Introducing AirlineSim Enhancement Suite BETA

[Marcipanas]

Hello AS community!

I have been playing AS since at least 2012 when I just started university in Canada. As most of you, I have that passion for aviation. Now 8 years later, from a different continent, with some breaks in between, while working in the aviation industry, I am still here enjoying being a CEO of my virtual airline. Used to be quite active on the forums at the beginning, but now turned more into a lurker here.

With the current global pandemic happening all over the globe the aviation sector has been hit really hard and for me it also meant that I had to reduce work to only 20% instead of 100%. That has left me with a lot of free time, which I have decided to spend to improve myself. Therefore, I have decided to give something back to the AS community and create my first ever chrome extension. As I work on systems, I was already quite familiar with several programming languages. However, I have never done much of JavaScript (main language for chrome extension programs), therefore it was quite interesting developing this as I have discovered and learned so much. Unfortunately, this also means that there can be many issues/bugs with the extension as I was kinda doing it trial and error way to see how and what works (kinda like AirlineSim when you are new ).

Introducing AES BETA
Since I work in the revenue management area I was always interested in pricing topics. Therefore, the first beta release comes with the first module which is dedicated to route pricing where you can:

• Easily see your route overview across with some analytics for the whole network.
• Automatically update prices to optimal levels.
• Automatically save historical load data.
• Customize most of the settings to fit your airline needs.

This makes it easier to manage big airlines in regards to always having up to date inventory (route) pricing.

Unfortunately if you are doing flight number specific pricing this might not bring any benefit to you as the first module only deals with cases where the whole route is priced at the same level. However, in the future AES might also get an update to do flight number pricing.

You can add this extension to you chromium based browser (like Google Chrome or Brave) here:
Chrom Web Store - AES

Here is a guide I wrote on the current functionality and how to get started after adding the extension:
AES Guide

Future modules
I have a plan to keep developing it to include more and more modules to improve quality of life on things that can be done via the extension. There are areas where extensions can not have any effect, like anything requiring talking with the actual AS database or back-end.
I already have few ideas that I want to further develop:

• Automate flight number based pricing - Similar to route management but on a more granular level to have analysis and prices on individual flight numbers.
• Automate Human Resources - Have something that would allow you once a week to set your desired price in comparison to the current country salary level (like always keep salaries at national average level etc.).

Also, I am interested in hearing your ideas of what you are struggling with and maybe we could do something with the AES to improve this.

I am eager to hear all the feedback!

[tso310]

Looks interesting.
I might be doing something wrong. Do I have to go through all my Inventory pages to save the data for Route Management ?

[derMaster1]

I’m just trying it out a little bit.
Thanks for investing your time and knowledge into this AS-tool!

@tso310
I’m not sure, but it seems that the tool copies the data from each single inventory side.
To do this a little bit more easier, “all” inventory pages can be loaded with one button on the “overwiew”-panel. They will all open, but also close after a second (as long as you checked the box in the preferences - otherwise you have to close them all one by one). I wrote “all” because this is done in packages of 50 connections. This is described in the manual.

I noticed that everything also works by using German language settings. Only the additional thing on the inventory page only works when picking English in AS (and for using this tool, the inventory thing is key).

For me the price recommendations are not really applicable. The indicator to lower or increase prices is the load factor in this tool. Of course the load factor works only for an A-to-B-Flight.
What I need at the beginning of an airline (that’s my current status) are prices that allow connections to have a rating over 0. Connections are normally A flight TO my hub and a second flight FROM my Hub.
As long as the rating of good connections are over 0, they are full (100%). When I increase one of the prices (e.g. 'cause the tool suggest it), the rating will be below 0 and I only have the direct paxand no transfer pax (which I normally need).
So, that’s my way to design prices at the beginning of an airline.
But I know that the Load-based approach is also valid and in the later game it’s exactly the way how it should be done.

Two Questions:

• What will happen if I extract a flightplan from a competitor? I saw that possibility when looking on other flight schedules.

• How often must the “Inventory Refresh” be done? / How many of past flight data is saved?

Thanks again for having created this.

[Marcipanas]

Yes, currently, there are two options:

1. Manual, going through all your inventory pages.
2. Automatic, enabling auto Inventory page close in the settings and going 50 by 50 via the Route Management.

[Marcipanas]

That’s good point. I have not tested in German language and some things might not be picked up correctly depending how different the English vs German website construct is. I would assume it should be the same but if some html elements use different name in German, might cause some issues.

True, currently, this is good only for P2P. I have few ides for future where I could also pick up the ORS rating for each possible route although it might take ages to go through all pages.

To answer your questions

1. Currently nothing, I forgot to mention that one other idea I have, is to create Competitor Monitoring Module where you could select other airlines to keep track of their schedule and changes.

2. Currently all past data is saved. This I realize could become a problem and slow down the app at huge amounts of past data. I have the idea to create this as a setting of how much past data the user would like to keep. You can refresh the inventory at most once per day. How often should you do it I guess is more of a personal preference. I do it every 3-5 days.

[rubiohiguey2000]

Just to be on the safe side, you consulted this with support right?

[highscore2]

I doubt it. But it is mandatory to ask the company.

[Marcipanas]

Good point @highscore2 and @rubiohiguey2000

I have not considered that at all. I will reach out to them to see if they are ok with AES

[highscore2]

As long as you have no OK, you should take the extension offline.

[nabishok]

its empty

[Marcipanas]

It is empty because there is no inventory analysis data available. After opening the inventory page you should start seeing the data in Route Management dashboard (assuming that auto data save is enabled). In the guide there is a section to automate this inventor analysis extraction.

[Marcipanas]

Version 0.5.3 released

New Features

• Personnel Management Module - allows to quickly change salary of your employees.

Changes

• Route Management Dashboard - select first 50 changed to select first 10.
• Route Management Dashboard - open inventory button changes to max 10.
• Route Management Dashboard - added inventory button next to each row to open inventory page.
• General Dashboard - displays info on last personnel salary change date.

Bug Fixes

• Inventory Pricing and Analysis not working with German language (thanks to @derMaster1
  for pointing it out).

I have also reached out to AirlineSim about the extension and it is allowed to be used by players. I had to make some changes, like reducing the amount of inventory pages that open up at once.

[derMaster1]

Nice, now I can use it without switching to the English Airlinesim.

I like the table with all the load factors (after removing some columns). This is a good visualization of some data. However, some things would make it even better:

• an additional column showing the price level (as a ratio to the standard price). I’m not sure if it’s helpful to have actually 3 values here (Y,C,F Class) or only one which is a pax-weighted mean value. (weighted by the seats offered).

• the possibility to group the inbound and the outbound flight together --> that means having both lines together (that’s what I already get by sorting them by column OD) and adding a thicker line below these two lines to indicate that this is one pair.

Just a few ideas by trying to use that tool…

[derMaster1]

And now I lost a lot of money by using your tool because it fired some pilots I hired. Very bad

[Marcipanas]

I am terrible sorry. Truly lousy programming from my side.
I have found the issue and pushed a hot fix, but it takes a day or few for chrome web store to approve new version.

[Marcipanas]

Version 0.5.4 released

Bug Fixes

• Personnel Management - clicking apply salary no longer fires any excess employees.

[derMaster1]

Hi,
I have again a problem.
The table only includes the routes I had several days ago. All new routes from the last days (the first flights have even be done) are not in that table.
I tried to extract again my flightplan. It says, that that was successful. Also in the Inventory it takes snapshots from the routes, when I go there manually. But at the end, no new routes in the table.

By the way: I have the following status regarding the extracted flightplan:
“Last schedule extract 09.0-5.-20 (NaN days ago). Extract new schedule if there are new routes.”
Maybe that explains the problem a little bit?

[LuckyPierre]

I’m having some difficulty on some routes that will not ‘load’ from the inventory screen unless I physically change a price and save it. That seems to ‘force’ the data… sometimes… anyway… Thanks for this tool… I was getting pretty bored so this gives me some new stats to chew on and much easier to mess around with stuff now… If I might suggest for rev 2: on the Fleet screen, Individual A/C FLight Plan, add a searchable summary of profit for the plane… # days and then use/force open the indv flight pages that occur in that time frame to sum the profit/loss from each flight. (or something to show if that A/C if paying for itself!)
Thanks!

[Matth]

It was a reason for me to download Chrome and check out the extension. I’m impressed and it is really nice.

Two small things.

• Some flights don’t seem to load the analysis data. On the outbound route the data is found and prices got adjusted, but on the inbound flight it keeps saying “No data for analysis”, while there are clearly finished/inflight flights. At first I thought it is for routes where I have multiple different aircraft types, but that’s not the reason. I also can’t find the data on some flights with only 1 type.

• The other is a suggestion. Would it be able to display/take into consideration the ORS rating of that flight? Cos if you already have a ORS 99/100, there’s not really a point in lowering your price. But I guess it’ll be difficult to get the values.

[flagsfly]

Same issue as poster above. Reason is “Apply Settings To: Return Airport Pair and Return Flight Numbers” is checked.

The tool only takes into account flights with the current price set. Since your price was changed on the outbound flight, there are no longer any flights with the current price when it looks at inbound flights.

Recommend adding a line in the Guide telling new users to uncheck that option before running the tool.