I was thinking if it is possible to link the airports in Airlinesim to the Metar of its airports.
I do not know which way is the best. But f.x. when calculating the demand, the airport could also check a database for the latest Metar. If the temperature is +- 3 degrees C, then there is a 30% risk of de-icing which will cost extra and give delays in a tight schedule.
This will of course unfavor the airports which are calculated from evening to the next morning where the temperature is in general lower.
Another solution could be to store the Metar report of every airport (another computer could do this) and over time calculate the average temperature of the given airport during the day. With this average it will be possible to make a random temperature for a given flight which is somehow real. (Snow in Siberia and sun in Egypt)
I don’t think weather will be implemented in AirlineSim anytime soon, or that it is even being considered, it would be too complicated and would wreck a lot of havoc. But this is just my opinion and my feelings.
Still, the implementation of delays was a great idea. The thing is that this feature is pretty pointless currently. Even with really tight scheduling, I don't experience any delay and this is sad because I expected some "action" when I first heard of this feature.
Maybe some airports could have a de-icing probability that could delay some random flights?
IRL, airline doesn't consider the weather when planning their schedule, they do consider the seasonal traffic but not directly related to the exact airport weather.
Management in airline simulation like AS focus more on the strategic level instead of the day-to-day operational level, which is highly dynamic.
The delay they introduced in the game is more like strategic delay, in which for slot matching purpose, you are willing to induce delay to your schedule.
Not the kind of delay that happen in operational level, like missing pax from the gate, annex-17 delay, adverse weather delay, last minute aircraft defect, etc.
While I would love they add more operational detail, like feature to select different airway for flight routing, but I think it's too much work and resources to spend and the experience is also not for everyone to enjoy. Not impossible but maybe in a very distant future, when they start making virtual reality AS.
Yes, I think managing everything that's happening in operational level might be annoying. Yet the simulation is supposed to happen in real time, so it could be interesting to implement some minor random events also occuring in real life. I believe that expecting the unexpected is a part of the strategy and requires some planning ahead.
Then, I find Jydskatomkraft's idea really interesting. We could have to deal with airport weather conditions, be it sand or snow storms, but also with ramp congestions etc... This way, at any given time, airports could experience departure delays that would affect players operating there, and maybe force them to rethink their strategies (scheduling etc...)
Please remember one thing… AS airline is a one-man airline. RL airlines have teams consisting of hundreds of people paid to deal with situations like these. There is only so much level of micromanagement that is acceptable. You are fine micromanaging a 10 plane airline. Get bigger and micromanagement will be a Pita.
I've never said the contrary, and I agree micromanaging is not the most interesting part of the game! (Though it would give smaller airlines an advantage over 500+ aircrafts airlines with only 99-ORS rating flights)
The challenge would be having to deal with higher probabilities of delays in some airports and having to cope with those events (by loosening schedules for example), not managing every other late passenger...
I've already had some reasonably large airlines, and at some point there's no much challenge. The only random-ish thing to happen is the AGEX fluctuation, but it's not enough to make the big ones fail, and the variations in flight durations are not sufficient to create a real disaster, with cascading delays and cancellations.