Flight attendant configuration

I have a suggestion and I apologize if this has been discussed elsewhere on this forum.

I have noticed for a long time now that when players want to configure an Aircraft’s cabin configuration, the plane comes pre-loaded with a certain minimal number of flight attendants. This automatically imposed F/As do not seem to impact the rating in any way. Players are often forced to add additional F/As in other to have positive rating (green bar) for each class.

My suggestion is simple - why does A/S not simply leave the planes unattended and allow us to configure the F/As the way we really prefer? For instance, a 100 seat jet with 10 business class seats and 90 Economy class seats came pre-loaded with 2 F/As which had no impact on the ratings whatsoever. (such a waste!). With the specified configuration, a player is forced to add another 2 F/As just so as to get positive green bars (1 for business class and 1 for economy). For a mere 100 seats, 4 attendants seems very high and unrealistic! 

If plane had come without any imposed F/A, it would have made sense to assign perhaps 2 F/As to economy class and 1 F/A to Business class! I believe it would also make sense for the average economy passenger to be happy with F/A to passenger ratio of about 1: 50 pax. Business class will obviously demand more attention - more like 1:20 or something similar.

This will allow players to efficiently assign F/As and optimize labour cost! I cannot for the life of me, see how it is reasonable for a 60 seat plane to have 3 F/As just so that it can get green bars. I strongly believe that superior gaming algorithms should allow planes to be entirely configured by player and only score the passenger rating based on pre-established F/A to passenger ratio rules (such as 50:1 or something)

English is not my native language.

I suggest that you switch off all "comfort functions" and do everything in the way you like it.

Flight attendants:

After a cabin configuration you can not change any small details anymore accept the number of flight attendants.

You can increase the number of flight attendants always to the number of jump seats available. Try it.

First of all, if you want to save on labour cost, just fly with the minimum number of F/As. That rating is inly one of many and it makes no sense to start of a rating system were the lowest rating is “good”. The ORS ratings already lack a more differentiated take, anyhow

Second of all, there is a legal requirement for one f/a per 50 pax.

Thirdly, the costs of additional flight attendants are lower than the additional money you can ask from pax and still achieve the same ORS rating.

Ranier and Yukawa, try and understand what is being said. Imagine if you had no option to switch off the default plane configuration? Imagine if when you played, the game always automatically gives you a plane with default cabin configuration (and charges you for it!) before allowing you to re-configure cabin (and then charge you again!)?? This would be inconvenient, wasteful and makes no sense! In A/S, a player can go to game setting and switch off the "default configuration of planes" - this means planes get delivered with no seat! Player then gets a chance to configure plane the way he/she deems fit.

I am simply asking for a similar option with F/As. No one is saying that the rating system should start off on good. What is being said is that just like seat is allowed to be configured wholly without interference, let F/As be assigned too. Heck, in A/S you could even buy a plane without pilots! Why not F/As? The best explanation is to give an example:

Let us use the small jet - Antonov’s An-148 as an example. Empty plane comes with no seats and apparently no F/As.

  • Configure it for 8 Recliner Longhaul business seats

  • Top up with Leisure Economy seats (which gives you 65 seats)

  • Once you choose economy seats, A/S automatically assigns 2 F/As to the plane. (you had no choice in this!)

  • Check the Flight Attendant rating and you will see that the 2 assigned F/As still leave you in red!

  • With the two assigned F/As, it could mean the little jet plane has 1 F/A assigned to Business class which means a ratio of 1 F/A to 8 pax. If this is the case, why is the flight attendant rating for business class still two red bars??

  • Or maybe the two assigned F/As were dedicated to the economy class. This means a ratio of 1 F/A to 32.5 economy pax! If this were to be the case, a quick glance reveals that the economy flight attendant rating is STILL a single red bar!!

  • The problem is that I have 2 automatically assigned F/As who are neither here nor there - they make no impact in any way and are useless!

  • To get acceptable flight attendant rating, player is forced to add 1 F/A for Business class and another 1 F/A for economy class!

  • This means you need 4 attendants for a mere 73 passengers!!

This makes you wonder what the entire purpose of the two automatically assigned F/As are??

MY PROPOSAL:

Using the same plane delivered with no seats and no F/As

  • Imagine if choosing your seat configuration had nothing to do with automatic F/A assignment? (separate the two functions!)

  • OK, …now we have the same configuration of 8 business Recliner Longhaul seats and 65 Leisure Economy seats (Remember, …no automatic F/A assignment)

  • Let us assume having no F/A assigned meant having 4 or 5 Red bars in flight attendant rating.

  • Imagine if player assigned only 1 F/A to the economy section, meaning a ratio of 1 F/A to 65 pax - this could reduce flight attendant rating to 2 Red bars

  • Let us assume player also assigns 1 F/A to business class, meaning a ratio of 1 F/A to 8 pax - this should give good green bar rating!

  • Imagine if player decided to add one more F/A for economy class (making 2 F/As) - this will mean a ratio of 1 F/A to 32.5 pax, which could give a flight attendant rating of 1 or 2 green bar!

In all, you can see that in my proposal, using just 3 F/As, it is possible to attain green bars. However, in the existing system, a player is forced to use 4 F/As to attain anything close to green bars because of the “pre-assigned” F/As which had no use or rating! It makes more sense and is more realistic that a plane configured for 73 passengers would have 3 F/As than using an unrealistic 4 F/As just to attain green bar! Furthermore, you can see that with my proposal, even when a player decides to use just 2 F/As (1 for Business and 1 for economy), the flight attendant rating is still very good for business class and not so great for economy class.

Allowing player to choose how he/she wants to assign F/As without imposing on them makes the system more realistic and efficient for airline! In my example above, if the player decides to use 2 F/As for the economy class only, then it could give a solid green rating for economy and a 4 or 5 bar Red rating (terrible) for business class! It is a choice and is flexible!

CONCLUSION:

  • I believe it would be better if F/A assignment was not connected to cabin configuration automatically (an option to switch off, maybe?)

  • Let players determine how best to assign their own F/As (just like seat configuration and service profile)

  • Gaming code and algorithm could give rating based on ratio of F/A to passengers (for instance, 1 F/A to 50 economy pax could be 1 Red bar)

  • Allowing such flexibility not only improves realism in game, it also allows player flexibility and even realistic ways to tweak and mess with profitability (this is what real world airline management is about!)

  • In the end, a player should be able to make determination about Cabin configuration, Service profile, Maintenance contractor and now, Flight attendant assignment in realistic ways!

I hope I have made some sense.

MY PROPOSAL:

Using the same plane delivered with no seats and no F/As

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You just need to switch off all comfort functions!

I buy / lease all my aircrafts since 6 years without any pilots / seatings / flight attendant.

There is a requirement to have a minimum of 1 FA per 50 PAX. Think of them as general FA who take care of all the passengers, and then if you want a better rating you can assign additional FA to specific class.

There is a requirement to have a minimum of 1 FA per 50 PAX. Think of them as general FA who take care of all the passengers, and then if you want a better rating you can assign additional FA to specific class.

The legal requirement is why it’s automatic, the alternative would be coding so that the plane cannot fly without the minimum number of f/a. As far as I am concerned it’s fine, as I always determine the number of flight attendants anyway. The plane is only delivered with flight attendants, if you choose to use the comfort feature. Otherwise they are only hired once you install the seats. I don’t see it as a problem.

yeah, what they said, because I did read what you wrote @Midas.

 

- Imagine if choosing your seat configuration had nothing to do with automatic F/A assignment? (separate the two functions!)
  • OK, …now we have the same configuration of 8 business Recliner Longhaul seats and 65 Leisure Economy seats (Remember, …no automatic F/A assignment)

  • Let us assume having no F/A assigned meant having 4 or 5 Red bars in flight attendant rating.

  • Imagine if player assigned only 1 F/A to the economy section, meaning a ratio of 1 F/A to 65 pax - this could reduce flight attendant rating to 2 Red bars

 no matter what the virtual rating, the actual result would be, that there were 23 seats you have onboard that you are not allowed to sell tickets for.

I guess the game designers just never had it in mind, that anyone would want that kind of "freedom".

and btw, I do understand that you could, in theory, save one f/a and still fullfil the legal requirements following your suggestion, but let me tell you: the way AS distributes pax, if you were to go that way, you could just as well not install business seats in the first place, as you wouldn't get any pax anyhow.