joflo

Although my pilots are more or less happy (they have a smiley), the attrition rate is very high: 1.77% per month. In other words: Every year about 20% of my pilots resign, an average pilot stays only 2.5 years in my company, although they are happy. This seems to me quite unrealistic.

On the other hand, I also had 0.00% attrition rates among some staff that was very happy. However, considering that they work 45 years before they retire, or 540 months, the minimum attrition rate even for the happiest employees is 0.19%.

So I suggest to set a minimum attrition rate of 0.2% and at the same time lower the attrition rates .

Several times I tried to open short distance, low demand routes with small planes, so I can offer high frequencies. However, every time I tried to use a small plane, there was almost no profit - only for a bigger plane I got some profit, but then I had to reduce the frequencies. I now looked a bit more in detail on the reasons, and found a problem with the airport fees:

Whilst in real life most airports charge fees on a per passenger base or depending on the size/type of the aircraft, in AE there are only two fees:

Firstly the landing fee. However, it is not charged at all, at least for my flights.

Secondly, there are 'Other fees and taxes'. Here I found that they only depend on the airport, but not on the aircraft nor on the number of pax.

I think this should be changed and the fees should depend on the pax. Futhermore, it would be nice if for every airport the fees could be shown somewhere.

Until now, when selecting the configuration of an aircraft, we just say how many first, how many business and how many economy seats we want. From that, the legroom is calculated, which in the end goes into the load factors.

Instead of doing it this way, I suggest that the players can "design" seats - i.e. decide for seat pitch and width. In particular, this should be done in the IFE/IFS part, as usually airlines combine new seats with new entertainment stuff. Then the player decides whcih seats shall be fitted to a plane, plus entering the ratio of first/business/economy.

One advantage is that players thereby can decide to have a very comfortable first class, whilst squeezing the economy passengers like fish in a can.

The second one is that thereby the players know how comfortable their seats actually are. For example the A333 and A332 have both the same number of maximum passengers, 375 (in Standard version, there is also the option to increase the number to 406 (A332) and 440 (A333) - by the way: for some unknown reasons the A330 in AE are much smaller, allowing only 281 and 350 passengers, respectively). However, equipping an A333 with 30C and 250Y seats will lead to much more legroom when doing the same on an A332. (It might be that the legroom in AE is actually calculated by looking at the maximum number of passengers instead of the cabin space - in that case I would suggest to change this to be more realistic.)

When flying from one city to another city, there is often a choice of different airports. In most cases, the airport does not make a difference to the passenger. E.g. when flying to London, there is almost no difference of landing in Stansted or Luton. However, in AE there is: The demand for both airports is totally independent. This can lead to quite absurd situations: In AE2, the route Frankfurt-Berlin might lead to one of two airports in Berlin: TXL, which is a bit closer to the city centre and has something like lounges, and SXF, which is at the outskirts (although only fifteen minutes further away from the centre by public transportation). Interestingly, the average ticket price on the FRA-SXF route is 130$, whereas on FRA-TXL it is only 100$; furthermore, the capacity on the FRA-TXL route would easily take also the FRA-SXF passengers. Therefore, in real life the FRA-SXF planes would be almost empty — yet, in AE they aren't.

As a simple solution of the problem, I suggest to calculate the demand not for single airports, but for whole areas. E.g. all five London airports just count as London for demand. To allow for a differentiation between the airports, the airports itself should be part of the "IFE" factors (it's not really IFE, but somehow it goes into the stuff that makes the airport more convenient). So flying to Stansted will be cheaper because of the lower airport fees — but passengers will only come, if the ticket is cheaper than the flight to London City.

As there are airports that may contribute to several areas (or vice versa, towns that lie between two airports), one would actually need a more complex scheme: Depending on where a passenger wants to get to exactly, several airports might be interesting for him, where the convenience factor depends on the distance. However, that would include a world map o where people live and where they wnat to get to, including where the rich people live — so it might become a bit too complex.

By now, one can choose quite a number of engines for each plane in AE. However, usually, there is only one option that people will choose: The most fuel efficient. In few cases the required runway may affect the decision. However, in general there should be some more points that influence the decision, and I suggest to add two features:

1. Introduction date of the engine.
For example, in AE one can buy the A320 with CFM56-5B4/P engines already in the year 1988, although the development of this engine started only 1989! And the certification on the A320 was no earlier than 1994.

2. Reduced maintenance costs.
There are already reduced maintenance costs for using the same fleet (although the savings seem to be very low). However, the same should be true for the engines. Having many different engine types will force an airline to have more spare parts and more technicians.