Idea for more PAX...

I think it might benefit if there were 2 columns for PAX in the data; Current PAX (The amount of PAX that the airport currently takes) and Prospective PAX (The population of the city it serves). This would help the game reach airports without commercial service that I cannot include in the list, and would increase the amount of airports in the game no-end. Next time I think I might get the data from Flight Simulator so I can include places that Wikipedia doesn't have.

Also, I think in sim1 it would be cool if you dropped the loadfactor on the days/ weeks after events that happened in the airline business, like September 11th, or the Tenerife Disaster, Just an idea though =).

I like the idea. More realistic would be that the passenger demand would be calculated from the cities populations and passengers would be routed from city to city, either directly or via one or more other cities, not form one airport to another. Airports would just be handled as a strip of pavement and a terminal that is capable handling x passengers. Different routes would share the same demand, for example there would be x passengers willing to travel from New York to Los Angeles and they could fly either directly JFK/EWR/LGA-LAX or via another airline's hub, for example ORD or DEN. Passengers would of course prefer direct flights and airports close to the city. The database should include cities with population and the distance of airport to the city and the capacity of it. Passengers doing a stopover at a city would prefer continuing with the same airline (or with an airline of the same alliance, if the alliance feature is introduced). That means, the only thing that restricts, whether an airline can create a huge hub at an airport is whether it has enough capacity (runways long enough, passenger handling capacity): If there's an airport in the middle of nowhere with long runways and big terminals one can create a huge hub out of it, by creating routes from a big city to another one via it. (Of course a hub is more popular if at least a part of passengers plan to stay there).

This way, airports of big cities are popular, there will be a small passenger flow from small cities to big cities (small city's airport <--> hub <--> big city's airport) and a hub can be created everywhere, if enough passengers are willing to travel trough it and it can handle all passengers. An airline could of course expand terminals (within pre-set limits) and perhaps even build new, longer runways (also limited by space around the airport, etc.). To get "tourist airports", like the airports on Canary Islands to work the population should include also the seasonal population.

The con of this system is that it is really (perhaps too ) complex, thus difficult to code and to play. But it would be realistic.

I hope my explanation was not too unclear and sorry for any spelling mistakes

I think I sort of understand, but this game already rewards hub and spoke systems anyway, so I don't know how much difference that would make (I've probably read it wrong though).

Extremely unlikely to happen is 'peak' periods, where you have a higher DOP because more people are flying, and 'off-peak' periods, where you have a lower DOP because less people are flying.

But I love the thought.

Why is that not realistic? Air traffic didn't recover for ages after Sept 11.

Air traffic does grow in the game. I won't say how since our ideas tend to end up in ,ahem, 'other' places, but it definitely does grow.

In reply..

a) It is realistic, I just thought it unlikely to happen in the game because it would be a lot of work

It seems Miller has already done it!

You could maybe add seasonal loads like for example in the winter, places like DEN, and SLC will have more loads for winter sports and MCO, FLL, MIA, HNL, OGG, and KOA see increased loads for winter vacation. Another idea is the possibility of advertising. You could advertise your airline on the TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, or leaflets. You can also advertise your airline for an increase of loads for a certain route to help create larger loads on a smaller flight or have a big campaign to just have an overall increase of loads for all flights.