Complex proposal to "Fair Play" issue on Aspern

This complex proposal requires several steps.

PART I.

1) Exclude very small aircraft (less than 40 seaters max capacity) to fly from 10-bar airport to less than 2 bar airport, from 9-bar to 3 bar airport, from 8-bar to 4-bar airport, etc

2) Exclude medium size aircraft (less than 60 seaters max capacity) to fly from 10-bar airport to less than 3 bar airport, from 9-bar to 4 bar airport, etc.

3) Make all players using inappropriate aircraft to remove such flights form schedule and immediately force them to cancel leases on those aircraft.

PART II.

Prohibit Slimline HD in C and F class on all aircraft,

Allow Stadard as C on  less than 40 pax aircraft (see flying limitation above)

Allow Leisure as C on less than 60 pax aircraft (see flying limitation above)

Allow Leisure plus as C on less than 110 pax aircraft.

All higher-pax aircraft would have Comfort seat a minimum requirement for C.

Prohibit Standard seat in F class on all aircraft.

Allow Leisure as F on  less than 40 pax aircraft (see flying limitation above)

Allow Leisure Plus as F on less than 60 pax aircraft (see flying limitation above)

Allow Comfort as F on less than 110 pax aircraft.

All higher-pax aircraft would have Comfort Plus seat a minimum requirement for F.

PART III.

Force dropping of capacity of airlines who grew too fast because of unfair use of high density seats in premium classes.

This is the complicated part. To do this, we will use some statistical functions.

We will create an "optimal growth point" in terms of pax capacity that shoudl ahve been achieved with a normal play.

Currently there are 978 active airlines with at least 1 pax capacity

The statistical median would be airline # 489.5 (which is arithmetic mean of airline # 489 and # 490). Therefore the median capacity is 30,696 pax per week.

We need to exclude outliers form this calculation, and the outliers are the top 5% and bottom 5%. So for the calculation we will exclude anything above or below the 95th percentile from the calculated median.

95th percentile from the top (outliers): airlines 1 through 24

95th percentile from the bottom (outliers): airlines 955 through 978

This means for the calculation are excluded

Gingko Airlines (Airline # 1) 235,441 pax per week

Mexico AIrways (Airline # 24) 84,146 pax per week

and all airlines in between

on the top part

Blue Sky Company (Airline # 955) 3,366 pax per week

Ethiopian Sky (Airline # 978) 170 pax per week

and airlines in between

on the bottom part

Therefore for calculation would be used the following data:

Eastern Cathay (Airline # 25) - 83,788 pax per week

all the way through

ShawAir (Airline # 954) - 3,432 pax per week

It has been 4 weeks since server start so we calculate the remaining airiines and divide them into 4 exact quarters (normal distribution) … meaning not 3/4 of all airlines, but 3/4 of the capacity

The last quarter would be excluded.

The total capacity of airlines #25 through #954 is currently 30,162,155 seats per week. The 3/4 of this capacity is 22,621,616 seats.

The result is airlines #25 through #550 (Eastern Cathay and Asas de Janeiro) reaching total cumulative capacity of 22,635,595 seats per week.

For the airline #550 Asas de Janeiro we can confirm that the airline was started 2013-11-29 (the first week of new server) so our statistical assumption is correct.

We now again create a median, which is airline # 275 - Cascadia Airlines 40,500 pax ... this is the median pax traffic of airlines set up in the first three weeks of server.

We create arithmetic mean of pax capacity of airlines #25 through #550  which is 32,432 pax. ... this is the arithmetic mean of pax traffic of airlines set up in the first three weeks of server.

The closes airline to 32,432 per week pax capacity is airline #456 Hellenic Airways with 32,404 pax.

Finally, we need to exclude confounding factor of the airlines set up in the 3rd week of gameplay. For this reason, we will find the median between the airline #25 and airline #456, which is airline # 216 - South American Wings with 43,164 pax capacity per week.

The final calculation would be taking arithmetic mean among all the airlines located between # 25 Eastern Cathay annd Airline # 216 - South American Wings (#25 through #216). The result is 55,991 pax capacity per week.

We can provide 1% leeway which is enough to operate one roundtrip flight (560 pax) on a widebody aircraft.

The limit for top pax per week would then be 56,551 pax per week.

This means that airlines #1 Gingko Airlines through #105 Asian Star China would have to adjust their weekly caapcity to max 56,551 per week.

THIS INCLUDES MY AIRLINE.

We have now reached optimal growth pax capacity that should have been achieved with reasonable gamepay since the server start.

PART IV.

Each player who is above the stated 56,551 per week capacity has to drop flights and even aircraft.

The highest capacity aircraft must be dropped first (we have already assured dropping small capacity aircraft in Part I) until the weekly capacity of the offending airline is is par (or less) with the benchmark weekly capacity.

Also, any yet unscheduled aircraft must be dropped (retruned) and not scheduled in the meantime. Any new delivery not yet scheduled must be dropped (returned) and not scheduled. in the meantime. A maximum 1 aircraft can be ordered after the 7 and before the next 14 days.

This means that airlines with higher-than-benchmark capacity (including mine!) would not be able to increase capacity for the next 7 days, and the following 7 days only 10% increase of capacity would be permitted. This is an increase of 808 pax per day, enough to schedule 8 daily flights on one CRJ or 6 daily flights on one 737 or A320.

PART V.

Assuring dropping of capacity.

A list of airlines that are over the benchmark capacity would be published.

Airlines would also need to RECONFIGURE their existing fleets to conform to the minimum seating standard requirement as outlined in Part II. This would be mandatory to do within the next 24 hours.

A new forum would be open for the airlines to post screenshots of the before-and-after fleet management page.

The "after" fleet management page must show new config already applied to the aircraft that do not conform to the minimum seating requirement. Any player can then try-test the given config to see if it conforms to the minimum requirements. The new cabin editor tool is helpful in this as we can create configs for planes we do not even operate. So try-testing if 4/10/88 config on E195 (example)  of a particular airline is feasible and conforms to the minimum seating requirement can be done by any player.

Players would also post, along with the before-and-after screenshots, the registration numbers of aircraft and aircraft type that are being dropped (returned to lessors) and the expected return date/time (so other players can check the fleet list and see if such aircraft is still operated after the stated day/time).

PART VI.

Any airline that does not reduce capacity to the stated benchmark or does not reconfigure existing fleet to configure seats to the minimum seating standard, or does not return excess aircraft to lessor, would be given 24 hours to comply, and if not adjusted, then completely deleted from Aspern (not just restarted) and banned from the server (by username) and posted on the wall of shame.

As a final note... this is probably a very feasible solution that can be quite nicely managed by exercising fellow-player oversight. It does not discriminate one or other airline, alliance, or anybody, and uses pure statistical methods to determine the benchmark number, exclude outliers (top 5% and bottom 5%), and exclude airlines recently set up, that might be skewing the final capacity benchmark.

EDITED:

An airline that would be subject to capacity reduction and which can prove it had always used reasonable config (e.g. as stated in Part II) could submit a request to AS to request its capacity not be reduced. AS would then review logs from fleet config to see whether the minimum seating standard in C and F was always maintained throughout the airline history, and would then approve capacity stay the same. AS would then inform the public that such airline does not need to reduce capacity.

Hi,

quiet a long and well thought out post...I agree with Points I and II, but I don't like Points 3 to 6. The goal is to punish cheating/bugusing/unfair practices, not good ideas and growth. It is well possible to archive more than ~57000 Passengercapacity/week without cheating, I myself only used fair methods and I am above that figure and I am sure there are other airlines who are as big or bigger than me who are not cheating. The passengercapacity is also depending on your bussinessmodel. If you f.e. only do longrange flights with 763s you will have fewer passengers/week than and airline using 737s to do flights shorter than one hour each. Your idea would prefer airlines which didn't grow fast for some reason.

I guess the only possibilty is for the team to check out each reported enterprise and decide on a case to case basis, even if it is much work this is the only possibilty to ensure a fair handling.

Yes Duoflyer, that's why I added the part about exclusion for airlines which can prove did not use slimline or standard seats in C/F.

I did use some standard seats in C because my competitor (an ES ailrine) was doing it and I did it to try to reduce the gap. But my competitor is one of the Top 5 airlines by capacity... and I think he should be having a good chunk of his capacity dropped.... he is using standard in F...

Okay, if the airlines have to possibility to prove that they didn't use too small seats it's fine..but I'm not sure if there are logs proving the configuration for the whole period from server start, I think a screenshot of the configurations would not be sufficient as it would only show the current configuration, not the previous ones...I attached a screenshot of my configurations(which I used since serverstart-in the screenshot I blanked out my current credits and my current amount of AS$ as it has notthing to do with the configs, currently I am only using the EMBs but created an config for A321s just to check it out) to show that it's possible(I have a weekly capacity of 67600pax, so well above the number you posted above) to show that it's possible to archive this amount of passengers without unfair configurations.

I agree with the above statement except for your 4th part, that may be a bit extreme considering there are successful airlines who have transported many passengers while sticking to the rules 

Yeah, but this proposal is a bit to far and to many restrictions. We will have a discussion in the team on this the next days, but at the moment it still is christmas ;)

We definetely do not want to forbid small aircrafts from large airports if they are making sense.

Yeah, but this proposal is a bit to far and to many restrictions. We will have a discussion in the team on this the next days, but at the moment it still is christmas ;)

We definetely do not want to forbid small aircrafts from large airports if they are making sense.

I agree with you that small aircraft should not be banned from large airports, but rubiohiguey2000 has a very smart and good proposal: not allowing small aircraft to fly from a large airport to another large airport. I don't know if it's technically possible though, in fact I suspect it's not, but at least you could setup the rule and let players report a company violating the rule, just as players report airlines when flying between airports in the same city.

We had all of these ideas too in discussion, but there are not that much airlines operating such flights. So I personally don't think that we need any other in-game solution we do not have at the moment (that you could earn a lot of money with such a flight was not in our intention).

We had all of these ideas too in discussion, but there are not that much airlines operating such flights. So I personally don't think that we need any other in-game solution we do not have at the moment (that you could earn a lot of money with such a flight was not in our intention).

The problem is that this is a new server, (most) airlines are still very small and not many connections have been established, therefore there are millions of passengers that are willing to fly as there is little competition, in  a few months when the world is much more competitive, then I believe the loophole of using slimline seats for business passengers will cease to exist

We need at least definition on what is C/F abuse (seat type wise) for a particular aircraft.

You could probably get away with Economy seat in LET between a 10 bar and 1 bar airport, but no so in A380 between HKG and LHR.

So we would need at least some guidelines as posted in Part II of my proposal... and then force everybody who uses improper seat config to change it. Myself, I have already removed anything less than Leisure Plus from C class on my planes.

I disagree with everything. Your solution to the problem just involves more complex rules, further distancing from reality and most important, huge reductions in freedom. Somthing i am against it in most cases. And this is not an exception.

I'm against the use of force/aggression towards other airlines. Let the market decide who is the winner and who is the loser.

Everyone should have the freedom to set up price structures, services and seat configurations as they wish - and from there we will let the PAX decide wheter they want to buy the product or not. No central authority shall dictate minimum service standards.

Everyone could have offered tiny seats. Some chose to and some chose not to. There is nothing wrong with that. There are no victims and there are no criminals. Therefore no airlines should be punished - big or small. 

Regarding the (mis)use of small airplanes at big airports. Also there your solution reduces freedom and imposes strict and unnecessary complex rules.

I think it would be better to simply raise the landing fees at the most busy airports - significantly. At small planes you can only spread the increased costs over few seats, which would raise the per-seat costs of the flight more than it would on big airplanes, and thus motivating airlines to use large airplanes at large busy airports.

At routes between big airports and small airports, where the demand is not big enough to fill larger airplanes, it would still be possible to economically operate small turboprops on a round-trip basis, because they only pay the high landing fee in one direction at the big airport.

In this case, airlines are motivated to use small aircraft carefully and only at small routes where larger aircraft can not be operated economically, which brings this closer to realism.

Again, the mechanics of the free market offers a nice and simple solution that doesn't require complex rules or reduced freedom.

Mr. Wedoe

Good morning sleepy man. Did you have nice dreams? Welcome to the new day, now please get out of bed, brush your teeth, eat the cereals with milk, and off to school you go.... if you have not noticed this has been decided and resolved by AS looooooong time ago.

Brush teeth right before eating a meal? You must be crazy

LOL :)

no .... haven't you noticed? Small seats were decided a log time ago (January 4, I think). While I agree with some of your points, e.g. less regulation and more freedoms (and btw I  have had a handful of threads researched in recent days where AS said itself (2012-2013) small seats in business were not a big deal etc. but this issue has been decided and closed (even if the decision was contrary to statements made publicly by AS in previous years) so really no need for anyone to go back to that topic.

No, honestely i have not noticed, as i rarely check this forum.

Was January 1, actually (not Jan 4)

http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/5779-en-usage-of-small-seats-for-higher-income-on-aspern-server/