Redefinition of airport handling capacities

Feature Roadmap
1

What?

Replace static handling capacity expressed in discrete amounts of pax or cargo units with something more fluid and realistic. If this sound abstract, it’s because it is.

In reality, an airport would have a certain amount of aircraft stands. Some with air bridges, some without. There would also be a certain amount of gates, some larger, some smaller. The terminal housing those gates could be specious or cramped, might offer a vast array of shops and restaurants, or not. Baggage handling could be modern and fast, or old and slow. The amount of security lines, check-in counters and baggage belts might be appropriate for a day’s peak traffic…or not. You get the idea.

An airline scheduling a flight to an airport requires all of these “capacities”, both in the actual sense - there has to be a gate - but also temporally - there has to be a gate from when the passengers start arriving until the aircraft leaves.

The “fluid” aspect mentioned in the first paragraph captures all the other attributes: You might be able to process a B767 worth of pax at a gate intended for narrow-body-sized planes, but pax won’t like it and there’s a high chance of delays or “operational challenges”. At the same time, all other parts of the building need to handle those pax either way and, up to a point, will do so. Again, it might just be slower than intended and passengers will suffer, but things wouldn’t suddenly stop working.

All in all, there isn’t a hard limit to what a terminal can handle, but the more the actual usage deviates from the designed usage, the worse the experience will be, with negative impact on both customer ratings/image and operational reliability.

All of this might be temporary, with a terminal operating at or beyond its design limit at certain times of the day but not others. Again, all of this would be rather fluid, just in the real world.

Why?

The way terminals currently work is silly and far too simplified. The value they add to the game is minimal and the way they are built and used breaks immersion, imo (think “41 terminals at FRA”).

That said, this is more of a conceptional topic, but one worth exploring on its own (possibly without any actual code changes). It is supposed to serve as the foundation for other features in the realm of infrastructure and ground handling.

When?

Anytime.

2

Would that mean that you cannot build your own terminals anymore?
I like the idea but could end up in a new “slotblocking” saga.

3

I agree we could see some new sense of slotblocking but more from a standpoint of operational restrictions.

While it does sound interesting on paper I think the level of complexity needs some real thought into what exactly this would look like to allow for a degree of balance. Personally I would like to see a concept or test world since I wouldn’t want to jump straight into a yay or nah conclusion.

I think its worth having a model that compromises between the two f’s - fun vs frustration. After all its worth remembering we’re all individuals trying to run a virtual airline compared to fully staffed flight planning, operation, marketing, admin/hr departments etc etc at the disposal to organise & run real world airlines.

I mean for instance if you see a lot of delayed operations would that then impact on flight ops if the airport is already at capacity, would it impact on other airline ops if gates aren’t available at time of planned arrival or would it just be a static requirement that a like for like gate is available in the schedule planning?

Would terminal operations include ground handling challenges like baggage & would that include simulation of baggage delays? Would that result in financial implications? You could then have profiling where domestic locals usually travel light compared to tourists & tourists leave more time before gate closers then local commutes. You could also have an airport with a poor baggage handling system but if an airline wants to have a gate occupied sooner in the turn around & subsequently close the gate sooner they could. So naturally it would be easy to assume that bad baggage infrastructure could impact customer experiences but if an airline operates with a model where pax are allocated to gates sooner then it could be argued that in some cases pax may not be any of the wiser if the departure slot isn’t missed. Since it would have forced the pax through check-in sooner providing more time for baggage handlers to move the baggage out to the aircraft. That would also increase dwell time in the airport & we all know everyone hates waiting in airports lol, would that have a rating calculation? Same could be said for boarding times & if you had a baggage delay one time that would have a negative impact on customer satisfaction compared to the satisfaction rating of a standard boarding process either rated high with good airport infrastructure or less desirable infrastructure.

I mean there could be thousands of different operational reasons that impact flights & customer satisfaction. Many of them backend that you wouldn’t even realise, but it all adds up & comes together to make ur 10, 15 minute, 2 hours delay or whatever it is.

The other thing in the back of my mind is that there is a good reason why the airline industry is fairly static in today’s world & you don’t see many successful new ventures. In fact we’ve seen a good handful of airlines disappear from Europe over the past couple of decades.

I can also say that from previous work based at an airport that on an operational level. It was very clear for workers to predict that one of the established long term regional airlines based in Europe would cease operations many years in advance of the fact due to operational restrictions, poor planning & slot competition/expenses. & poor infrastructure, for example u mention baggage belts that is whatever is provided by the airport but would that include the airline’s own computer systems? Of which this airline’s system wasn’t a net positive to operational effectiveness combined with handling operation sop’s etc etc. Of course there were other factors as well which isn’t relevant to the above like poor fare & baggage management but I digress.

Overall though, yes I agree the current terminal system is very basic but when you look at it, depending on how deeply in depth we’re looking at its a bit of a case of how far down the rabbit hole do we go. I tried to not make too many examples for this very reason. But yes we could go into deep simulation like a flight simulator but is the infrastructure available capable of it & the overall operational complexities that all airlines will have to face with this. Particularly since again this model supports established airlines with available capital to tackle operational challenges. Whereas new start up’s will struggle more. This would imitate a more real world scenario so it just depends on how you look at it.

Its also worth mentioning that if your intending to expand gate allocation to aircraft sizes then straight away you wouldn’t be able to serve 767 in a gate that isn’t rated up to the size rating of that aircraft. You can service smaller aircraft in a larger gate but not the other way around. It would be a safety issue, ac collision, ground vehicle service room, personnel safety around dangerous areas etc etc. Of course that doesn’t mean that the internal building space could be less then desirable & cause longer handling but it depends on what model of data you would want to work with. Since it would be probably unrealistic & not worth modelling the exact terminal data of every worldwide airport outside of the basics of how many stands & what types, estimated rating of infrastructure/ amenities, dreaded wifi :wink: etc etc.

Also with a final thought that springs to mind what happens to the planes we have parked on stands as storage, would that take up airport space or not count?

I would be interested to read in some more detail though :slight_smile: with particular focus on how & what gameplay impacts this could have?

Its defo worth a talking point :wink:

4

This is a nice idea for more realism, BUT

  • There would need to be a real-time diagram/display for each airline at each station of how many gates, check in counters, etc. are needed at its maximum peak (whatever that hour would be, so it would need to be dynamically calculated by AS) to handle everything at 100% satisfaction.

  • Players would then have choice to explain to this planned peak (or surpass it) with buildout projects.

  • It would need to be able to do this with one click, e.g. make selection how many narrowbody, widebody gates to build, how many check in counters, baggage trucks, etc. and do the buildout with clicking one submit button.

This should never be a feature that would require much micromanagement. Check it out, build it out, forget about it until more flights are scheduled.

Also you have to analyze the fact that most terminals are operated by handling companies and not airlines themselves, so the handling companies would need to have a screen to see what are the peak times and who occupy that capacity (e.g. airline A occupies capacity at 7 am and airline B at 8 am), and also the airlines would need to have visibility when contracting the capacity for which hours the capacity is available. Also the capacity would not be possible to be booked if there is no capacity for the specific hour.

I think the most complex part would be how to deal with the fact of the handling companies and the current bookings of capacity from third party airlines. because a tool would need to be made for handling companies to see the peak points, and the contracting airlines as well, so the handling companies can either build more capacity or the airlines cancel their contracts so not to be affected by delays and related negativity.

The way the OP was presented this would make for a great AirportSim simulation… but I see it difficult for AS implementation because of many entagled issues already mentioned by me and the previous poster.

1 Like
5

I think everyone so far has pointed out too much detail would be unmanageable as the game now becomes ‘Airportsim’ instead of ‘Airlinesim’. Personally, I think the feature should probably be more like an expansion of the current ones instead of radical changes from the current ones, as the current structure is very manageable but lacks features. I don’t think the game should ever implement things related to daily operations, such as ground handling, etc, as these are dynamic events. What could be implemented is purely what you can have for the terminals.

Personally, I would rate features on how much they deviate from the current structure as following:

Level 1:

  • Enable upgradeable terminal features
  • Enable more types of boarding, e.g., jetbridge, remote gate, enclosed walkway for remote gate

Level 2:

  • Consider peak capacity as part of the capacity during the build so that you have a pseudo simulation of number of gates built. For current terminals, use the current construction cost and invert it to a peak capacity.
  • Class-related features, such as a business lounge with a defined capacity, and their rating impact on flights based on class.

Level 3:

  • Detailed gate arrangement, e.g., single v.s. dual v.s. triple jetbridge, gate sizes such as narrowbodies only, widebodies, A380s, etc. It should be only the maximum number of higher class airframes allowed, e.g., max A380 allowed, max A330 allowed, max B767 allowed at any particular time slot (not departure or arrival during the slots, but including the ones in the boarding process); it is not exactly what the property of each gate is because you can split dual-bridge widebody gate into two narrowbodies gates. You might need to do the same inverted mapping based on construction cost for current terminals
  • Additional shops and stores and their operational cost and profit

Level 4:

  • Dynamics events such as delays etc. I don’t think it should end up with a cascade event as now you get into detailed gate management
  • Capacity impact due to maintenance: if the flight has a scheduled maintenance slot, the departure capacity should be added to the next flight time slot, not the prior one for the peak capacity.

Just some of my personal thoughts :slight_smile:

6

Thanks a lot for your elaborate feedback, everyone. Really appreciate it!

Since I can literally smell the fear in the room, let me a get a few basic things addressed first.

Firstly, and as mentioned in the OP, this is a “conceptional topic”. What I mean by that is quite literally that the goal of the roadmap item is to come up with a concept for this part of the game. It’s an initial vision/idea for what this might entail, but nothing concrete. So everything goes.

Secondly, the goal isn’t to drift into “AirportSim”, but quite the opposite. The current system is sort of a (bad) airport simulation, as we have airlines building mini-terminals left and right, which makes no sense, has no equivalent in reality and adds very little to the game besides cost-savings and a potential quality bonus.

Thirdly, I am not planning to add direct operational features to the game. All of this relies heavily on the assumption that some sort of more or less powerful Auto-Ops feature has been implemented that allows players to address operational issues on a strategic/tactical level without having to mess with day-to-day ops manually.

Lastly, I am in fact considering removing the current style of “building own terminals” in favor of a more passive “petition the airport to expand” kind of feature. But as said, nothing is set in stone. It’s all just vague ideas at this point.

That said, this feature has to be seen in the context of the overarching design goal of most of the things on the roadmap: To enable airlines to actually follow different strategies and business models, rather than the current “make numbers go up” model that has all airlines competing for the same 4 passenger/cargo types within a framework that - at the end of the day - is utterly static and shallow.

@rubiohiguey2000 This is not meant as criticism, but just as a really good example for what I mean by the above paragraph: Look at your airline empire in Idlewild. The parent holding alone operates nearly 4000 aircraft, I didn’t even check the subsidiaries. Even the very largest airlines in the real-world don’t get close to this. And this of course explains the reaction to my suggestion: When I take a step back, read what you suggested and translate it to the core meaning, it reads like “you can change all you want but make sure to add features that ensure nothing changes”. You even state that you want a single-click feature to ensure you to “handle everything at 100% satisfaction”. And this makes perfect sense…in current-generation AirlineSim, this probably is a sensible request, as “100% satisfaction” is the only thing that works.

But that’s not how the real world works :slight_smile:

The real world is about trade-offs. Everywhere. Ryanair operates our of HHN because it’s small, it’s fast, it’s cheap. Lufthansa operates out of FRA because it allows them to operate an international hub, despite (or because of) the higher costs, longer turnarounds and possibly lower passenger satisfaction. In the future, I want these things to matter in AirlineSim as well. I want players to have to make explicit choices about how and where they operate and why.

Is this going to be more difficult? Probably. Is it going to be more engaging and fun? I’d hope so :smiley:

What I really hope won’t work anymore is the “just add more flights” type of mega-airline we have today, where the size of an organisation simply doesn’t matter and one can just grow to whatever physical limit there is. Obviously, this is a long-term goal and a lot of pieces have to fall into place to actually make it work, but I hope you get the idea.

2 Likes
7

Oh, and one more important point: Aside from this (obviously) being out in the future quite a bit, note that - as far it’s technically possible - all the really disruptive new stuff will likely be feature-flagged and limited to new game worlds only, meaning old game worlds will hopefully stay unaffected. How feasible this is for the terminal system remains to be seen, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

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I really like the idea of airports expanding as soon as it gets too small. That could create a more dynamic gameworld where smaller airports could become big hubs while other big hubs remain empty due to higher costs in the beginning etc.

You could even combine that with your idea of PSOs. Airports could create funding projects for the extension which then is payed by one or more airlines. They get some sort of compensation for their effort. e.g. reserved slots/gates etc.

9

This sounds like a cool idea. I mean it could be a good potential way for airlines to co-operate & petition for better facilities. On the surface it would make it feel as if you have some more co-existence across the game worlds rather then everything just being competitively oriented.

That being said when it comes to talking about airport expansion just in case there’s any crossover of terms. That personally my opinion is that stuff like the amount of runways & lengths. & the slot capacity linked to the throughput amount those runways can maintain. Should remain realistic to the data we use now. Otherwise we’ll swap a building terminals problem for a building runways problem or turning tiny airports into mega international airports.

After all eventually we end up with more money then we know what to do with - pls dont add airlinesim country taxes eh lol :wink:

10

While I’ve been opposed to the idea of allowing expansions of airports’ runways/slot capacity in the past, I don’t want to rule it out for the future. For one thing, this could be a game world-specific setting. And for another, I’d hope that we’ll manage to actually meaningful limits to demand in the game, meaning you can grow an airport as much as you want, but if passenger demand doesn’t grow with it, that either won’t help you and/or other airports that might have “over-expanded” will feel the consequences. Sounds interesting in to me :wink:

Definitely something for the roadmap :wink: