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New Aircraft Deliveries and Backlogs

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#21
Harshil

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I guess that airlines should also be allowed to sublease or lease out aircraft to newer players and others at their discretion. Keeping a competitive used market for leases and sales would lower prices and give more options to the newer entrants at cheaper rates.

#22
Yuxi

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I guess that airlines should also be allowed to sublease or lease out aircraft to newer players and others at their discretion. Keeping a competitive used market for leases and sales would lower prices and give more options to the newer entrants at cheaper rates.


In principle that's a more ideal system, but it also opens the door to abuse (i.e. those "newer players and others" are often airlines run by the same person or alliance) because the only major limiting factor to AE airline growth is the rate of aircraft acquisition. In the past, players have proven they will to go to great lengths to amass large numbers of aircraft through every possible means (of varying legality). If we can implement an effective regulation system to minimize the abuse, a competitive market wouldn't be a bad idea. :P

Also, I think aircraft lease prices are low enough as they are and don't significantly slow down the growth of new airlines. With the current game dynamics (which may certainly change in the future), this would most likely do more harm than good.

#23
Harshil

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But we can prohibit one player selling/leasing to/from his or her own Airline1 to Airline 2. But then another way would be cross selling/leasing.

#24
Viking Air

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Sorry for coming back on this topic a bit late :sleep:

1) Should leased new aircraft come out of a limited pool of aircraft provided by leasing companies (who then order the aircraft using their own slots), or should we continue new aircraft leasing directly from manufacturers?


I (also) agree that both solutions can be good.
Airlines should have two options (for leasing):
1. leasing aicraft from the lessor's book, that can be used or new (i.e. ordered by the lessor but not yet delivered), where the aircraft. (in this case leasing companies doesn't allow a short lease&buy for new aircraft)
or
2. ailines order the aircrat by themself and ask for leasing, with the possibility to choose operational or finantial lease. Normally a long term lease or a lease with shorter with fixed term buyout.

2) Assuming leased aircraft come out of a separate pool and the delivery system applies only to buying aircraft directly from manufacturers, should we keep the delivery system as is, or do you have other proposals on how to manage delivery schedules and the backlog?


There should be, I guess, a regulated production rate, with minimum and maximum rate (or maximum ramp up rate from one month to the other).
With both leasing companies and airlines feeding to the same logbook.

But in this case it could be hard to simulate lessors decisions... (moderators?)

Alongside limited production rates, I would imagine to provide the lessors and the used market (separated) with a good admount of 5-20 ys old aircraft at the beginning of the game (maybe to be released on the first 10 years and not at once...)

#25
dhon

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Regarding this issue, should we return to the starting pointing about leasing system--> which is the credit of the airline!

Currently, no. of lease is "limited" by the airline's credibility. However, an "A" grade credibility can easily achieve when you have some cash. So shall we modify the credit system:-

1. For low grading credibility, airline can easiliy improved by having some cash.
2. However, for exapmle, B+ or above must have asset which equal to certain amount which is much more difficult to acheve when compare to the existing system.
3. Also, the limitation of no. of lease should also significantly reduced to avoid unrealistic order of plane.
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#26
Conor

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If I remember a few years back someone suggested a broker system. One or two players would form companies which could form the only way of players leasing aircraft.

These one or two companies would take orders from airlines and then order them from the manufacturer and then the airline and broker company could agree on fixed rates per month for each aircraft leased out. The broker company would start out with a higher starting cash and instead of one free aircraft maybe two or three.

Of course the broker company would not be able to open up routes etc and they would not be allowed to create an airline in the same world for cheating purposes.

#27
Conor

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Players would still likely be bias in their brokering....


Well yes but hopefully in a good way. Take this as an example:

Broker A has a lot of customers. Now almost every airline more or less goes for either an A320 or a B738 in their fleet at some stage (not all i know) so if I was a brokering company I would order plenty of A320's to keep the backlog flowing. If a mega airline with say 20 different aircraft families comes up to me and says, right i want 3 of these, 3 of these, 4 of these, 5 of these and 6 of these. Of course I am going to say no, why?
Put it like this. I have say 40million in cash. Over 50% of my customers want a steady flow of 1 of 3 aircraft. Now this mega airline comes up to me and wants 5 aircraft, 3 of which I dont have in stock.

It is of my opinion that the smarter business thing to do would be to say no. I would much rather spend the money that I have on the 3 aircraft that I sell the majority of to keep my majority customers happy rather than split my funds into seven or eight families.

#28
Alfrenzo

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Well yes but hopefully in a good way. Take this as an example: Broker A has a lot of customers. Now almost every airline more or less goes for either an A320 or a B738 in their fleet at some stage (not all i know) so if I was a brokering company I would order plenty of A320's to keep the backlog flowing. If a mega airline with say 20 different aircraft families comes up to me and says, right i want 3 of these, 3 of these, 4 of these, 5 of these and 6 of these. Of course I am going to say no, why? Put it like this. I have say 40million in cash. Over 50% of my customers want a steady flow of 1 of 3 aircraft. Now this mega airline comes up to me and wants 5 aircraft, 3 of which I dont have in stock. It is of my opinion that the smarter business thing to do would be to say no. I would much rather spend the money that I have on the 3 aircraft that I sell the majority of to keep my majority customers happy rather than split my funds into seven or eight families.


Actually, you gave me an idea... Why not give people the choice of being a lessor or an aviator? It would deny people to lease planes to their own airlines. Of course, there would be jokers that would multiaccount, but the easy answer is to immediately perma-ban these people.

Additionally, why not make buying leased aircraft before a certain age more expensive? It's irritating to lessors that a certain aircraft is bought for market value, making these lessors have to buy more aircraft whilst have to wait for them being delivered due to delivery slots, and losing money (earned from the people leasing) in the meantime...

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#29
Yuxi

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Alternately, i just give my friends lots of planes while everyone else waits. (I Personally would try to avoid doing this - but its a highly obvious issue. ) :P


That's the kind of bias people are worried about, not the business kind. :P If they are the only source of leased aircraft, it's a very dangerous setup. When you put control of all airlines' livelihoods in the hands of a few (human) players, corruption is inevitable.

#30
dhon

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I have another ideas, how about adding a requirement of deposit/security when leasing an aircraft. It is also a little bit related to creditability. For example, when you need to lease a A320, the lease must support by a A320 which is owned. When the airline unable to pay for the monthly rent, banker can takeover the owned A320 (since it is a security).
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#31
VanHorneDog

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so let me get this right, the goal of this would be to decrease unrealistic airlines from operating huge airlines and order thousands of planes (therefore producing unrealistic numbers of planes), meanwhile keep the ability to begin an airline and make it profitable at early stages.

One way will be to disallow airlines from constructing terminals to the extent they do. Do airlines build them in real life? Of course, but there is limited land. For example, are you really telling me there can be an extra 100 gates at LAX? i dont think so. So there should be a limit to how many gates an airport can hold. Also, there maybe should be an increasing fee for more gates being leased. Airports would inherently desire more airlines for more choices for their customers. If Southwest wants an extra gate in San Diego so they can increase SD-LAS service while British Airlines wants to open up 747 service to London, A 20th gate for SW might not be ideal for the airport when bringing in 747 service might generate more revenue for the airport. Especially if while the 747 is not there, they can sublease the extra gate time to a smaller airline like Mesa Air. So if SW wants it, they have to pay a higher premium.

What this would do is make it more costly to operate large numbers of planes out of an airport. Also, airports may only allow one or two airlines to operate hubs at their airports (or build terminals). This could be an exclusive rights type thing or simply the airport only allows 2 airlines to have hubs there so first come first serve. It should also cost incredible amounts of money and require a history of service at the airport. An airline that has never had service at an airport isnt going to just build 50 gates at a 25 gate airport because they can. Increasing route fees for airlines that spam routes could work too. This would limit the numbers of planes put on routes.

All of this would just be a way of making it not profitable to overdo routes and make it less likely for somebody to order tones of planes to spam routes.

Another option would be to greatly increase the costs associated with pilots flying different type aircraft. The reason the 757 and 767 are so popular is that they are the same type rating. but, you cant just throw a 737 pilot into a 757 or 777. It costs A LOT OF MONEY. So these rapid build ups of ordering EVERY PLAN even if they are just slightly profitable is insane. No airline would do it. The logistics and number of pilots you would need undermines this. Plus the extra maintenance costs.

Maybe adding a "type rating" costs to the maintenance section is a good way to do this. It would keep fleets more homogeneous (like the real world) and keep fleets lower longer, For every pilot you have you multiply that by the cost ratings for each plane. Small airlines that only operate 4 types of planes and only have 20 pilots wont cost a lot. But if you have 2,000 pilots and 30 different aircraft, the type rating costs to make sure enough pilots can operate those planes is staggering.

also cutting off production when its production ends. IE not making dc-3s in the 1970s even though Big Spender Air ordered 30,000 of them.

Ideally you have a production rate generated by demand. IE Boeing can produce 2 737Js a day, So you get in line. The orders are staggered based on time you enter the line. So your first plane is delivered once everyone in front of you gets a plane, then you slip into a slot that gets you an airplane on every 20th plane if you were the 20th one to order those planes. That is more realistic, but as soon as the backlog gets higher say a backlog of 10 companies ordering planes (not aircraft but companies), Boeing can open a 3rd plant and produce 3 aircraft a day and so on and so forth. That way, one company cant just jack up production rates themselves but production rates increase based off of demand so the line doesn't get so long that a new airline cant get 5-10 planes in order to make a profit.

Also, having randomly generated used aircraft hit the market might be a good idea to help new airlines along. These would be out dated planes and maybe not even available to airlines with certain credit ratings because no real airline would say right now, sure im going to lease a 707 cargo and turn it back into passenger service. But, a small company might because it is their only option.

Also the whole lease thing and credit ratings. I like how it controls your growth for a while. But is a credit agency really going to lease out 1000 planes to even a successful airline now? I mean, thats a HUGE gamble, thats a lot of eggs in one basket. Maybe there should be a limit of leases available to all airlines that max out at 100 or 200 planes, but companies with large profits can buy many planes anyway. So it allows for quick gap fillers for bigger airlines but makes it less likely somebody is going to SPAM a production line with 1,000 planes on lease.

anyway, the issue will require many different adjustments in order to make the playing field more level and the game more enjoyable. Adjusting leasing, production schedules and gate limitations (so that having 1,000 planes doesn't help you but actually costs you more money)


My problem is once there becomes a few giant airlines that SPAM a world i am in, i usually just stop playing and start a new airline when a new world opens. Its no longer fun at that point.

#32
technotron3

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Let Airlines lease there planes, but make sure there is a min and a max

#33
LLC

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In principle that's a more ideal system, but it also opens the door to abuse (i.e. those "newer players and others" are often airlines run by the same person or alliance) because the only major limiting factor to AE airline growth is the rate of aircraft acquisition. In the past, players have proven they will to go to great lengths to amass large numbers of aircraft through every possible means (of varying legality). If we can implement an effective regulation system to minimize the abuse, a competitive market wouldn't be a bad idea. :P

Also, I think aircraft lease prices are low enough as they are and don't significantly slow down the growth of new airlines. With the current game dynamics (which may certainly change in the future), this would most likely do more harm than good.


Restrict all worlds to ONE airline per player,

whyle implementing an Airline Empires "Express" system (Ie American Eagle for American etc) to serve the lower demand airports
whereby you would NOT control the operating "Express" carrier directly, but IN-DIRECTLY where by you only would choose the
cities the "Express" flight flies from - to, and what size aircraft used (number of seats per aircraft) unless the main airline buys the aircraft then
leases them back out to the "Express" carrier

#34
ar157

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restricting a player to one airlines doesn't really work, even with the inclusion of subsidaries.

#35
Keelung

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I think due to AE's unusually high demand for aircraft, we should have a totally different system of delivery from the current one that is similar to those of real life. 

 

For example, for the Airbus A320 series production line, we can have 20 slots per AE day which amounts to 140 slots per week. Each airline would only be limited to 2 slot per AE day for receiving aircraft, a maximum of 4 per AE week, 12 per AE month and 100 per AE year. This means that when airlines are ordering their aircraft, they can either opt for the system to evenly spread their orders or they can choose the available slots they want. Airlines can factor in when they are able to play the game and the number of aircraft they can possibly handle. This system would ensure that big airlines would not be hogging slots and deter them to receive more aircraft than they can cope as they would be piling up aging unused aircraft. This would also allow players who have the time to be able to grow their airline as fast as possible with their limited time. If airlines choose to defer their aircraft, they would still have to pick slots and their original slots would be opened to others.

 

would prefer to see unrealistic orders voided. For example in R5, which ends in 2025, one airline has ordered so many A380s that the last delivery is scheduled for 2051. If you make significant changes to the current set up you need to think of the implications.

We should not allow any airlines to pick delivery slots which are after the fixed game-ending year.

 

Therefore, this system would still be based on the "first come first served" basis, but with a lot more flexibility for airlines to plan ahead which would really bring out the airline "manager" part of the game.


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#36
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#37
Sheepy

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 The game is TOO hard as it is now  :disgusted:

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#38
Yuxi

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We all want a "CLASSIC" (AE 3.1) Open World when the new worlds come online

 

The demand ratio for open vs. realistic worlds has made itself very clear over time, and I don't see a major imbalance in that regard at the moment. :P

 

 

that being said, the game developers have to balance various aspects of the game so they do not end up with a game that no one will play (ie jumping the shark as it were)

 

 

as it seems like the designers are moving dangerously 
in the direction of (based on various posts on the subject) making it so Airline Empires IS NOT FUN TO PLAY ANYMORE !  XD

 

If you have concrete examples of unpopular changes or specific problems, you're welcome to post them in other threads in this forum. What you just said is extremely vague and doesn't say anything meaningful...



#39
Northern

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I'm against the change :P

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#40
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Reviving this thread, I made a short calculation:
Currently there are 5529 737NGs ordered in S2 (2022). The prodution rate of 737NGs at Boeing is 42 iirc or will be expanded to that. So, all the current 737NGs would have been able to be delivered within 11 years, which is less than the current system, assuming a single airline would want a lot of aircraft. To give other airlines a chance it might be possible to keep airlines getting delivery slots in a row (say, not April 4th, 5th & 6th but 4th, 6th & 8th) and keep earlier slots empty, until other airline/s come/s. To further keep airlines from clogging the slots, perhaps a total ordering limit per aircraft might be made, say 1000 or 1500.
Additionally I would strongly vote for a production rate that's somewhat dependent on the backlog.


A backlog system would as a side effect lead to a higher importance of preordering aircraft if you want some very early slots.





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