my ideas all in 1- aircraft, maintnence, ratings...

[flightsimer]

i was reading about the seat configuration below, and was replying and it lead me to this... yes this has already been talked about, but im adding on alot to it... now what im saying would require some time put into, and alot of info being found, but i think it would be very well worth it to do it

When we buy planes, we should be allowed to configure the plane anyway we want (as long as its realistic). When we order the plane there should be a field that comes up, that you pick the class config. you want for your plane(s). some classes would be eco., business, first, and standard. once you pick your class you can then set the amount of passengers you want for the classes. Ill use the Boeing 737-900ER as an example. It can seat up to 215 in all economy seating, it also can be configured up to 180 in two class, it seats 6 across in eco, and 4 across in business. So if i want the all eco class then i can have anywhere between 180-215 seats in it (used 180 because below that, it starts to go into the -800's range, and a line needed to be drawn...), so all the options for seats on that should be 215,210,204,198,192,186,180, because the rows in the 737 are 6 across, so thats how you should have to go down by... if i wanted a 2 class config. then it would be between somewhere between 180-and 160 (used 160 because below that it cuts into the -800's ranges...) now this class would be a little bit harder to model because you would need more info because of the size difference in the seats... If i want an all business class then it would be around 90-108 seats, i figured that out by a diagram, but its close enough. but for every three rows of business seats its around 4 rows of economy seats.

Now once the plane is bought it still can be changed, but it would have to sent in for an overhaul, now this could be introduced into the game so that after every say 500 flight hours it has to be done on top of the current a,b,c, d checks but you could also be able to do it anytime. also this "overhaul" feature should allow you to convert aircraft into others... like taking a DC-10-30 and making it into a DC-10-30F, or taking a 737-700 from your fleet and turning it into a BBJ...

Now for the ratings, currently its not the best system, but it works... but what i suggesting, and how all of this relates, is that the aircraft you use affects your rating along with your routes, and extras you may have. So they would be things that you can add to your planes when either you buy them, or overhaul them, you can add certain things that "passengers would like". Here are some examples that im talking about, and i will be using the 737-900ER again. if i have a an all economy class aircraft, then the more seats i have in it, the less leg room passengers have, so passengers wouldnt be as happy as if there was one less row of passengers, etc... also would be able to choose from leather interior, cloth, etc, with leather being the best. another would be, you could add entertainment systems on your planes for you passengers to use, which would make your passengers happier and would want to fly with you again. you would have to pay to add the systems into the planes, then every month you would have to pay to run the systems. you could also choose to add a complimentry company magazine to all flights. another would be to add snacks, food, drinks, adult drinks, etc on to flights. this would be applied in the flightplan manager, but the more flights you have this on the more rating you have. have the advertisments boost your rating. these are just some examples that i could think of, i think that these would have to be added into the current way, and they shouldnt affect the amount of passengers alot, but should allow for higher ticket prices, like the how the codeshare flights do.

i think these three ideas alone could add so much more realism to the game, along with the ones on the to-do list. yes they would take a while to implement and would be sort of hard to do (getting all the info needed), but in the end it would make this game much more realistic...

[flightsimer]

and i just remember... i knew i was forgetting something... but anyways

terminals... what about companies have to rent gates, or build terminals, and there is a certain amount or gates... it would too make it more real...

as for repairs, if there are terminals, then this too should be added... but it could be added without them... but what about certain airports as your maintenance shop. so you can only maintain you planes at that airport, not just anywhere...

[Miikoyan]

Well, as was the previous answer to terminals (essentially gates, in my post) not many people in FlyNET wants to pay money to rent them.

[alemaobaiano]

Interesting ideas, but they wouldn't change much unless there was a pool of available passengers at every airport, complete with purchasing preferences. Let me take an example from Transbrasil's network to illustrate things.....

We operate the Sao Paulo-Congonhas to Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont shuttle flight with the 737-700, and with a reputation of 120 we fill every flight. This route (real world) has two distinct types of customers. First we have the low cost customer, nothing else matters and they will happily fly our 737s configured for 126 economy pax. Then we have the business flyer, who wants to work during the trip, and would certainly appreciate more space, leather seats, laptop power points and such, and more importantly this pax is prepared to pay for the extras. So we could configure our 737s for more business class seats and charge higher fares for this. Flynet currently has no mechanism that could accommodate this difference, it simply fills flights. As things stand there is no value to an airline in offering differentiated services, either through on-board comfort or aircraft type.

To really make these ideas practical we would need to have a limit of available passengers at every airport, who demonstrate purchasing intelligence, and then we really could compete by offering something different. Again an example from our network, we can fill any aircraft we can actually fly from Campo Grande, just the same way that we can fill anything capable of flying out of Congonhas. In reality Campo Grande will only generate load factors of 50% for 737/320 class aircraft, whereas Congonhas is limited only by the size of aircraft that can safely operate there and everything goes out full. Now imagine if we had our "intelligent" pax at Campo Grande, we could offer extra on board services and business class (lots of wealthy people in the region), and fight our competitors for the limited number of passengers. We could offer business class and our competitors could offer low fares and see which business model comes out on top.

Personally I would love to see this happen, but I'm not sure that the majority of users would like to get involved in that degree of planning, many users are just interested in stacking up the virtual $ as fast as possible. Going down a more realistic route would probably drive away a significant number of Flynet users, as can be seen from the interest (or lack of) in renting gates, paying landing fees and having slot limits at airports.

[CAPFlyer]

Also consider that most of what Tyler has said has been discussed in the past and potential plans of attack developed. The only thing is that most of that development is being done in the background and will be rolled out sometime after we move to the FSAirlines server. All of this stuff is web-side and so it's up to Konrad and Joe to program so it can be quite intensive in code and they have to balance code complexity (and volume) with traffic volume to ensure we don't overtax our web hosting plan and have the problems we had previously where we were constantly overreaching our available bandwidth and connections and thus having lots of problems with people not being able to finish flights because the website and server were unreachable.

[Lenair CEO]

Hi

Is there any news about the seating configurations?

[Brendanair]

Like the ideas about gate rentals, seat configurations, etc... maybe the powers that be could work into the "pax loads" at each airport a portion which are business passengers, first class, etc...

[vaccaro]

There are already some payware add-ons doing what you guys are asking for.

I said that because you people are ready to pay for the gates and such so you can also pay for the software .

[Brian Peace]

LOL.

I see both sides of this, but honestly... it's too easy to make money here, and once you have money the only thing you spend it on is maintenance (which is a tiny fraction of income). How about more expenses for the airlines... so we'd actually have to come up with a sound business plan instead of just randomnly purchasing new aircraft when enough money is raised?

Gate Rental (each airport you have in your route network) x 1000 bucks a month or something
Landing fees (self explanatory)
Terminal Rental (for a "hub")

or things like that.... ?