I was scheduling flights, and I noticed that on many airports there are less slots avilable than should be.
For example PEK on Stapleton should have 13 slots, but
10:05 - 100% used, but only 12 flights, same for 10:10, 10:15, etc.
10:45 is 100% full with only 11 flights
WAW on Ellinikon:
12:35 5 flights / 6 slots, but 100% full
These are just examples, but at PEK it is easier to find time with bugged slots, than with correct ones.
One time I was transferring flight from one plane to another (with errors) and I couldn't reuse a slot that provious flight was using - it became unavailable.
I read somewhere that slots should be freed after 3 days, but PEK situation has been there since I noiticed it over a month ago.
I will do that, but I believe it should be done automatically every few days.
As this is only a very rare and infrequent problem, it would be a waste of resources to run this process every few days on every game world for all the airports. It is done manually, when situation like this is discovered and reported, and I believe there is no need to do it other way.
Rare and infrequent as it may be... it is a nuisance. In the past two weeks I have replaced about 100 planes, and I have had 3 schedules that were "invalid" because the slots somehow had disappeared.
The strange thing is that for example "Departure Slots" show a green V, but "Departure Time Validity" shows a red X.
If you get the error message "flight schedule could not be transferred because it is invalid" you can only tell support there is a slot problem in one of the several airports that plane flies to. And if you start clicking on the individual flights to see which flight is affected, the schedule becomes unflyable. You know, it shows red on the fleet page. Then you have to lock the flight schedule to avoid canceled flights and hope support will be able to solve it.
Oh... in the process of trying to solve it myself by moving a flight to an earlier or later slot, I have also noticed other slots that were used for 90% according to the airport slot page, but that showed red on the flight schedule page. It may be a waste of resources to clean the slot data base on new servers, but in Tempelhof it would correct a lot of errors.
By the way, it looks as if the 737-700ER now flies faster than it used to. At least, every plane of that type that I have replaced needed manual correcting. They all arrived earlier than they used to. But at least that is something I can fix without having to bother support.
There are two possibilities usually happening, one is the slot window is overbooked, and second one is slot is there but not showing.
In the first possibility, if you switch flight plan, there is nothing that can be done as simply there are e.g. 11 slots on a 10 slot airport in that particular slot window.if you decide to not move schedule, you can actually count additional slot in that particular slot window when you do manual count on airport’s slot page.
The second possibility is the better case scenario, that the shoudl-be-free slot is not showing up, in such case slot refresh can help.
Of you click a flight affected with slot issue, and you do not click to save it but rather click away, that flight and slot on the original aircraft is not affected.
Departure time validity has nothing to do with missing slots. You get that, if a flight crosses the date. The same flight number can’t be on two different days.
Departure time validity has nothing to do with missing slots. You get that, if a flight crosses the date. The same flight number can't be on two different days.
What you mean to say is that the same flight number cannot be at two different times in one day, which can happen if departure offset crosses the UTC 00.00 time line.
Departure time validity has nothing to do with missing slots. You get that, if a flight crosses the date. The same flight number can't be on two different days.
Hi Matth,
your remark made me think.
I guess the "Departure Time Validity" check is fairly new because (as far as I remember) you got canceled flights if you moved a flight across the server midnight line and the same flight was supposed to fly twice on the same day.
I believe this happened to me once or twice and since then I set my airlines to server time.
Anyway, the flight I referred to leaves at 16:00 and lands at 20:00 and moving the flight of one day by one minute causes the "Departure Time Validity" error.
As my airline is set to server time, moving one flight from 16:00 to 15:59 should not produce a problem.
However, I have created an extra flight number for that one day and the system accepted the flight.
I don't understand how an afternoon flight crosses midnight if you use server time, but thanks to your remark that problem is solved.
However, it is still annoying when the system allows another airline to use "your" slot...
What you mean to say is that the same flight number cannot be at two different times in one day, which can happen if departure offset crosses the UTC 00.00 time line.
Actually, Jan, your flight departs at 00.00 UTC and the offset flight departs 23.59 UTC. You can ser this if you aveces your airline’s flight schedule without logging in to server (without logging in, all displayed times are UTC).
Actually, Jan, your flight departs at 00.00 UTC and the offset flight departs 23.59 UTC. You can ser this if you aveces your airline's flight schedule without logging in to server (without logging in, all displayed times are UTC).
that may well be the reason... Red Sun China is my second airline, created in 2011. It is possible that it was set on local time originally. Changing the airline from local time to server time my cause some issues.
And yes AK, at this moment my airline is definitely set on server time, I just checked it again. Besides, the flight in question departs when night ban starts in China. I don't think Chinese airports close for the night at 16:00 hrs ;-)
Uhm, PVG or BKI have a night time ban on your server? On Idlewild both airports operate 24 hours.
And you have two possibilities to set the time. You can set it for the game world (Top right Settings - Game World Settings) or then on the airline level (Airline name - Settings).
that may well be the reason… Red Sun China is my second airline, created in 2011. It is possible that it was set on local time originally. Changing the airline from local time to server time my cause some issues.
And yes AK, at this moment my airline is definitely set on server time, I just checked it again. Besides, the flight in question departs when night ban starts in China. I don’t think Chinese airports close for the night at 16:00 hrs
Jan
Just wanted George not to confuse UT with LT in your flight.
As for the validity check:
It should return an error when either UT or LT go through 00:00.
