I have reading a post regarding increased aircraft aging. One thing led to another and I had this thought, what if airlines could redo the interiors of a plane they lease or own. So if I lease a 757 that is 20 years old I could refit the interior (and it wouldn’t be cheap) and by doing this the aircraft age would get a small boost in the ORS.
As a passenger IRL I don’t think I have ever considered aircraft age when booking. United for example is redoing its 767-300 and they look almost brand new from the inside. So say in game it would allow some airline that utilize older aircraft to give their image a boat because of new interiors.
This would NOT have any effect on the maintenance price. Simply the Image and ORS.
Also the boost would not be massive, just enough to give an edge. Not enough to be able to directly compete with brand new aircraft.
Well, I think it would be realistic, but I would do it with two different values for aging. One value for the age of the aircraft itself and another for the age of the interior. You could make the interior age faster than the aircraft itself so that airlines have to replace their interiors every few years in order to keep passengers happy and keep a good rating. The aircraft itself can be less of a factor for the experience of the passengers and the decision on replacement of old aircraft can be based more on things like maintenance costs, fuel efficiency, etc.
This could create a situation in which new airlines are having an advantage over long lasting and established airlines. As new airlines have these brand new interiors they are more appealing for customers and older airlines have older interiors and need to keep installing newer interiors if they want to keep competitive with newer airlines.
This sort of feature would require aircraft interiors not to be able to be changed out on the fly as it kind of negates the benefit as an established airline could just save up a week or so and refurb their interiors in one go. In real life, an airline would have to put an aircraft down in hubs for days or weeks for a normal change of interiors. A massive airline would be able to change out interiors in chunks and take a couple weeks at most. To make this feature not just cause a small stall in large airline expansion as they change out interiors. Of course, it couldn't take weeks in the game but instead, it could take a full day for a widebody or half a day for a narrow body and only a couple hours for something like a Q400.
I do like this, idea, however. Especially when you look at a few airlines flying older aircraft. I flew a Delta 767-300ER recently. Both in Economy and Busines,s they look very nice and new and don't show their age in comparison to an Air India A321 I flew on three weeks ago which looked like it was one of the first off the line but a google search revealed it was only 8 years old. The general public doesn't understand 757's or A340-300's are old planes they just think its new based on how shiny the IFE and how clean the lavs are.
This sort of feature would require aircraft interiors not to be able to be changed out on the fly as it kind of negates the benefit as an established airline could just save up a week or so and refurb their interiors in one go. In real life, an airline would have to put an aircraft down in hubs for days or weeks for a normal change of interiors. A massive airline would be able to change out interiors in chunks and take a couple weeks at most. To make this feature not just cause a small stall in large airline expansion as they change out interiors. Of course, it couldn't take weeks in the game but instead, it could take a full day for a widebody or half a day for a narrow body and only a couple hours for something like a Q400.
I agree, it should take a couple of hours or a day max.
I think that it should be able to negate like 50% of the negative effect of age. That way it still hurts to run older 737s but gives new airlines a fighting chance.
Aircraft should have the interiors stay the same after a lease ends, but the interiors should still age when not in use.
Imagine there being different levels as well.
Lvl 1: Basic walls and lighting
Lvl 2: New walls, new lighting, air vents
Lvl 3: Lvl 2 plus lights that change depending on the time of day
Lvl 4: Boeing Sky Interior
These levels would get more expensive but also have better ratings.