In the real world, many countries have a competition regulator which imposes rules to prevent companies becoming too dominant in a market, preventing competition.
In AS, a simple implementation of this could be to prevent a player/holding from scheduling more than a certain percent of total slot capacity at an airport in a day. For example at a mega airport, the limit might be 25% of slots can be used by a single player, allowing 3-4 players to have a hub there. Large airports might have a 50% per-player limit, and no restriction on small/medium airports.
A alternate implementation of the competition regulator could operate more dynamically and only act when an airport is close to capacity. As well as market dominance It could consider whether slots are being used efficiently. For example load factor, aircraft size or too many daily flights on the same route. It would notify a player or players they need to reduce their slot utilisation during a particular time of the day. The player would choose which flight(s) to cancel or reschedule. If they don’t comply there would be fines or some other negative action.
Why do this? It is difficult to new players to get started on long term game worlds because major airports often have little or no slot availability. New players joining the game and creating new flight networks will also change the dynamics of the world, keeping things interesting for existing players.
Acknowledging this might be a controversial idea, I would suggest making it an optional setting for some long term game worlds rather than implementing it everywhere.
I generally support the thought that it isn’t good for the game when some players have a monopoly.
But in my view restricting the slot percentage isn’t the solution. In real life, you have plenty of airlines who have fortress hubs at mega airports. TK in IST, QR in DOH or DL in ATL comes to mind.
I‘ve made that exact proposal already 10 years ago…
There are only benefits:
The rule is easy to check, as the number of departures of each airline is shown at every airport. Competing airlines are the „watchdog“.
It adds an additional, realistic element to the game.
It increases competition and hinders slot blocking.
It increases the value of interline agreements.
Of course it depends on where the maximum number of departures (important: it has to be based on a holding and not on an airline) is set and there could be some differences between smaller and bigger airports, but generally it should be set as a percentage of maximum movements possible at an airport. This percentage is up to discussion.
Never understood why the game never went that route, especially as new servers are popping out and new things could be easily tried on temporary servers.
I mostly like the idea, except I don’t think this will work everywhere in the world. Lets take a look in Australia. There aren’t many Airlines who start in Australia, so this would negatively effect the Airports as airlines and alliances will struggle to function properly here if they can’t use the slots. We could encourage airlines to build their own terminals, which adds extra slots to it. That benefits everyone as the big airlines keep their slots, and the small airlines can use the empty space. Once airlines reach lets say 25% of the public terminal slots, they must build new terminals for extra slots. This also makes it so airlines in Dubai and Doha can still create massive carriers.