Building new Runways

I recently posted a new idea in the German part of the forum, and I wanted to share the idea also here to get a broader input on it.

Existing games worlds start to become at one point or another by a few big, dominant players that fill most slots on the airports and make it difficult for other players to enter the world.

My idea therefore was, that it should be possible for a player to invest in an airport and be able to build an additional runway. The cost though should be very high, to not just have anybody build runways at will. The runway would also need to be available to all players equally, so nobody gets preferential or exclusive access to it. I would even suggest, that every player gets an in-game mail with a note stating that on airport xy a new runway will be finished in 2 or 3 weeks to allow them to prepare for the event.

Alliances or multiple players could obviously work together to build runways at various airports and thus increase the overall capacity of a given world. As the demand though would not necessarily rise, it would mean you'd have to compete with more players for the same share of the pie.

Of course, it would deviate from the "real" world, though if airports become too congested, they also try (some more, some less successfully) to expand and build either completely new airports (like Turkey, Beijing, etc.), or build additional runways (like LHR).

I am all for this.

Some suggestions:

On German forums it was suggested a runway should cost a billion AS$.

But airports (and demands) are not created equal.

I would suggest each bar would correspond to a $100 million cost.

So a 7-bar airport's runway would cost 700 million, a 10-bar airport would cost a billion for a new runway.

Additional slots would be summed to the airport slot page, the runway should be considered a "completely independent runway" which brings (I think) 3 or 4 slots per 5 minutes.

Maybe there could be partially independent runway (for lack of better words) that maybe has shared taxiways etc. and that might have e.g. half the slots, at 70% of the cost.

There could be a "consortium" for runway building, something similar like a stock exchange, where players could subscribe the required cost.

The "requesting player" could chose two options to build/bid on runway:

A ) Full payment must be met, which would create completely independent runway

B ) Partial payment (e.g. 70% of cost) which would create partially independent runway (as discussed above)

C) Accepting Partial build if Full payment is not collected

A single player could subscribe the whole amount, or an alliance/multiple players could subscribe it, or even players who wnat to get access to slots could subscribe it.

There could be a set time limit (e.g. 2-3 days) during which subscriptions for runway construction can be taken.

If the offer does not get sufficient funding, the money is returned back to players, same as with unsuccessful IPO.

Another requirement could be that a subscribing player(s) would need to own a terminal at that airport (but this is just consideration to make).

Another consideration is that maybe a new runway could be built maximum every 3 or 6 months, and each player/holding could request to build only one runway every 6 months.

Also there could be an option that the runway be default of certain length (e.g. the maximum length it is in current life/maximum length as is in AS), but could be extended at a surcharge, with an incremental progression of surcharge. E.g. 5% extension of length would add 5% of cost, 10% would add 15%, 15% would add 30%, 20% would add 45%, 25% would add 60% of cost, etc. This is not an exact formula, just to have idea.

I like this very much, and it is quite realistic as it happens IRL that airports may get extended if their capacity is overfilled. It should be very expensive though. I agree with rubio's idea of having a sort of fund everyone can donate money to. But I'd say the cost should be based on airport size rather than the number of bars, I think that makes more sense.

Same thing for extending the runway length. Most small runways are small IRL because no bigger airplane wants to fly there to justify the cost of extension. If major airlines would start flying there as they do in AS, the runways would be extended in no time. For instance, I have an airport very close to my hub that has a 950m runway, which means I can only fly a LET or a DH3 there. If I were to suddenly tell the local government "I want to bring an ATR here and connect your town to a network that flies all around the world", how long would it take them to build those extra 100 meters?

Sorry I hate to be the one but I'm not in favour. Your are right is a deviation from the real world as runways cannot be built/extended just because. There are real world issues that mean additional runways are a problem, such as population, and terrain. Building unlimited runways (no matter the cost) at any airport is extremely unrealistic. Also what about taxi design? The slot system is also based on available and usable taxiways more or less, when does that kick in?

It also allows a dominant player to become more dominant unrealistically. Yes your saying that runway will be open to others, but realistically a new player competing against say an 8000+ departure airline will not survive, therefore, even if not at first, the dominant player would become more so. 

As a solution, to keep the game more interesting and more REALISTIC I have been pushing that airport act as a company (ie. actually want to grow passenger numbers and profit). So my suggestion is that if the number of available slots available dips below a certain %, then landing fees  increase by a %. This can change for example weekly or monthly. Fees can also decrease if slots available increase below a %.

With this solution operators are encouraged to use larger aircraft to make use of the slots available, and therefore increase growth, profit, and prevents slot blocking. The other end to this solution is that slightly out of town airports may become more popular as with real life, as passengers choose to use ground transport then fly, than straight to fly

2 Likes

I don't mind this idea in general.

However I am concerned about situations where one player (or a consortium) spends a billion $AS on a new runway only to have another large and annoying player who didn't contribute a cent come in and snap up most of the newly created slots overnight by adding a few hundred departures. Well all know that happens a lot already. It would render the entire investment useless. So instead of having the runways publicly available, maybe they should only be available to players who contributed financially to construction...

@ Panache - that is the risk of this "investment". That's why it would also be announced to every player by in game message, and the construction would take weeks instead of days. That s the very purpose - so others can come in and grab the slots. There is no way it would be a "private runway".

@ Ianmanson - the building restrictions might be true in Western Europe, but not else in the world. The expansion is usually free to go, in USA, Latin America, Asia, Africa ... actually, in some countries they just build a bigger and better airport instead of expanding the current one (Dubai, Istanbul, etc.). I wish we could build new airports here... talk about a 50 billion investment in a new 10 bar airport! On this topic, I must disagree with "ianmanson".

Similar in China, or even crowded Hong Kong. Beijing builds a new massive airport to become one of the biggest in the world, and Hong Kong flattened/reclaimed an island to build a completely new airport less than some 20 years ago. And Hong Kong will soon start to build a third runway because slots are already getting full.

Yes, Europe is difficult, though also not completely impossible. See Berlin, or the ghost airport that was built some years ago in Spain. And also Heathrow will build a new runway, although it might take another decade or so.

@ Panache: Yes, that is a risk, but nobody forces you to invest. It's up to the player to do so.

But on a similar argument would you be able to build extra runways at London City?

I belive only certain airport should be able to build additional runways and still not an unlimited number of Runways. Only airports that have space around them should be allowed to actually build runways.

@ianmanson: Well, there are always exceptions to the rule. This is a game, and it simulates the reality. In my opinion, this does not mean it has to always follow 100% the real life. There can be deviations from reality, be it for simplicity reasons, or others.

My initial idea was to have a simple, easy solution, that would be possible to implement without big changes to the system (easy to program, little to no additional data required).

Of course, any feature can be extended and made to perfection. Question is, how much is it worth to invest in? If the solution becomes too complex to implement, than it might be easier to develop other features, that could tackle the slot problematic in other ways, but are much more costly to build.

I completely understand, that not everybody agrees with my suggestion. That's why I posted it here to have a discussion about it and see if there is wider support for the idea.

Well I think this is a nice idea and would make the game more realistic

While I like to see ideas keep coming to this simulation game as well as a new way to grow the airline business, I'm really sorry to say that this one is way out of context of the game, even-though I kinda like it. As much as the idea bring opportunities, implementing it will definitely make the game depart from the realistic airline business simulation.

Yes, IRL airport will be expanded as the number of passenger grow. Some airlines do their part to lobby governments & airport authorities, some airlines chip in for development in variety of forms (space rental, cash deposit, etc), some airline might even somehow 'acquire' an airport and develop it according to their need. But most of the time, the airport expansion project is beyond the scope of airline business. Remember this is an airline simulation game and not an airport simulation game. Expanding an airport is not a generic thing which all airlines can do or even has the opportunity to do. A lot of political and behind the scene process that are beyond airline business, that will make them irrelevant to be included in the simulation. 

There should be another way to expand airport capacity without compromising the realistic sense by giving airline the chance to build their own gigantic airport with a dozen of runways. For example adjusting wide body turn around time for short haul to favor wide-bodies utilization in short haul ultra trunk routes. CGK - SIN would be my favorite example as always, ~500nm route in which SQ deploy 10x daily 777 of all sizes, -200/-300, in addition to a dozen airlines sending a swarm of narrow bodies.

IRL, it take years before a heavily congested big airport catch up with its pax number growth, and during that congestion time airlines have to optimize their slots utilization and in a sense it is more realistic circumstance than having a feature to magically add a fairy tale runway over night. 

But on a similar argument would you be able to build extra runways at London City?

Airports like LCY are the exception rather than the rule. Most major airports aren't built within city centres but in the outskirts, and they have plenty of room to expand. Even island airports like Funchal, when there was no more room to expand they built the runway quite literally on the ocean.

Most European airports don't get expanded as much as in the rest of the world, but that's mostly for political rather than engineering reasons: governments simply do not believe the benefit justifies the expense. Almost all of them have plenty of room to expand if there is the will. But we could have another category such as "noise ban" or "night-time ban" to define whether an airport has room to expand. It wouldn't be that hard as all one needs to do is check this map in satellite view to see whether or not there is physical space.

Now it shouldn't be easy, and it shouldn't be cheap. It should be ridiculously expensive and cost a couple dozen people several billion each, but it should be possible. Otherwise we're hostage to the airport's IRL needs rather than AS needs, and an airport that has a lot of use in AS but not so much IRL will not get expanded because the RL needs don't require it, but would be expanded IRL if the usage was as great as it is in AS, thus breaking the world simulation.

If this idea is applied, data on local policies and culture should be applied. It is much easy for Peking to add new RWY and terminals, but some other place might not be the case. not only because of the room for the expansion but also the local people thoughts. Narita airport original plan had three RWYs in total, and even now it just build two if them, and 16L/34R is much shorter than planned because of the disagreement from the residents. If locals are not willing to make the airport expand, there is no way it should be done in the game. 

znjfsnit4kdkz2rfdpcx.jpg

it will be hard to actually collect these data because they are different for all the airports. e.g. it will be much easier for Haneda to add a new RWY and terminal (like what they did several years ago) than Narita. Kansai will be easier than Itami because it is surround by water, and there is free space on the island anyway. You may not even know whether Kagoshima can expand because you will never know people owned the farmland next to the airport will give up their place or not. On the other hand all the airports in Mainland China  will be easy to expand (unless geometrically impossible) because people don't own the land in the country. It's government's land, so it will be also easy to take  it away.

When you mentioned about HK, it is a crowded city, but the airport is actually not using any space on the land. Land reclamation is much easier than just taking land from locals. If HK wants to expand Kai Tak instead of the HKG, it would be much harder to accomplish. 

it's a great idea, but i don't think it will be feasible. 

My view is somewhere in the middle. I like the idea of major airports slowly expanding over time, but I would prefer a more realistic model for it.

  1. Airport charges - In most cases, the various airport charges rise considerably as an airport becomes congested. The increased charges encourage airlines to use slots more efficiently, but are also often used to fund new capital works.

I’d prefer a system that more closely reflects an airport’s business model, by raising fees as slots become rare and that triggers a new runway if slots remain scarce for long enough. The more congested the airport, the higher the fees, and the sooner the new runway is built.

Once the runway is built, fees might drop, but perhaps not back to their original level.

  1. Passenger levels - To make it more realistic, you could require a certain number of weekly passengers before an airport will expand. That number could be based on a reasonable average number of seats/pax per slot, so that a 10 demand airport packed with LETs would probably not get an expansion, but an airport with a reasonable mix of E-Jets, 737s, 787s and A380s probably would.

From the airport’s point of view, it needs a viable business model to expand, based on the ancillary revenue it receives (parking, retail, pax fees etc). From the airlines’ point of view, it would further increase the incentive to use slots more efficiently (i.e. average seats per flight).

  1. Incentives for new airlines - One of the concerns a lot of people have is that incumbent airlines will continue to dominate large airports. You could possibly reduce that problem by introducing a model where airports that are dominated by one carrier (e.g. >50% or 75% of slots are taken by one group of holdings and subsidiaries) offer commercial incentives to new airlines, or even to airlines using a small number of slots. Those incentives could be as simple as reduced fees, or as complex as reserving slots. The incentives could last for a number of weeks, to allow airlines to get established.

The objective would be to lower the cost and risk for airlines that want to compete at major hub airports, especially if they are building an expensive new runway.

I'm not against this idea since I personally would free ride:P and benefit from the change. but I'm not a big fan of it. AirlineSim claims and strives to be as realistic as possible in almost any aspects about the running of airline businesses, yet there is an exception being introduced, in which this very exception is not about 'less realistic' but rather 'less relevant', as rpandugita puts as 'out of context'. We normally accept some 'less realistic' arrangements in AS, for example, no round-trip, no combined fares, fixed cabin passengers etc, but building a runway is not the duty of any airline companies. This does seem a little odd to me, as it strikes me as somewhat inconsistent with the aim of the game.

I understand there are better solutions which most of those are always more long-term and harder to program or implement; I also understand Matth's main idea that building additional runways is a viable approach to solve the slot-blocking issues, while still being simple, and not requiring complete overhaul of the current system or destroy game balances. However, I'm concerned about this change would set the precedence to prefer a 'faster solution' and introduce more 'unrealistic' or 'less relevant' changes to the game in the future.

What I'm always advocating is the "spill-over" of demand from a crowded airport to a less crowed one, say, from LHR to LGW, not by changing the current demand calculation structure at all, but by manually making combined ratings of within-city ground connections not limited to a maximum of 73 (I forgot if this is the right number). For example, a flight from DXB - (plane) - LGW - (ground) - LHR in the current system can achieve a maximum rating of 73, which makes it impossible to compete with DXB - LHR direct flights of rating max at 100, as the LGW - LHR segment is regarded as an unfavorable "Connection". However, if the rating can be set to max at, say, 95, setting up a DXB - LGW flight is almost as good as a DXB - LHR flight, so the demand of LHR effectively spills over to a less-crowded LGW. It is possible to do a complete enumeration on those ratings since there are only a handful of cities in the world that have multiple airports, and AirlineSim already have established no-flight restrictions within cities. Anyway, that's my idea and I'm not sure about how feasibility looks from the AS Teams side. Food for thought.

@hczeitgeist: I do like the idea with making the flight rating comparable for ground based connections.

Possibly it could even be considered, that any ground connection within the already defined ground network of the airport is treated as "no penalty". That would mean, A flight  DXB-LGW-LHR would get the same rating as a flight DXB-LHR. Assuming that the passenger doesn't have LHR as his destination, but greater London. So for the passenger it's irrelevant, whether he has to take a transport from LGW or LHR to the city center. Obviously this could be refined, but in general that would ease the pressure a bit from certain airports.

@Reeve: I equally like the idea that airports are expanding "automatically" based on certain criteria, mainly the average pax/slot and overall useage of slots. Possibly we should introduce an airport tax which is added to each ticket price (for the rating of a flight). The airport tax will go up with the congestion (as well as the landing fees) to make it less attractive. The funds could equally (partially) be used to finance an expansion, once enough money is accumulated. A high airport tax (which can't be influenced directly by the player) will make a congested LHR less attractive than an empty LGW for example.

@hczeitgeist: I do like the idea with making the flight rating comparable for ground based connections.

Possibly it could even be considered, that any ground connection within the already defined ground network of the airport is treated as "no penalty". That would mean, A flight  DXB-LGW-LHR would get the same rating as a flight DXB-LHR. Assuming that the passenger doesn't have LHR as his destination, but greater London. So for the passenger it's irrelevant, whether he has to take a transport from LGW or LHR to the city center. Obviously this could be refined, but in general that would ease the pressure a bit from certain airports.

Going off-topic here but I agree. People want to fly to London, not to Heathrow or Gatwick. Yes, Heathrow is somewhat closer to the centre, but that's not why it's more popular, it's more popular because of connections, as all the major airports in the world connect to LHR and only a few to LGW. So people who use London as a connecting hub for international flights will favour LHR, but people who have London as their final destination will just as easily fly to one or the other. 

And while we're at it, ground connection rating should be severely increased to way above 0, probably as high as 50 - IRL if a flight is so low quality as to have an AS rating below 50, people will just take the train.

@Reeve: I equally like the idea that airports are expanding "automatically" based on certain criteria, mainly the average pax/slot and overall useage of slots. Possibly we should introduce an airport tax which is added to each ticket price (for the rating of a flight). The airport tax will go up with the congestion (as well as the landing fees) to make it less attractive. The funds could equally (partially) be used to finance an expansion, once enough money is accumulated. A high airport tax (which can't be influenced directly by the player) will make a congested LHR less attractive than an empty LGW for example.

I like this option as well. It will certainly prevent player abuse of over the top expansion beyond realistic expectations, and it will mean only the really congested airports will get an expansion, and only after they've been severely congested for a long time. Which is quite realistic.

1 Like

Another possibility could be organic growth of the airport and its demand as the number of connections grow. That is simulation of real life. If Jet Blue establishes a midgets hub in Cleveland, it’s passenger numbers would grow. This would provide incentives to not hub concentrate on larger airports but smaller ones as well. This would increase not only connecting passengers but local demand as well. It is natural that as the number rod possible destinations flown from the airport increases, the demand for air travel also increases in the local market. I will write about it more tomorrow as I need some sleep now.

Well, the problem with these self-driven developments is that they can be achieved, but there is no need that they will. So increasing the offer doesn't mean that there will be more demand (and automatically more infrastructure followed up).