one million to join the project. Once he pays one million, he gets one slot per hour reserved for him. If the project get enough fund, the project will begin.

Lastly, the players who joined the project can trade or exchange the slots reserved for them to schedule flight in accordance with needs.

2

Have you ever seen a real world airline building its own runway??

And guess what, Heathrow would have 38 runways then… very realistic!

3

Airports expand in the game world as well - whenever the real world airport expands. Just recently for example Frankfurt gained a number of new slots, because the real airport gained some as well after opening their fourth runway.

4

Airports expand in the game world as well - whenever the real world airport expands. Just recently for example Frankfurt gained a number of new slots, because the real airport gained some as well after opening their fourth runway.

Thank you for bringing this up. As I were saying (for many many many many times already), CLT has got its fourth runway operational since 2010, and I have yet to see those slots reflected in the gameworlds....

And yes, I have sent multiple tickets to the support team and I have got multiple replies saying they will "build the runway" next time a patch comes out. But now, we are almost in year 2014, and the runway is still not operational...........

5

The slots increased from 132 to 144 per hour with the 4th runway. So yes, this is already patched.

6

The slots increased from 132 to 144 per hour with the 4th runway. So yes, this is already patched.

Thanks for getting back to me sk. But I am getting mixed signals from you guys...I sent an email (#1696) and got a reply saying that the 4th runway is not included in the data patch - would you clarify for me please?

7

Do you have a ticket number for me please

8

Do you have a ticket number for me please

It is 1696 :)

9

Ok - that makes it easier ...

In the former days, we had not a clear system on how to validate the available slots. I must confess that this is not easy to have a feeling for the right numbers to have a balanced slot availability and not to discuss about each airport. All airports with 120 or more slots/hour were reviewed some years ago and the slots were adjusted. Charlotte "lost" some slots (12 per hour). But the slot reduction is not rolled out on the existing server. Now as the 4th runway opened Charlotte received the "old" slot number again. This means - on the old server it looks like nothing had changed. On the new server - started with the lower slot number - the slots were added. But the current data (on all server) have all 4 runways in service.

I hope this cleared the situation

10

Thank you sk - this does make it clearer :)

Though, I really hope you can perhaps explain a little on how you define the number of slots at an airport.

From my observation on Tempelhof, a "standard" length runway would produce 60 slots per hour. Naturally, airports that have two independent parallel runways (i.e. runways that are at least 1,525m apart from each other) would allow up to 120 movements per hour, like LHR and HKG. In the case of MAN (for example), it has two parallel runways, but since its they are too close together to be functioned independently, only 96 slots are available per hour.

When it comes to CLT, which has three parallel runways (plus one 05/23 runway intersecting the 18L/36R) that allows three completely independent approaches, it should, theoretically, be able to handle at least 180 movements per hour (should have been more because the intersecting 05/23 was not taken into account) - but that is not the case, why? The difference between 180 and 144 isn't small...we are talking about 36 slots per hour, that is 432 slot pairs per day!

There is one more thing that puzzles me.

You said CLT used to have 144 slots per hour when it only had three runways, and later reduced to 132. Both numbers look completely logical to me as I have absolutely no clue how many slots you add onto an intersecting runway. As long as it is more than 120 (which is the capacity of two parallel runways) it is fine by me. But then, when the fourth runway (i.e. the third parallel one, 18R/36L) opens, you only added 12 slots per hour to the airport. Correct me if I am wrong, but what you are essentially telling me is that this brand new runway, that is 9,000 feet long, that is parallel to the other two long runways, can only handle one movement in five minutes. I am sure the tax payers would want to know where all that money went :)

Thank you sk for reading this long essay ;) and for taking the time to respond in the forum. I would really like a logical explanation on why there are only 144 slots per hour instead of, say, 180, or 192?

Calvin

11

First you have to separate between coordinated slots and technical possible slots.

The coordinated slots fewer than the technical possible one as the flights have a 15 minutes window for their coordinated slots to take off/arrive at an airport. Coordinated slots are only available on airports that have a slot coordination - the most airports (especially the smaler ones) are not coordinated in any way.

We could use the coordinated slots (which are about 1/3 of the technical possible - no fix value but a short calculation on some data I found), but we don't have these numbers for all airports and the number is much below our current values meaning that the slot situation would be even worse. We do not have any delays so we could use the technical possible slot number which is about 1 aircraft per minute for a full equiped runway with high speed exits etc. But this is only valid for smaler aircraft (not heavy) and there are a lot of restrictions depending on the airport and the topograhpics.

At AirlineSim we are using some kind of mixture. Let's start with 1 runway airports. If the airport only has the runway and the terminal located at one end of the runway connected by a single taxiway, it will receive 1 slot/5 minutes. If the terminal is located somewhere at the middle of the runway and conected by a single runways, the airport will have 2 slots/5 minutes. If there is a partial parallel taxiway at one end of the runway where one or more aircraft can hold and wait for other traffic on the runway before/after backtracking, the airport will have 3 slots/5 minutes. Having this on both ends or a complete parallel taxiway with only few 90 degree exits or if the aircraft has to cross the runway between terminal and parallel runway: 4 slots/5 minutes and finally a full equiped runway 5 slots/5 minutes. As you can see - there are already some "or" in the decission between 4 and 5 slots/5 minutes.

The secound runway if it is parallel and there is much room between (so it may be operated independently) will add the slots to the first runway. But at this point it is getting complicated as the location and heading of the runways, the quantity and architecture of the taxiways etc. are very important. This has to be reviewed for each airport - especially when there 3 or more runways. I try to compare it to other airports with the same slot-size and to judge if this is comparable or not. If you take i.e. Chicago ORD - having up to 7 runways in use ... you can not even operate 4 of them independently - only 3 can be reached without crossing another runway.

About CLT ... only 2 of 3 parallel runway can be used independently. You have to cross another runways taxiing to/from the new runway. And the 45 degree runway to the others is also influencing the other runway usage and the taxiways for two runways. This are important reasons why CLT haven't more slots.

12

Really an interesting insights and explanation

I had no idea that slots were determined after studying the runway layouts.

13

Thank you sk, this is the kind of explanation I was looking for :) I think it gives the players a clearer picture of how the slots are allocated to the airport (if they care).

I understand that AS cannot use real life numbers in the game, otherwise HKG will only have 68 slots per hour due to terrain constraints. Imagine a HKG in the game where the available slots is slashed by almost half ;)

Thanks for explaining about CLT. I realized that you will have to cross 18/36C in order to get to 18R/36L; and yes the usage of 05/23 will affect the operation of 18L/36R....but that still doesn't explain why only 1 slot/5 minutes is added after 18R/36L is in operation...?

14

I wouldn't say only 1 slot/5 minutes for the runway. The combination of all runway and taxiway layout for the airport is not giving more. But that is a subjective opinion ...

15

I wouldn't say only 1 slot/5 minutes for the runway. The combination of all runway and taxiway layout for the airport is not giving more. But that is a subjective opinion ...

Well fair enough - it is indeed a subjective opinion.

Thank you again for explaining to me (us) and I guess I will wait until the fourth parallel runway is in place....in 2017.

Just three more years to go, no big deal ;)

16

That will be sooner as the new Berlin airport :ph34r:

17

That will be sooner as the new Berlin airport :ph34r:

I literally laughed out loud on this one :D

But well, in Meigs it is already in operation ;)

18

well Zagreb (ZAG) will soon have new Terminal :D

works on new terminal started 18.12.2013

ET of build 3 years

so we hope 2016 we will have nice new Airport

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19

I think I read about it on Airports of the World or somewhere else. It looks quite modern!!

Hope your new terminal will beat the opening of Brandenburg ;)

(sorry sk, I had to, I had to ;) )

20

Go ahead, I'm living in Frankfurt and you can bet on opening of our T3 ahead of Berlin :P