Problem: People leasing 5,672 LETs and hogging every available slot as a means to prevent competiton from being able to grow.
[Edit: Reading now in the announcement forum, I see this is called "Slot Blocking".]
A modest proposed solution: As airports fill up, there should be an acquisition and/or ongoing rental cost for slots that is progressively applied. That is, costs increase per slot pair for people who take more slots.
[Edit: Or, reading that this is not the first instance of this problem, perhaps this airline should be reset. But I would still submit a "slot tax" as a possible more general solution that resetting / fining airlines.]
Details: My airline is based in Lima, Peru. There were two major airlines hubbed in Lima (Aero Chasqui and Peru Sky), each with about 600 flights, and one or two smaller carriers. A new "competitor" (monopolist?) has come to town, and in the space of a week or so has so far rented 50 LET410-UVP's and put them on short routes, taking over 1200 slots at the only hubbable airport in the country - as many slots as the two major carriers combined. But, of course, since this guy isn't flying regional jets or larger turboprops, he doesn't fly the number of passengers the others do.
The problem with this is not the competition per se but the exploit of the limited availability of free slots in order to prevent other airlines from using the airport. This is notably unrealistic. It would be impossible, and impossibly expensive, for a startup to march into a fairly major airport and consume every slot available for no significant cost. First, there would likely be enormous gate and other costs incurred in real life, and secondly, the governments and others that run airports would never allow a major international airport to be filled up with 15 seater local flights when other airlines were eager to fly larger planes to more distant destinations.
From experience reporting won't help as I guess AS dont count it as slot blocking under the rules as the player is not operating within the same metropolitan area. I have asked AS for clarification of why this sort of "stratergy" is not counted as slot blocking but I have not recieved a reply (email sent 2+ weeks ago to support@).
I have suggested, like yourself, that when an airport reaches near saturation point (less than 10% of slots available) that as in the real world, the costing for handling increases dis-proportionatly for smaller aircraft, or simply aircraft with less than a certain number of seats are banned. This happens in real life as at the end of the day airports are also businesses. The more passengers = more money in fees, shopping, outlets etc = more profit for the airport. When a LET is blocking a slot that could be used by an A380...we know what the airport would choose
Does he have interlines? I often wonder, how many airlines interline with such guys.
Write to his interline partners, describing the facts and ask them if they really want to partner with such an airline... I'm sure most of them will back down.
Not a future solution, but at least a bit of "social pressure".
sk, this sounds good, I run European Air Shuttle and is the largest airline based on
FRA, in Gatow
It has in the past weeks appeared a new airline that has 660 + departures and the largest aircraft is A81 but most of the flights is conducted by aircraft like AT5, SF3 and other “small” aircraft.
This means that it is not possible to bring about any reasonable route from FRA now.
Now I do not know what kind of aircraft that is used from FRA in reality, but I doubt that but sees many of the mentioned airplanes.
I’m not saying that my competition cheats, he does not. It must be rather a change in the game, allowing larger aircraft should be used at major airports
My LET man in Lima has leased 10 more planes. Now operating 60 LETs, configured with 14 seats each, and taking over 1500 slots at the only airport in the country where connections are permitted.
Its good to see sk comment and good to see AS is doing something about this problem. I hope that the solution does come sooner rather than later to allow those such as perezoso, haarek and myself to continue to play the game fairly and realistically. Without exploiting "bugs or cheating opportunities" or "making use [of resources such as slots] of them for no other reason than to deny their use to another player is expressly forbidden" which these players are clearly doing.
I look forward to AS solution to this, and hopes it brings another further sense of realism to the game
It's very delicate... some companies do also rely on LET's! My company in Nepal, wouldn't work without LET's, so it's very important, that it would only punish people who exploit the planes, not the one, with an actual need for the planes!
Banff, I don't have a problem with LETs or other small aircraft per se. I fly a few ATR-42s, which are relatively small, and some of the very small airports in Peru won't fill anything bigger (in fact, they won't fill the ATR either!). That's the case in a lot of places.
The problem that I am trying to draw attention to is different. It is the problem of people that lease massive numbers of small planes in order to consume all the slots at airports. This "reserves" space for future growth by the offending airline, while preventing the competition from being able to grow, because the slots aren't available.
What's completely wrong about this, from a simulation standpoint, is that no major airport would ever allow itself to become so completely clogged with 14 seat flights that it prevented people that are operating large rjs, 737s, A321s, etc... from being able to grow their operations or even use the facility at all.
It's very delicate... some companies do also rely on LET's! My company in Nepal, wouldn't work without LET's, so it's very important, that it would only punish people who exploit the planes, not the one, with an actual need for the planes!
I don’t think anyone expects a Nepali carrier fly a A380 (or even an 75 seater…maybe) on a domestic route. It is a delicate thing, do 14 seaters count as Blocking in Nepal…NO! Do 14 seaters count as blocking in Dubai? Yes, if it is not a real world plausible scenario!
I’d say that 20 LET in Lima is on the edge of believable. 60 is slot blocking if they don’t even fly a “network” of routes.
I don't think anyone expects a Nepali carrier fly a A380 (or even an 75 seater...maybe) on a domestic route. It is a delicate thing, do 14 seaters count as Blocking in Nepal...NO! Do 14 seaters count as blocking in Dubai? Yes, if it is not a real world *plausible* scenario!
I’d say that 20 LET in Lima is on the edge of believable. 60 is slot blocking if they don’t even fly a “network” of routes.
Well, that’s my point. It is hard to find a way to punish a player in Dubai with 20 LET’s, if you dont want to punish the guy in Nepal, or Mongolia etc.
Any system would have to be based on percentage of slots still available. This would solve your problem of punishing a player in Dubai and Kathmandu.
Currently in KTM I see that there are only 3x hours a day that over 50% of slots are used. In DXB there is only one hour a day where there is a slot available everyday.
Just to give everyone a good idea of the complaint. LGW has been taken over by a "slot pig" and has been reported, yet doesn't fall outside of the rules as they stand. Here are the statistics...
96% Slots Used
9648 Slot Used
Of those...
SEATER SLOTS USED %
<10 | 2002 | 20.8
<25 | 188 | 01.9
<50 | 82 | 00.8
<75 | 548 | 05.7
<100 | 1214 | 12.6
<150 | 3326 | 34.5
<200 | 466 | 04.8
<300 | 1274 | 13.2
<400 | 208 | 02.2
<500 | 208 | 02.2
>500 | 188 | 01.9
CGO | 152 | 01.6
As you can see the biggest group is 100-150 seats, which is fair enough...these are fair players. However the 2nd group is 20% for less than 10 seaters...all one airline... how is this realistic or not abuse of a bug within AS
This is also happening in ATL with Gevelair Sun, which has over 90 daily departures with LET’s as well as more than 50 with F50’s. I don’t think this is anything new, they’ve had this schedule for a while now, but as ATL is obviously a very popular airport there are very, very few slots left. I have never been able to fly there because it is just impossible to find any suitable slots. I don’t think that Gevelair is trying to block slots, this just appears to be that players strategy, they did a similar thing in Pearls, but it’s just ridiculous that they have 15 LET flights a day to places like BHM, GSP, HSV and CHA when myself and likely many other players can’t even get a single daily flight in at all.
I’m not really sure what AS could do to prevent things like this. I suppose in this particular instance they could get Gevelair to give up half their LET flights at ATL to free up slots for other players (perhaps by donating larger aircraft to them) but it would likely be a free-for-all, with many of the larger players just getting even more slots and players with no slots like myself missing out again. I think that a fair re-distribution of slots would just be too difficult and time consuming for AS to manage, but perhaps they can figure out something that will prevent this from happening in future game worlds . . .
. . . also, as far as I can see, every single airport has the exact same number of slots available, correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, this is just ridiculous. So tiny little airports that in real life have only 1 runway (and some not so tiny airports like LGW for example) have the exact same amount of slots as huge airports with more than 6 runways like ATL. The slots available for every airport in AS should be based on how many runways can be used simultaneously at that same airport in the real world. So a single runway airport gets 12 slots every 5 minutes but an airport that can use 4 runways at the same time should have 48 slots.
Pretty much everybody seems to agree that it should not be possible to use tons of flights with dozens of very small aircraft as a means of blocking access to a major airport. At the same time, nobody debates that you should also be able to operate small aircraft to big airports when it makes rational sense (e.g. flying into Katmandu from small Nepali airports, or Lima from tiny Andean outposts, or around Pacific islands).
The solution should, as best it can, reflect the reality that it would be impossible in real life to displace larger "mainline" aircraft from a major airport by taking all the slots with a 10, 12, 14 seater.
My idea was a progressive "slot tax" that would make it financially unviable to occupy too many slots with tiny airplanes at major airports. ianmanson similarly suggested that handling fees should spike when airports get near saturation.
Maybe one could have two components to the handling fee when used at large airports. One part of the fee would be per rotation, regardless of the aircraft size. The other component of the fee would be per passenger (as, if I understand it correctly, it is currently done). If the per rotation component of the fee is large enough, then it should create an incentive for larger aircraft at the big airports that can fill them.
Maybe one could have two components to the handling fee when used at large airports. One part of the fee would be per rotation, regardless of the aircraft size. The other component of the fee would be per passenger (as, if I understand it correctly, it is currently done). If the per rotation component of the fee is large enough, then it should create an incentive for larger aircraft at the big airports that can fill them.
This sounds like a pretty good idea, as it would make operating such small aircraft out of larger airports effectively unprofitable. Now if an airline was using a few smaller aircraft to create feed for their larger aircraft, then it most likely wouldn't be that much of a problem for them if those smaller aircraft were losing money, because the feed they would generate would probably more than make up for it. In the case of Gevelair in ATL that I mentioned above, they don't really have a hub operation at ATL and all those LET flights are not feeding into a larger network (although they probably do feed into to each other to an extent as well as to interlining partners). If the rotation fee was implemented as you suggest, then most of their LET flights would likely become unprofitable and they would have to start using larger aircraft and give up most of their slots.
When I wanted to land in Dubai was not a slot-pair available. Until today I can book flights to Dubai 140 without complaining.
Frankfurt? Yes, Mega Airports connections need to mega airports and done with large aircraft. However, there are no flights from George Town (Bahamas) to Lepizig. So the customers fly from George Town to Nassau, flies to Frankfurt and from there to continue to grow in Frankfurt on a flight to Leipzig. Use of a 737 George Town to Nassau does not pay and the same applies to Frankfurt > Leipzig.
There are three airlines from Frankfurt serving smaller airports to Frankfurt. These airlines are for others the only cast airplanes in the mega-airports connect very important because the passenger will not be possible even to Frankfurt, but after Leizig and increases in Frankfurt just. Smaller airports can be economically only fly small planes. Also from Frankfurt. Therefore have the long distance provider interlining with the short-distance fliers, even if they have their stroke on both the Mega Airport.
You see, there are other business models to achieve than large aircraft with high PAX. And these business models complement yours, because without the great links to the mega-airport, this business model would not work.