Hello there, I saw that it’s actually possible to buy leased airplanes after 4 weeks or so. Now one of the old airplanes that I leased would cost now exactly 0$ if I’d buy it, whereas if I buy one immdieately (non leased) would cost around one million. How is this “purchase option” calculated?
here the leased plane →
Purchase options are based on the book value of the aircraft. Aircraft are depreciated in AS over 24 years, so after that time, their book value is zero and so is the purchase option.
Offers on the used aircraft market always start at a minimum of 10 percent of the original value, no matter how old, and go further down when the aircraft is on the market for a longer time.
Thanks for your answer. So If I want to buy any airplane that is 24 years or older, it makes the most sense If I lease it for 4 weeks and then use the purchase option?
So you could buy them for free after 4 weeks leasing and then sell them with a nice profit after you bought them.
Sounds a bit like a bug or cheating opportunity
From my understanding that is considered cheating… i think one player on my server did that in the past.
We have a ticket pending to look into this. Just not sure yet what a good “residual value” should be for old leased aircraft. The underlying issue really is the way our leasing contracts work (or rather: don’t). Typically, real-world contracts have fixed durations with a clearly defined terms as to what happens when the contract ends. Those terms would make financial sense. The way it currently works doesn’t, really. It’s more like renting an aircraft rather than leasing it.
i don’t think anyone wants to have fixed-tern leasing for their aircraft on AS… The dynamic of the game is much ‘short-term’ than real-life.
Just some ideas to make sure the resale value is lower than buy-in one:
one option is to make sure the resell can never be higher than the buy-in: so if the aircraft is brought in as 0 AS$, then it can only sell up to the 0 AS$. This will still keep the cheaper buy-in option currently has, even though it is not realistic.
another option i can think of is to decouple the buy-in value from the leasing / book value: if the plane is rented at 50% listed price, it should still value the same way as 100% listed price. For this option, i will assume you a lower chance to buy in with 0 AS$?
i think one solution that might be needed to couple with any solutions is to have minimum price on the aircraft because any aircraft will still be worth some value, no matter how old they are even if it is just for scrap metals…
just some ideas.
It would make sense to just cap the buy option at a minimum of 10 percent of the new aircraft price to guarantee that it’s not going to be cheaper than in the aircraft market?
i think the downside of keeping the 10pct price is that if you have a 40 yrs dc8 or 707, which Kaitak has, you might be over-pricing the plane. To be fair i don’t see too many are going to operate these ancient planes for obvious reasons, but still might be an issue.
The easiest way would be to set a purchase price after 4 weeks of publicly leased aircraft is equal to minimum buy price that AS has when you sell the aircraft on the market.
If you own a 25 year old 734, it has a minimum residual value price, which you have to use as a basis and list at 50% of it on the market in order for AS to buy it. It’s just needed to link the two, the residual value price used to list aircraft for sale on the market with the buy price used to purchase a leased plane.
Really simple idea, though I have no idea of implementation simplicity or difficulty. But the idea is very simple.
In reality, a major maintanence (C check or even D check) is required before aircrafts can be transferred to a new operator. Normally, the current operator pays for these very expensive checks, which can amount to 2% of the listed price of a new plane. That’s why the real sale price can be higher than the book value, as the buyer effectively bear some of the maintenance cost. This also keeps the lessee from arbitrarily terminating the lease.
AS could introduce this one-off maintenance payment in addition to the regular maintenance cost. The payment should be based on the listed price, rather than the book value. The older the plane, the higher the payment. The payment should be charged when a leased plane is returned to the lessor or an owned plane is sold to a new owner, but not when a leased plane is purchased. This way, even if one buys an 25 year old plane for free, selling it would cost 5% of the listed price. The price must be set at higher than 5% of the listed price to be profitable.
