Fleet planning revised

As I've been playing with the game for some time now, I tend to loose intereste once I have built up an airline and when it is somewhat running successfully. There is little to no incentive to replace the fleet (there are even obstacles preventing this) and you can also keep it running without doing much for an extended time blocking an established server from getting some activity.

For that I would like to suggest some ideas that might extend the game playing and create more changes in the airlines.

Fleet planning

While it is somewhat frustrating to wait for aircraft when you ordered them, it actually should be much more of a long term strategy decision as it is now and should have a whole bunch of decisions related that influence the success of your airline. Here are a few ideas that I was thinking about:

• Manufacturers should have a single order book, and when you order your aircraft, you get first come first serve principle. The production rate then should be flexible and determined by the system, based on the size of the order book, the Agex, the aircraft type lifecycle and possibly some other variables.

New aircraft in development (777X, 330NEO, etc.) could already be ordered upfront to get an early slot, while being a launch customer gives you a financial benefit

- It should be possible to negotiate for your aircraft order and get a much more individual price. That could also be a possible additional benefit for the alliances, to make an alliance wide aircraft order and get a better price/slots/etc. This might benefit bigger, and more established companies though.

By combining orders for different types from the same manufacturer (737 and widebody) and creating an overall bigger order, the manufacturer would offer a bigger discount. Here should be some complexity in the price building, and include parameters from the Agex, the reputation of your airline, your fleet (if it’s a single Boeing fleet, Airbus might give you a bigger discount to get the order), the size of the order, the time in the lifecycle of the aircraft type (ordering now a classic 777 should give you a bigger discount, while you might get almost none on the 777X), etc.

Possibly it should be be possible to make a counteroffer, trying to reduce the price even further. If you press the limit too far, you might get a penalty in terms of delay in negotiations, as you upset your counterpart?

- It should be possible to buy options along with an aircraft order, which could potentially be tradeable (possible for abuse/cheating? Maybe they would not be tradeable, but add some flexibility in the pipeline/delivery times?) Options should be reasonable in price, but not too cheap to make it too simple to just order in reserve

- The financing of the aircraft orders should be a separate negotiation, taking again into account your airlines reputation, it's financial standing, etc. These financing companies (played by the system) could also place some orders on a regular basis to have some aircraft available for new entry players, smaller companies that only need 1 or 2 aircraft. Financing contracts should have a limited duration (possible to choose, impacting the price. There should be situations, where shorter contracts have better conditions, to create some activity in the airlines fleets. For example during low economic conditions (Agex) the offers might turn). Terminating a leasing contract early would also have a negative financial impact.

- It might be possible to slot-block an aircraft type by placing a big order (if you are big enough).

- Leasing contracts should have a chosen end date. Leasing contracts should also expire after it's intial term, forcing you to order a new aircraft/replace with another. Ideally, it would not be possible to simply renew the contract and keep the aircraft. The difficulty to terminate early should prevent slot blocking and help prevent "cheating"

- To support the importance on the fleet planning, the demand should possibly have a bigger influence on the aircraft type and age to support a regular renewal of the fleet. Also the administrative overhead should somehow be higher with a hetergenous fleet (requiring more pilots, etc.) and not just be reflected with the maintenance cost

I believe that this would add a whole new dimension to the game playing.

I personally don't like most of the suggestions. To me, most of these suggestions would not add new dimensions, they would kill the game.

Single order book would need to be massive. We are playing in real time... Who would be willing to wait 3-4-7-10 days for an aircraft to be delivered, when everything runs in real time? Players WOULD lose interest in the game. I know I would. Having single order book is possible for games that run on 20 minutes time.

You suggest a single airline could "slot block" the order book... well, on most servers the 2-3 dominant alliances could well block the aircraft type ahead for YEARS (real life). Now hear the complaints of the other players!

Also imagine you start in an investment open countries (with the exception of very few, most of them depend on connecting traffic to make an airline viable) and you need aircraft coming quickly in order to develop the critical mass that supports connection. About 20-30 aircraft is needed for that. If you need to wait 2 real life months to get 30 aircraft, there is no way to make that work.

All of this, plus more, lots of complaints, then we are back to the individual order book.. Not even worth to start messing with the idea of single order book on real-time server, IMO.

Financing of the aircraft, by doing it differently than it is, would actually hurt small companies rather than benefit them. Try to go lease a brand new A320 or 737 from Boeing Capital or from a major lease company, and unless you have strong backing AND great business plan they will show out the door but on your way out they will offer you a 10-year old machine. I don;t think new airlines in AS would appreciate being worthy of only 10-year old machines when they start up.

My suggestion would be to somehow making OWNING the aircraft more interesting than it currently is. Owning it (paying the interest plus principal) should not be much more expensive than leasing it (some more expense is warranted because you will own it at the end).

Also subleasing would be a nice idea, it could help smaller companies to get aircraft even cheaper! A big airline orders 200 aircraft, and then subleases 50 of them; the price the offer for sublease could be actually lower than the AS leasing company, by the virtue of having placed order for so any aircraft.

Now, the idea of negotiated rate is the one that I actually like, as I consider discounts offered for 100 airline order (or even more) to be negligible, given the fact that in real life a price airline that orders 5 A320s is about 20% higher than an airline that orders 100 or 200 A320s. It's been written about all over that Ryanair's aircraft at 4-5 years of age are sold at a price (market price for a  4-5 year old A320) where Ryanair actually makes a profit (from their original purchase price) by selling them. It is not fair that an airline that orders 100 aircraft gets a very measly discount compared to airline that orders 3 planes. Myself, I have been ordering in batches of 5 (10 max) in order to manage order books among various subsidiaries, because the current discount offered is not worth the trouble of blocking the order book well in advance, AND paying the deposit at the time of order.

No airline game has "set date lease contracts" that automatically expire at lease end day (unless you manually chose such option and enable it). Even for 20-minute days games such option is a huge micromanagement issue. Then, we have the issue of cost of equipping the aircraft, positioning it, etc. Every game, even 20-minute day games, allow early termination, by a small fee. That fee is usually negligible.

Players already replace fleet, because after a 2 years period you pay the same for a 2-year old plane as for a new plane, there is no benefit in price and you are approaching the 2.5 year window when your ratings start to drop. At 2.5 years you are overpaying by 10.5% the aircraft's actual market value (you pay as brand new), yet your ratings for aircraft age start to drop. This in itself forces many players to replace fleets. I do not think that a forcible fleet replacement by having set-date leasing contracts is necessary, and again it would just cause a lot of micromanagement. Implement that and people will not be able to take vacations at all, I mean let's go to Africa for a Safari and when you come back home after 2 weeks, 50 airplanes of your 1000+ fleet will be gone, along with corresponding slots. Yeah right, I can imagine willingness of martin and sk to take all that heat at that moment! not!

Let's try to make the game more interesting by other means:

- New players that base at 7 bar airports get 5 MM additional subsidy, at 6 bar airport it would be 10 MM, and at 5 bar airports it would be 20 MM. This subsidy would be requested through the menu, the system would check where the airline is based. The system would also periodically check (when running stats daily) to make sure that such airline is really flying from that airport, and not just paper-basing there to get subsidy, it would need to have 40% of all of its departures from subsidy airport. This would increase competition, along with making it a known fact in wiki that building connections is the way to get traffic. The airline would need to comply to this requirement for 60 days after being awarded the subsidy. Penalty for failure of compliance (after maybe a 1 or two warnings) would be forced bankruptcy of such airline by the system.

- Make more use for alliances, for example by introducing alliance as part of an image factor of the airline. Alliance image would rise and fall, for starters it could be base don number of flights and passengers transported, then also by the number of members AND their connectivity (e.g. number of possible alliance connections). Negative financial rating of individual airlines would hurt alliance score, and in turn image of all airlines. Bankruptcies of members would have even stronger negative impact.

- Open up "new level" of AS, similar as "off-topic" is on many forums, you need to "deserve" it. For example, charter contracts. In order to bid for a charter contract you must own the plane that will be doing the charter work. Charter offers would be random and at random times, and players would bid on them.

- Create code shares, where partners can buy up a fixed portion of capacity (for a fixed agreed fee) and then sell that portion as their own. This would take care of some slot issues, because two alliance partners could run a joint 747 or 380 instead of 787 each. Each airline would get its own demand calculation. Partners would agree on what service and seats are offered, because those would affect the base ORS, but each one could add flight attendants of its own as well as set its own pricing level. FA, pricing, and airline image would be the another factor affecting the ORS for that particular airline's codeshare flight.

My end word: if we want more micromanagement, then AS should definitely implement this. If we want this to be more interested in terms of strategy, there are other options that will make the game more interesting. I am in this game for business feel, to see if my strategies work, how they work and under what conditions. I am not playing AS to be a slave of micromanagement.

The point is, we should strive to make the game more diverse, to have more areas where to spend time by "interesting tasks" rather than menial micromanagement tasks. If we want micromanagement, we can even go back to transferring aircraft schedules fight by flight. I wish to see how many players would be willing to remove the aircraft transfer tool, I guess very few.

This would be very sad as some order books alredy have 100 orders in and take a couple of months untill your aircraft can be delivered. For new airlines this is terrible as they maybe have invested all there money in the aircraft and then they do not have it to start earning some new money? Being a launch costumer how does that help if you do not even have the full data of how your aircraft works?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to add more micro-management to the game play. My intention is to add more strategic, long-term elements to the challenge. At the same time, I want to force long-term players back on the table, as currently there is little to no "need" at all to manage your airline once it has a certain size. You can easily run a large airline without touching it for months. I want to avoid that, and compete with "active" players.

Now to reply a bit more specific to your concerns.

Single order book

Yes, it would mean you have to wait longer for your aircraft, and this is what I meant with a more long-term strategic element. It would need to have the possibility for new players to still place purchase orders in the future, even if you don’t have the money (yet). And I did not mean for the new players to have to wait months to get their first aircraft either. That’s why I wrote, that the AS Financing companies should place in regular intervals orders for some of the types and have a “stock” of new(er) aircraft available for new players (only?). But it should somewhat be limited that you can’t get a fleet of 100 aircraft in a week or two. Grow slowly, grow steadily, grow planned.

And again, there is still the used aircraft market, which allows to get aircraft on short term to start playing.

Slot blocking

The slot blocking idea would probably not be used that often, as it should definitely have a big financial impact. To just order (a lot of) aircraft on stock and not use them, should also drain a big airline considerably, given the point that you can’t just order it, and cancel the leasing with no negative consequences. And even then, the aircraft would end up on the used market, making it available for the others to use them.

Quick startup

Your example of starting a daughter company and you need quickly a lot of aircraft. That’s exactly what I mean. You would need to plan ahead and order your required aircraft ahead of time (through the mother company) and once you get the deliveries, you start up. Or you can always start up with used aircraft.

Financing

Regarding the financing. I'm not saying it should be done 100% like in the real world. There would certainly be room to allow for some advantages for smaller airlines to help them get started.

And yes, it would certainly help to make owing an aircraft more attractive, but it should also have some kind of option to sell it again once it is not needed anymore. Currently, once you have an aircraft, you won’t be able to sell it anymore, as hardly anybody buys one from you.

Terminating (leasing) contracts

And I agree, it should be possible to terminate a leasing contract early, but it should have a financial impact. You can't just go and lease a car signing a 4 year contract and two months later you return it and not face consequences. Same here. Currently I can return an aircraft anytime, and not have a single penny to pay (except that I loose my cabin interior).

Maybe there are certain players that replace their fleet, but there is no “need” to do so, if you don’t want. And again, buying an aircraft would alleviate you from the need to replace your fleet when you’re on a long vacation. And it might even be possible to maybe enable somehow a feature to plan ahead (cancel and replace early, adjusted delivery times, etc. etc.)

Subsidies

I do like the idea of subsidies if you start on a smaller airport, but if you only get that money at a later stage (60 days as you suggested) then it's worthless. Who wants to wait 60 days for money you need most when you start up? You just wrote, that waiting for an aircraft is a no go, waiting for money is? If you give the money immediately, you provide the player with forward trust. You wanna force the airline into bankruptcy once it fails to comply to the constraints?

Alliances

I like the idea with strengthening the alliances.

Charter

Charter contracts? Hmm, not sure. It is probably difficult to implement, yet adds little game play? Or are you talking about a business aviation concept kind a thing?

Code shares

Code shares, yes. My understanding is, that this is partially implemented with the interlining. But being able to provide more options here as suggested, would certainly be a nice feature.

I agree with your closing words. I also want to make it more “interesting”, yet this is certainly very subjective. For me, the game is a long(er) term strategy game. And for that it’s very interesting to start something up, but after a certain time it lacks the long-term binding. Or maybe that’s just my personal problem, that I loose interest in things too quickly…

I'm against the single order book.

In real life companies like Boeing, Airbus have multiple production lines. Each model has its own production line, in some cases when the aircraft is popular, like the 737 or 787 they even have multiple production lines for the same aircraft type. 

The single order book would be of course per aircraft type/family (like all A32X or 737 variants).

And as I wrote, the production rate should be automatically adjusted based on the size of the order book, meaning the rate of production will go up if there are a lot of outstanding orders, and slowly come down, if no new orders come in and the order book gets smaller.

Just like in real world. Although the manufacturers have multiple production lines, they still communicate the total production rate per type as a single figure (currently around 50/month for the 737 and A32X family and 12-15 for the widebodies). Both big players have just announced some time ago to increase the production rates for the single aisle aircraft as a reply to the high demand. But it's not doubling the output, it's rather increases in the lower 2-digit percentages (10-15%).

Yeah, but in real life airlines wait YEARS for new aircraft (not a new model, but rather a new piece) to be delivered. I don't think waiting for months or even weeks of real life time would be accepted by most AS players. It has been implied that one week in AS is equivalent in profitability to one month in real life. By the same token, a 737 production line would need to have 50 planes delivered per week instead of per month. Also it's assumed the "world size" (passenger demand, etc.) in AS is about 4-5x the actual world size, so that would mean 250 aircraft (737) deliveries would be required in AS per week. That is 36 planes per day. Looking at it, we are on the same number of deliveries as with individual order book, or maybe even we exceed that. Now a single airline places order for 20x 737, with 36 deliveries per day and very few players in line, they would get their planes in 1-2-3 days max, all 20 of them. Single order book, I say no.