Futhermore, in reality, few are the cases of start ups flying small planes into clogged airports, exactly because these slots are a very expensive commodity.
When you say "expensive", what do you mean? You mean the landing rights are expensive, or do you mean that the slots are a limited resource, meaning that they are valuable, but not expensive? The discussion is about making slots even more expensive in one way or another, with the explicit intention of making it prohibitively expensive for small aircraft to land. But my question remains, if you do that then you will penalize startups with small aircraft - or are you saying that startups should adopt a strategy of only using very old large cheap aircraft, in which case they get penalized with high maintenance costs? The way I see it, long established large companies do not have an automatic right to hog all the slots they want, and to change the rules to exclude newcomers.
When you say "expensive", what do you mean? You mean the landing rights are expensive, or do you mean that the slots are a limited resource, meaning that they are valuable, but not expensive? The discussion is about making slots even more expensive in one way or another, with the explicit intention of making it prohibitively expensive for small aircraft to land. But my question remains, if you do that then you will penalize startups with small aircraft - or are you saying that startups should adopt a strategy of only using very old large cheap aircraft, in which case they get penalized with high maintenance costs? The way I see it, long established large companies do not have an automatic right to hog all the slots they want, and to change the rules to exclude newcomers.
Take the acquisition of 49% of Virgin by Delta Airlines, by millions. These was seen in the industry as a way for Delta to get hands onto new slots in LHR, although they are flown through Virgin. They are in fact very expensive, so in reality to operate into one of this airports an airline needs a certain critical mass. I understand your concern about startups, but as in the reality, or your start up has a sugar daddy with lots of cash to inject and gain quickly that critical mass (number and size of airplanes ) or you simply can't compete on estabilished routes to major hubs with the big airlines. So on my view, starting fresh on an estabilished game world would always be possible, but you would simply have to adapt to the existing conditions, basing flights on another airport, avoiding flights to constricted and slot expensive ariports (as in reality) and growing until gaining the necessary "muscle" to fill a larger and profitable plane.
What I think is disgusting is always having tons of small ( many times not even profitable ) aricraft clogging airports in a way that prevents other players from exploring the routes true potential. No airport in the world would be hostage of a company like that, preventing it’s economical growth, not even a city or country.
But, as I said, I truly share your concern about small enterprises, I just don’t think that the solution I proposed would’ve been the end for them.
There is a difference between reality and AirlineSim. In reality many airports are not coordinated in terms of slots. Only the busy ones are coordinated. And there are some contradictional rules in real life. On the one hand you have the grandfather rights. Meaning once you have a slot and operate a flight on a regular base on this slot, you have the right to keep it. This is pretty much the same like in AirlineSim. As long as you operate the flight and do not touch the schedule linked with the slot, you will keep it.
There are also airlines in real life using small aircraft on large routes to keep their slots. I remember on some ATR operations between LHR and CDG some time ago.
But in reality there is an antitrust authority and this one is opening the door for new airlines at a crowded airport. It is telling existing airlines to reduce slots on events like merger or joint venture or even on complains from oponents. But there is no specific slot they have to give up - only a daily/weekly number. And we do not have this one in AirlineSim.
ATR between Chicago and London? Are you sure? Doesn't that go beyond the operational performance of the aircraft?
Thanks for the insight SK. I think all those issues are not easy to solve, specially when trying to keep everyone happy and playing the game, but I urge you to put some mesures in effect against the small aircraft invasion on clogged airports. This creates hostility between players and steals part of the fun from playing to those not opting for the small aircraft fleet. Somehow the game has to reflect the true value of a time slot on an airfield, hope you can find a suitable way!
I think it is so unfair because I wanted to start an airline in LHR I I couldn't get any slots that were free all week!!. Routes like Manchester and Paris have 20+ flights a day and they are all small aircrafts, rather then increasing the amount of flights on offer change the aircraft to an A321 and then increase the number of flights on offer!!!
I think it is so unfair because I wanted to start an airline in LHR I I couldn't get any slots that were free all week!!. Routes like Manchester and Paris have 20+ flights a day and they are all small aircrafts, rather then increasing the amount of flights on offer change the aircraft to an A321 and then increase the number of flights on offer!!!
The only alternative is to look for alternative markets and not LHR.
Btw the change to bigger equipment does not automatically mean that the bigger aircraft are well-booked. One major aspect is that AS-passengers really like frequencies + the booking-policy (three booking.waves) allows that a smaller aircraft is filled much faster.
I would be glad to use A300 and A330s on domestic flights within Indonesia and to use fewer slots. The problem is that I can´t replace three 190-seat A321s with one 514-seat Boeing 777-300. The 777 would be loss-making and half-empty.
The unrealistically low operating-costs of several turboprop-types also add to the viability to use small aircraft with high.frequency.
I know that some players use small aircraft to block slots but I don´t think hat the majority is doing this. .
Give me the assurance that I can make good use of 20 flights between Jakarta and Bali with A330s or Boeing 777-300s and I would give up 80% of all slots on this route.