Building new Runways

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
21

Well, the problem with these self-driven developments is that they can be achieved, but there is no need that they will. So increasing the offer doesn't mean that there will be more demand (and automatically more infrastructure followed up).

This is true, but I am not sure that it is a big problem or unrealistic, at least as far as airports expanding their infrastructure goes. There are examples of airports that expanded too much, and where demand hasn’t kept pace. If that happens, the spare capacity sits unused for a while, until the airport finds a way to fill it (usually by lowering prices again - SIN has being doing that a lot since QF left, and to combat EK, EY and QR).

In the case of passengers flying more if they are offered more destinations, as @rubiohiguey2000 suggests, I thought that the current AS model does this already, up to a point. Maybe I misunderstand the proposal or the current system, but I believed the current model generates X passengers at each airport for each destination, and then finds them the best way to get there with an ORS > 0 and up to three connections. So, if you open up new destinations, you may discover new passengers.

I agree that simply simply more destinations or seats might not increase demand. But lowering pricing definitely does increase demand (it’s the LCC business model to stimulate demand). If I recall correctly, this change is on the long-term agenda, but requires a rebuild of how demand works?

22

No what I meant that if in Indianapolis are 7.4 million OD passengers per year, when an Airline XYZ opens up real life hub there and offer 100 daily departures to cities Indianapolis was not connected to before, the OD traffic in Indianapolis increases substantially over the 7.4 million, without counting the connecting traffic.

The AS implementation would be, for example, a 5 bar airport growing into a 7 bar airport with 2000 weekly departures because a new local OD demand is generated. The bars reflect demand generated in that city, again I am not talking about connecting passengers which can connect through any airport on their journey. I am talking about a real life hub airport that grows local traffic. The reason local traffic is grown is that a hub makes the city grow, new businesses base there, new people move in, tourism increases, and it’s a snowball effect. This is just fact of life.

If Indianapolis becomes large hub in real life, it gets reflected in AirlineSim. It would become an 8 bar airport with a patch update and corresponding increase in local demand. But the same thing happening in AirlineSim has no effect within AirlineSim. In this aspect, it’s not a simulation of real life, but rather copying the real life.

A player wrote above that building runway and increasing slots would be running airport Sim and not airline Sim. But organic growth would be exactly airline business related Sim.

23

So now not only wanting to include airport sim in airline sim, a player also want to include sim city / sim nation to factor in economic growth, population growth, etc into airlinesim.

There's a reason why real life hub is a hub, all political, economical, cultural, geographical, demo-graphical, technological, and blablabla factors that are beyond the scope of airline simulation to simulate, and to some extend, using real world hub data easily represent all those factors realistically.

Sure I would love to see AS allow me to outperform SIN, a single city nation hub with 5 million population, with my CGK hub - city population of 10 million and potentially national population of 250 million to connect through hundreds of domestic airports.

However there's a reason why SIN is a much bigger international connecting hub than CGK, despite the potential. Different visa policy for entry - SIN allow more nations to travel visa free into the country, different airport facility - SIN develop a truly nice connecting environment, different ATC capability - SIN has more advance tech to handle air traffic, spacing arrival traffic with 3 miles separation instead 7 miles as in CGK, and there are A LOT of other differentiating factors that would make data collection a nightmare to AS team.

Rather than assessing out of scope data, simply using real life airport statistic make the airline sim a more realistic simulation. Not really copying real life, but creating an environment that some what realistic for simulating real life condition, hence they don't use exact city-pairs statistic but also factor in connection.

If airlines in AS start growing airports, it's a matter of time before they start asking for a custom aircraft type for their specific need, as IRL aircraft manufacturer build aircraft according to customer need given enough number of firm orders. And AS airline certainly able to order a more significant number than RL airline. Organic growth airport, custom aircraft type, what next? buy/build own oil refineries as IRL? start own maintenance provider as IRL? I can see the list to keep growing and suddenly we have a fairy tale airlinesim, with everyone running their own version of Emirates in their backyard, lol.. 

24

@hczeitgeist: I do like the idea with making the flight rating comparable for ground based connections.

Possibly it could even be considered, that any ground connection within the already defined ground network of the airport is treated as "no penalty". That would mean, A flight  DXB-LGW-LHR would get the same rating as a flight DXB-LHR. Assuming that the passenger doesn't have LHR as his destination, but greater London. So for the passenger it's irrelevant, whether he has to take a transport from LGW or LHR to the city center. Obviously this could be refined, but in general that would ease the pressure a bit from certain airports.

@Reeve: I equally like the idea that airports are expanding "automatically" based on certain criteria, mainly the average pax/slot and overall useage of slots. Possibly we should introduce an airport tax which is added to each ticket price (for the rating of a flight). The airport tax will go up with the congestion (as well as the landing fees) to make it less attractive. The funds could equally (partially) be used to finance an expansion, once enough money is accumulated. A high airport tax (which can't be influenced directly by the player) will make a congested LHR less attractive than an empty LGW for example.

Hi Matth, Thanks for your reply and I'm glad that my ideas at least make some sense to the team. I agree that small detail about this idea should be refined on a later stage. My stance is that I wouldn't prefer going too far for "no penalty", since I would always fly to LHR instead of LGW, ceteris paribus. There is still some considerable difference between various airports in London (LHR is always more preferred for O/D on average), and some slight penalty for choosing an alternate airport should still be reflected. 

I fully support the airport tax as fund pool for the new runway idea. I especially like the fact that the expansion decision cannot be influenced directly by players (or airline companies). One thing I wish to add is that the tax should be a flat/per-person tax rather than based on ticket prices.

25

No what I meant that if in Indianapolis are 7.4 million OD passengers per year, when an Airline XYZ opens up real life hub there and offer 100 daily departures to cities Indianapolis was not connected to before, the OD traffic in Indianapolis increases substantially over the 7.4 million, without counting the connecting traffic.

The AS implementation would be, for example, a 5 bar airport growing into a 7 bar airport with 2000 weekly departures because a new local OD demand is generated. The bars reflect demand generated in that city, again I am not talking about connecting passengers which can connect through any airport on their journey. I am talking about a real life hub airport that grows local traffic. The reason local traffic is grown is that a hub makes the city grow, new businesses base there, new people move in, tourism increases, and it’s a snowball effect. This is just fact of life.

If Indianapolis becomes large hub in real life, it gets reflected in AirlineSim. It would become an 8 bar airport with a patch update and corresponding increase in local demand. But the same thing happening in AirlineSim has no effect within AirlineSim. In this aspect, it’s not a simulation of real life, but rather copying the real life.

A player wrote above that building runway and increasing slots would be running airport Sim and not airline Sim. But organic growth would be exactly airline business related Sim.

Hi rubiohiguey2000, I think you made a good point about dynamic airport growth. However, I'm concerned about that the time horizon of "growing local traffic" might not align with the time horizon of the game. I would say the additional O/D generated by increased connection from an airport would take at least 3 - 5 years to materialize, and most of the players on AS haven't play this game for so long. It is also quite difficult for the team to research for the constant that exactly quantifies the effects using existing literature, and I think many players won't be satisfied with an arbitrary number.

26

@hczeitgeist - Good point, yes, exactly the effects would need to be investigated and a formula crated. But anyway there is already a formula that distributed passengers on city pairs, that formula also had to be invented. A time frame of 3 to 5 years in real life is very reasonable, but with the so frequently mentioned acceleration factor of 4, that could mean 1 year here. Not that unreasonable any more. And the increased local demand might be a nice bonus to a player who already build 5000 connections in Wichita Kansas.

@ the other player above hczeitgeist - Yes own maintenance providers, why not. It had been several times on the list of suggestions if you use Google search. No wheel invented there. The same way you could say that code shares or joint Ventures should not even be thought of in AirlineSim… Yet they pop up every now in then in the suggestion box. AirlineSim started with a very basic demand model as I was informed. ORS came only later on. I am sure some player might have said the same thing then as you do now, well it’s transport Sim not analytical Sim to try to find out what are the connection and passenger flows. According to what was publicly written, new ORS might bring more dramatic changes than having own maintenance provider would.

You are enjoying features that are result of “unimaginable features” in the past. If everything would be just copying of real life you would not be able to fly your airline as you currently do. You would not be able to fly from a huge US East coast gate way to tens of European cities or build a hub midcontinent.

What you say has actually no logic to it. Just copying the real life is not sufficient, while it is okay in some areas, in others it leads to stillness and stiffness. Had AirlineSim always just copied the real life it would not be AirlineSim we know today.

27

i am not sure the player above me reading me right, so he's free with his own imaginary world.

28

@ the other player above hczeitgeist - Yes own maintenance providers, why not. It had been several times on the list of suggestions if you use Google search. No wheel invented there. The same way you could say that code shares or joint Ventures should not even be thought of in AirlineSim... Yet they pop up every now in then in the suggestion box. AirlineSim started with a very basic demand model as I was informed. ORS came only later on. I am sure some player might have said the same thing then as you do now, well it's transport Sim not analytical Sim to try to find out what are the connection and passenger flows. According to what was publicly written, new ORS might bring more dramatic changes than having own maintenance provider would.

You are enjoying features that are result of “unimaginable features” in the past. If everything would be just copying of real life you would not be able to fly your airline as you currently do. You would not be able to fly from a huge US East coast gate way to tens of European cities or build a hub midcontinent.

What you say has actually no logic to it. Just copying the real life is not sufficient, while it is okay in some areas, in others it leads to stillness and stiffness. Had AirlineSim always just copied the real life it would not be AirlineSim we know today.

I am not suggesting own maintenance provider is a new suggestion, I frequently check the forum so no need to use google search, I am familiar with topics being discussed, so thanks for your suggestion to use google search anyway.

I am not suggesting AS to copy real life is sufficient, they use real life data to create a realistic simulation environment, which imo is good enough so far. I had no idea how your mind works saying I have no logic, so sorry for that. 

29

Guys, calm down!

This adds nothing useful to the topic that should be discussed here.

30

No what I meant that if in Indianapolis are 7.4 million OD passengers per year, when an Airline XYZ opens up real life hub there and offer 100 daily departures to cities Indianapolis was not connected to before, the OD traffic in Indianapolis increases substantially over the 7.4 million, without counting the connecting traffic.

The AS implementation would be, for example, a 5 bar airport growing into a 7 bar airport with 2000 weekly departures because a new local OD demand is generated. The bars reflect demand generated in that city, again I am not talking about connecting passengers which can connect through any airport on their journey. I am talking about a real life hub airport that grows local traffic. The reason local traffic is grown is that a hub makes the city grow, new businesses base there, new people move in, tourism increases, and it’s a snowball effect. This is just fact of life.

If Indianapolis becomes large hub in real life, it gets reflected in AirlineSim. It would become an 8 bar airport with a patch update and corresponding increase in local demand. But the same thing happening in AirlineSim has no effect within AirlineSim. In this aspect, it’s not a simulation of real life, but rather copying the real life.

A player wrote above that building runway and increasing slots would be running airport Sim and not airline Sim. But organic growth would be exactly airline business related Sim.

Would a city revert to its smaller size once the hub that made it grow is closed?  In the 3 years that Gatow has been around, I have seen just about every mid size city used as a hub by someone or another.  Some of those hubs only lasted a couple of days, some a few months and some years.  If the city does not revert to its smaller size once the hub is closed, the game would lose all of its mid size cities, as they would be much larger in the game than real life.

31

Yes, it should be normal that the city would then revert back to actual traffic (OD traffic as represented by the bar size) as per real world ... same as what happened with Memphis, Nashville, Cleveland, Cincinnati, etc. Memphis actually lots a lot of traffic/demand in AS last year (passenger side).

Large corporations actually relocated in real life after hub cities were dehubbed. I do not have examples from the top of my head, but they can be goofled. Some may not relocate completely, but downsize in that particular location. Being hub city (especially if there is real life economic activity) brings in a lot of O/D traffic, businesses etc. Let's take Des Moines, IA. It is one of the top insurance cities in the US. Now if it was a real life hub, with hundreds of daily flights across the US, more insurance companies would move in, or increase operations in the city, which would create more demand for O/D among business passengers. Just one of the examples...

Another example... San Antonio, TX is a "hot" tech city (Silicon Valley of Texas). I know none of the current large US airlines opens up a hu there, but let's say Virgin America or new startup airline with huge backing opens up a hub there. Even more companies would move into SAT, and because SAT is also attractive for tourism, more tourists would come, now being just a non-stop flight away. Of course things like this do not happen overnight, so it might be that an airline X has so-and-so de[artures in order to be raised bar-size of the airport, for X amount of time (e.g. 12 months of real life time). If the airport is still so huge with departures, AirlineSim would simulate real life reality, (where real life O/D demand would increase) and would increase the bar size (and direct demand) of that airport.

32

Good day everyone

now, what is the reason the idea of builing additional rwys is on the table? It is about increasing a restricted resource, namely slots, to allow more departures. For the sake of thisargument, let's forget about how the new rwy comes into being, who pays for it, etc. Let's just assume, a new rwy opens, new slots become available. Well, who has the capital to fill up those slots fast? Usually the big airlines. Even, if rules are in place limiting big players' access to a new rwy, they would still get a fair share of it.

But, for the sake of this argument, let's forget about the actually who gets how many slots. Let's consider what happens now that there are more departures. Either, the increase in slots is not enough to allow so many flights, that pax demand is exceeded. in this case, we have the same scenario as before, just a few months later. We once again have too few slots.

Or maybe, the incresae was enough, so now, we have all the slots we want, but not enough pax. no one is really profitting, but new airlines are hurting the most. Why? Well, let's say we have a total pax demand of X. Before the new rwy, an imaginary airline had 4000 weekly departures, and a newly founded airline has 500. So, if all other factors are the same, the newly airline has a shot at having ( 500 / 4500 = ) a ninth of the total pax sitting in his/her aircrafts.

Same situation but after an increase (however it came to be) of slots, the our imaginary established airline grew to 5000 slots. The new airline still can only afford enough aircraft to end up with 500 flights. So now, he/she has a shot at (500/5500= an 11th of the total pax.

So, if we allowed building new rwys with the main argument to help new players, will we now increase the number of total pax? (which, btw, wouldn't help new airlines any more than more slots).

The well-known, well discussed and certainly well-thought of (by the AS team) issue is the demand distribution system. For as long as it is more economical to have many small a/c fly the same route many times rather than having fewer flights with demand-appropriate a/c and a good connection set-up (not by sheer number but by intend), there is no solution. All that can be done is to counteract some of the symtoms. Personally, I think increasing a limited resource such as slots is not doing that, but is only delaying the symptoms. (not to mention, that, in my opinion, it is exactly the limited resources that makes this game worth playing)

Until a solution to the demand distribution can be found and - more importantly - actually be implemented (which I believe to be a real hazzle), we are stuck with counteracting symptoms. For this problem, I believe to give economical incentives to use bigger planes and fly the same route fewer times is better suited. One way could be to make it really expensive to fly the 25th daily flight on the same route. Maybe make slot pricing depended on airline size or on number of flights already on the planned route (either total or by the operating airline) - or maybe a combination of both.

However, this topic is on building new runways, so this idea is for another thread.

Regards

33

@yukawa - what you write is nice, and most probably true. BUT,...

What you and fellow "runway expansion opposition" don't understand is that if airline currently slot dominates an airport airport, then even increased fees and changes in ORS will not make it release the slots. That is on existing world's.  So an airline would earn 200 instead of 400 million with additional fees and changes in booking assignments.  Still a small price to pay to not let competition in.

In worst case scenario, airlines would reschedule those slots to another destinations.  So they just release slot on Route A and book it for route B. Still no change in slots.  So they will now fly to more destinations or smaller airports they did not fly to before.  But I can assure that once an airline has slots it is not releasing them.

Let's say I fly to 207 destinations from IAD and there may be more than 40 or 50 cities in Europe I fly to.  So now imagine there are system changes that I cannot fly a 20 minute shuttle to JFK, so I use those slots to fly to some one and two bar airports across the USA I am not flying from IAD at the moment.

In any case, 25th daily flight on a same route is nothing unusual. As I already wrote, Avianca runs over 30 daily flights between Bogota and Medellin daily, in real life. Same situation goes on in Brazil on SDU-CGH route. AS is always thought of as a 4-time multiplier of real life. That would make it 120 daily flights in AirlineSim on a same route, be comparable to 30 daily flights on a route in real life.

At the end even with any kind of changes implemented, there would be only very few slots released back to the pool. Routes will be rescheduled, new destinations will be opened, slots exchanged within alliances. But the same slots number will keep to be taken.

34

But - and this is were AirlineSIM starts and leaves AirlineARCADE - if in your example further slots in Bogota are not available to existing and new enterprises, Avianca would use larger aircraft and therefore reduce some daily flights to open new routes. This happened before here in FRA in real life as well. And in matter of new airlines, in general they don't have any chance to enter an airport in reality too, where all slots are occupied. They get a chance if an antitrust authority demands so (i.e. on making contracts with oponents).

35

as an answer to rubios' comment:

I understand your arguments, I simply come to a different conclusion.

I agree that by increasing the number of slots (in whatever way) there is a chance for newly founded or young airlines to get a hold of some of these slots. But as there are a lot of airlines around that have way more capital (both the major airline(s) already based at the particular airport and other airlines from the same country), only few of those slots could actually be used by the young airlines. In my opinion, all it would do, is increase the number of flights any newly founded or young airline would have to compete against, thus reducing their chances of success even further.

So, I come to the conclusion that increasing the number of available slots is actually counterproductive for all young airlines.

edit: grammar

36

Well, SK, Avianca would never run a wide body on that route, because even for them it makes no financial sense to run such heavy aircraft on a 400 km route.

37

They would, if they would have the need. You can/could see that in Europe and Asia too.

38

They would, if they would have the need. You can/could see that in Europe and Asia too.

SK, I do not see 767s or 330s or 787s running on FRA-MUC, or CDG-NCE or ZRH-GVA or LHR-MAN in Europe either.

Yes, you can sometimes see widebodies on intra-European routes  - when the airlines are bringing new aircraft type in and training crews.

e.g. http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6493655/

But those are "random flights" and very very scarce. And only happen when new model is brought in by the airline.

39

Within germany LH was flying the AB6 between FRA and TXL/HAM/MUC and sometimes DUS - since the new runway in FRA is in use and more slots are available, LH started more often flights and stoped the service with this aircraft type.

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