19 replies to this topic

[Northern]

I have recently came back to AE after a short period away and started a airline in R3 world only to find that basically every gate at major European airports is taken, personally i believe the old gate system is better but never the less, i think we should limit the amount of airlines in each country or continent, this would make more gates available and help the game be more realistic, also we should possible introduce a max amount of gates available to lease before you must build a terminal (possibly 4)

[Yuxi]

I have recently came back to AE after a short period away and started a airline in R3 world only to find that basically every gate at major European airports is taken, personally i believe the old gate system is better

This was part of the old gate system. When I started playing, I had to wait for gates to open up at large airports all the time.

but never the less, i think we should limit the amount of airlines in each country or continent, this would make more gates available and help the game be more realistic

If you want reduced number of airlines, check out the S3 worlds.

also we should possible introduce a max amount of gates available to lease before you must build a terminal (possibly 4)

We already have that. In R worlds you can lease 5 gates at any airport, or 15 gates if you declare it a hub. After that you have to build a terminal. In open worlds you can lease up to 40% of an airport, or 75% if it's a hub. That hasn't changed in years.

[Nick of DC Airways]

75 %

[KJS607]

75 %

At smaller Uk airport im usually...alot

[Nick of DC Airways]

At smaller Uk airport im usually...alot

I plan to have 95 Gates At Dulles in S3B

[KJS607]

I plan to have 95 Gates At Dulles in S3B

too many by any case for me to ever be bothered to manage, I prefer just having about 15 airlines

[struggle]

This was part of the old gate system. When I started playing, I had to wait for gates to open up at large airports all the time.

So how long do we have to wait for the gate to be available at the airport to occupy?

[Moldova96]

Struggle you have to wait until another airline returns the gates or they leave a gate unused so long that it is taken from them.

[QK Flight Industries]

75 %

At that point, your gate lease costs would be extremely high and you'd probably just build a terminal to release the gates for some poor sod who's going to get crushed by you while reducing your costs.

[mxax-ai]

We already have that. In R worlds you can lease 5 gates at any airport, or 15 gates if you declare it a hub. After that you have to build a terminal. In open worlds you can lease up to 40% of an airport, or 75% if it's a hub. That hasn't changed in years.

It's 10 and 25 gates. Though I'm not too sure about the 25, you can definatly lease 10 gates at a non-hub airport.

[ar157]

It's 10 and 25 gates. Though I'm not too sure about the 25, you can definatly lease 10 gates at a non-hub airport.

He was referring to open worlds, which also incudes S3-B

[Pineair]

Struggle you have to wait until another airline returns the gates or they leave a gate unused so long that it is taken from them.

I had to wait15 game years to get gates at Lisbon in R6 ........Snorrrrrrrrr

[SIALimited]

Can't we implement a system that forces airlines to use a minimum quota on the gate they leased for the monthly leased price?

 

Should they not hit the minimum quota, the monthly price of the gate will be increased at a small rate of say 5% per month by the airport as a fine and after a period of 6 months, the airport will terminate the gate contract with the airline (I'm sure the specifics can be worked out later) for failure to hit the minimum quota.

 

Maybe you can even have something where the airport rewards you for using say 75% of the gates such as lower landing fees or what not?

 

Forces players to use their gates or be forced to leave the market. It'll also stop a player from just grabbing all the gates in a world - at least in the start anyway where every buck seems important.

[conmanflyer]

I think it should be based on utilization, ex: a 737 uses 1 slot for 30min and a 747 uses one slot for 1.5h. I think gates and landing slots should be regulated separately ex: gates have 24hrs of use during a day. so, you could put 48 737s through there, or you could put 16 747s through it, and just pay for slots on the runways. which, for a 747 is 2m, and a 737 it is .75m. So, one runway would have 1920 slots for 737 arrivals/departures. or 720 747 spots.

[Mobeer]

Can't we implement a system that forces airlines to use a minimum quota on the gate they leased for the monthly leased price?

...

 

This would be unworkable for airlines based in smaller countries flying to big overseas airports. For example if based in Singapore then there is only 1 airport, and if a route Singapore to Delhi has 1000 pax / week demand then this only needs 3 flights a week; charging more because only 3 slots out of 50 are in use would be very unfair.

[Keelung]

Like I said on different threads for a countless number of times since this has been brought up repeatedly that the only solution to this is to replace the gate system that we have now that gives you 50 slots when you only need a couple to the system in the real world where international airports or airports with high traffic would have a regulated slots system which you can buy/sell/lease individual slots where one slot can only be used for one flight either arriving or departing. That means you need two slots for a return flight and this might be a tedious task but we can have an automatic slot leasing/procurement system while we are adding flights and it will perform in the same way as the system we have now and this would only apply to the airports with IATA Level 3( Coordinated Airport ) standing http://en.wikipedia....ki/Landing_slot . Applying this in AE4 would free up lots of unused slots and save some insignificant money for the airlines, providing others with the opportunity to expand their operations to these high-traffic airports and allow more competition, with the fundamental aim to make AE more realistic.

[berubium]

I don't think that's just limited to big airports.  I've been to tiny airports that have gates that aren't exclusively used by one airline.  Especially if an airline only flies there once a day (or less).

 

I personally like the idea of being able to lease an entire gate for your own use OR being able to lease just a certain amount of slots at a gate that is used by more than 1 airline.  This is where timetabling would become a factor (assuming we have timetabling in the future).  If there is only one slot open at XXX airport & I wish to have a daily flight serving that airport at noon, the next airline to lease out the remaining slots would not be able to land their planes there at noonish.

[Keelung]

Gates and slots are two different issues. We can use the turn around time to calculate how much should be charged to a single flight.

[Exodus]

I think it should be based on utilization, ex: a 737 uses 1 slot for 30min and a 747 uses one slot for 1.5h. I think gates and landing slots should be regulated separately ex: gates have 24hrs of use during a day. so, you could put 48 737s through there, or you could put 16 747s through it, and just pay for slots on the runways. which, for a 747 is 2m, and a 737 it is .75m. So, one runway would have 1920 slots for 737 arrivals/departures. or 720 747 spots.

 

I think conmanflyer has a good point. The current system actually puts new & smaller airlines in the disadvantage. While a new airline can only fill up gate slots with smaller aircraft (because they don't have the funds for larger aircraft yet), the bigger airlines can fill up that same gate with A380's if they want. So putting an A320 at a gate should be cheaper than putting an A380 at a gate. Instead of leasing gates, you should be able to lease gate time. Let me explain with an example. At JFK, you currently pay $437,623 for a gate with 50 slots per week. With 24 days in an AE month, this comes down to 171 slots per month. This brings the cost per slot to  $2,560. So every airline pays $2,560 per gate slot, wether he puts an ATR-42 or a 747 at that gate.

 

If for every gate at an airport we add 22 hours of daily availability, we get 528 gate hours per month or 31,680 gate minutes per gate per month. This brings the cost per gate minute to $13,81 for JFK.

 

An airline doing 737-800 flights would pay 35 min x $13,81 = $483.35 per flight.

An airline doing A380 flights would pay 120 min x $13,81 = $1,657.20 per flight.

 

So this will effectively make gate cost more realistic.

 

1) A starting airline operating 1 daily 737-800 flight into JFK would need 24 x 35min of gate time per month. So it would need 840 gate minutes. This airline would then pay 840 x $13.81 = $11,600.40 per month

 

2) An established airline operating 7 daily 737-800 flights into JFK would need 168 x 35min of gate time per month. So it would need 5,880 gate minutes. This airline would then pay 5,880 x $13.81 = $81,202.80 per month

 

3) An airline based at JFK operating 7 daily A380 flights out of JFK would need 167 x 120min of gate time per week. So it would need 20,160 gate minutes. This airline would then pay 20,160 x $13.81 = $278,409.60 per month

 

This means you pay only for the time you use, making it significantly easier & cheaper for smaller airlines to start operations to new airports.

 

In addition, this would also solve part of the gate congestion problem. Currently, players lease gates, but lots of gate slots sit idle. An airline operating a daily flight into JFK leases 1 gate with 50 slots, but only uses 7 slots. So 43 slots are sitting idle and nobody else can use them ...

 

An airport with 40 gates now has 2,000 slots per week or 6,857 slot per AE month (which takes 24 days) So this airport would handle a maximum total of 6,857 flights per month. With the gate minute system, we get a total of 1,267,200 gate minutes per month (24 days x 22 hours per day x 60 minutes per hour x 40 gates). this would allow for a total of 36,205 A320 or 737-800 flights per month, but allow far less flights if widebody aircraft with long turn around times are used.

 

Really do hope this system is taken under consideration as it would solve 2 problems at once.

[Keelung]

This idea of charging airlines by the turn around time for using the gates has been suggested (by me actually) quite some time ago. It's under consideration and I think it's one of the solution to the imbalance. Also I have to reiterate again, landing rights/slots have to be separated from gate usage. Please search the forums for my previous posts 'cause I don't feel like typing my idea for the billionth time.