Airport Expansion and slots

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

May Berlin Brandenburg be operational when Qatar hosts its World Cup Finals!

What will happen to old airports in Berlin and Doha when new airports open in the game? Will they have instant demand or will it grow over time?

At the moment we still have the rule that they won't be closed, but due to the data patches they will see a reduction of demand. Maybe we will have to think about this rule...

At the moment we still have the rule that they won't be closed, but due to the data patches they will see a reduction of demand. Maybe we will have to think about this rule...

It certainly helps if the airports are gone altogether, but if you reduce the demand to 0 (just like what you did with PFN closing), I don't think anyone is stupid enough to open that route...

Never say never ;)

Does AS apply this rule same as Medan (KNO) instead of MES?

If they use the same IATA code (eg: DOH), we don't have to create another flight plan again... :)

It certainly helps if the airports are gone altogether, but if you reduce the demand to 0 (just like what you did with PFN closing), I don't think anyone is stupid enough to open that route...

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I am not so sure about the former.

  • Albert Einstein

And if you take a look at Croydon you even see people still offering flights from PFN :D

Actually...same here in in Tempelhof too. 4 airlines, 10 daily departures in total....I wonder how the loading is like :D

Does AS apply this rule same as Medan (KNO) instead of MES?

If they use the same IATA code (eg: DOH), we don't have to create another flight plan again... :)

It could be a problem if the new airport retains the code but not the location - that could mess up the flight plans as distances are changed...

It could be a problem if the new airport retains the code but not the location - that could mess up the flight plans as distances are changed...

That's the time all players would go and take as many slots as possible if new big airports are coming up.

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.

Would it not be usefull to implement the airport pictures again like a couple of years ago?

Actually...same here in in Tempelhof too. 4 airlines, 10 daily departures in total....I wonder how the loading is like :D

Well, there are passengers on board. Dunno why I havnt removed the flights yet.