Aeroport de Benidorm: An Airport Story (UPDATED: CHAPTER 2 IS UP)

Hello guys! Just letting you know that chapter 2 is up! Scroll down to the bottom of the page or click the link down below to take a read. If you’re new, please disregard this and start at chapter 1.

Welcome to Aeroport de Benidorm: An Airport Story, a new idea I had inspired by Sid Meier’s Civilization AARs, or after action reports over on Civfanatics. What this thread is, essentially, is a recollection of me playing through a game of Airport CEO from the perspective of the CEO in game. Each game I do (assuming I get to multiple and this is well-received) will largely be me setting my own goals, however, I will stick to a few basic rules throughout:

  1. Games are played with sandbox mode turned off. For the purposes of this first airport, I started off with plenty of cash as I figured out how to do this in the first place.
  2. I cannot acquire money through any means not included in the game.
  3. If I run out of money, I am run out of town, and the game is over.

I should also note that the starting airport isn’t actually Benidorm’s airport (the actual city doesn’t have one). I threw together a small little airstrip to serve as a “starting point” for the story. With that said, lets get started.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Getting My Feet Wet
Chapter 2: A Delayed Chapter About Delays

Chapter 1: Getting My Feet Wet
Benvinguda! My name is Josep Hernandez, and I have just been hired as CEO of the airport in the coastal city of Benidorm in southeast Spain. Benidorm is a bustling tourist spot in the world’s second most visited country with a beautiful coastline peppered in beaches. Unfortunately, however, cruises largely dominate the tourism industry around here. I am here to change that.


This is Benidorm’s current airport. As you can see in the image, it is a very small airport with no paved taxiway, a grass strip runway, and traffic primarily consisting of general aviation. It is not the most ideal tourist aiport, but fortunately, there is some good news.


As you can see, even though it is only my first day on the job, we already have a busy day ahead of us, with the airport’s 2 gates being completely booked all day by Stripe Air and Forest Air. This is great; it is a sign that there is interest in coming to town by air, and it will provide us with a stable source of income for our early expansion plans.


This is the current terminal. It is built next to a crowded endpoint of a road and is woefully tiny, lacking any amenities other than the most basic restroom and plastic bench. No passenger will want to travel into this mess. To add insult to injury, our expansion options for the existing building are extremely limited, as the fuel station is immediately to the south of the facility, with the vehicle depot not far north, either. At most, we could expand to four gates with this woeful facility, and the proximity to the runway could pose issues if we decide to expand to jet-service, as we would need wider taxiways for such an occurrence.


In light of the current situation, I have decided to use the funding I received to construct a new state of the art facility to begin the airport’s expansion. Here you can see the basic outline I decided to go with. A simple rectangular design ought to do for our purposes, since, even with the larger facility, we still are going to limit ourselves to prop aircraft due to the short runway and funding. To it’s south is the outline for a state of the art transportation center where passengers can easily catch either a public bus or their tour coach. I placed the building a fair enough distance away from current facilities to ensure room for expansion, both in terms of more gates as well as larger planes.


Here is a shot showing how the expansion, now under construction, would fit in with the airport as a whole.


Great, we’re having issues. This Stripe Air flight is delayed for an hour. The airline is calling me, wondering where it’s plane is. After walking over there to figure out what’s going on, I noticed what you probably have by now. Where’s the staff? Why aren’t the passengers on the plane?


Upon further evaluation, there is actually a SURPLUS of staff scheduled for this time. Again I must ask the question, where is the staff?! I didn’t authorize a break!!!


Oh, now my computer system shows a shortage. How nice of it to warn me AFTER the airline has complained.


I decided to bring a couple more staff members onto our crew in order to prevent this sort of issue from occurring in the future. Please welcome Mr. Aliyev and Ms. Sargsyan to the team.


The next morning, I arrive to find our contractors making great pace on constructing our new facilities. Here is an image of the layout for the interior. You might be asking, “Josep, why is only half the terminal under construction?” That is a very good question, with a rather simple answer: I’d want to get at least part of the terminal running and churning out cash rather than wait for it all to be finished (plus I’m not sure what to put in the other half quite yet anyway…). Also, the large empty area will be used for a shop in the near future, already a great amenity compared to the previous building.


While we are in the business of remodeling, I went ahead and ordered our runway to be paved. It may seem like a waste now, but airlines will inevitably demand it soon.


A few hours later, the first half of our new terminal is nearly ready to open! It already feels more roomy. I should point out, however, that the old terminal will remain in operation until the entirety of this terminal is open in order to maximize profits.


The inaugural passengers are here! Stripe Air has the honor of hosting the first flight out of the new terminal, destined to Milan, Italy.


Here’s the aircraft, a small DHC-6. As it pulls up to the gate, a small celebration erupts in my office, as this is my first major accomplishment as CEO.


A few hours later, the aircraft is turned around to mark the first takeoff on the updated runway as my first few days as CEO are complete. The future looks bright, and I am excited to continue coming to work.

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I absolutely love this idea, and I think it shows how creative people can get with this game! Keep it up! And remember, The Olympus Organization is always looking for new oppertunities! :wink:

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Thank you for the kind words! I’ve decided to do a part 2; check back soon, you’ve given me a bit of inspiration.

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A couple quick notes before I begin today’s chapter, Coenogo, I had intended to add Olympus to the airport but unfortunately your organization has not offered me a contract. A shame. I look forward to the day you do. I also apologize to anyone reading that it took so long to get this up. I actually have played up to Chapter 4 at this point, but I am behind on writing these up. I will catch up before I continue playing, do not worry.

Chapter 2: A Delayed Chapter About Delays


Welcome back to the Aeroport de Benidorm! It is my pleasure to continue showing you the development of the local airport. It’s bright and early on this, the third day of my administration here in Benidorm. This and part 3 are going to be based heavily around dealing with traffic, construction, and expansion. To compensate for this, part 4 will be based nearly entirely around managing the airport and improving efficiency.


One of the first things we need to do today is sort out our scheduling, as our commercial flights are increasingly becoming a greater source of funding for us. As you can see in the diagram, our gate space can handle far more flights than we are taking on at the moment. More flights is equal to more funds to continue our expansion, so I will contact the airlines and schedule some more flights.


Here we go. I have opted to add more Stripe Air flights because Stripe likes to use the larger DHC-6 aircraft, whereas Forest Air only uses Cessnas. By utilizing larger aircraft, we have more passengers moving through the terminal and as a result we get more money from terminal fees charged to passengers.


I have also gone ahead with laying out the basic setup for the second side of the main terminal. It is identical to the first for symmetry. As you can see from the bottom of the picture, the curbside of the terminal remains blank, and I will leave it as such for the foreseeable future. I plan to use the space primarily for more ticketing desks and security checkpoints as those are needed going forward.


Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the airport a few hours later. You can see how there is a very large space there in between the main terminal, the general aviation area, and the original terminal. We are going to take advantage of that space and put a nice and solid stretch of tarmac in there. For now, the stands there will simply be more general aviation stands, as I do not have the infrastructure to suppose more commercial flights quite yet.


We’ll go ahead and start that by laying in a few grass stands and a grassy area separate from the main taxiway. This will be a recurring theme as we go forward with future expansions. Having the stands separate from your main taxiways is important to ensure that traffic jams on one or the other do not spread to your entire airport.


Here is a shot of the currently completed main terminal building. Stripe Air has offered up more flights to those two gates which will begin service today.


As for the original terminal, it will remain open for now, primarily servicing Forest Air flights with a low passenger capacity. We will re-evaluate its fate in the near future.


Here we have one of the issues that will be recurring for most of this episode and the next. See, the original design of this airport allowed for about 6 general aviation flights a day and 3-4 commercial prop planes. 10 flights a day is manageable for a single runway. This airport now runs 20-25 commercial flights on a daily basis, with a departure or arrival every 15 minutes on average for passenger traffic alone. When you factor in general aviation traffic, that’s a lot of planes on very little runway, hence this jam here


The clear solution to this, then, is to build another runway. I decided to go with a nearby, parallel runway (where planes would have to cross the original runway) as opposed to either a distant parallel or a perpendicular runway for a number of reasons. Firstly, having parallel runways as opposed to perpendicular runways would allow us to operate both at the same time, allowing one to handle departures and the other to take care of arrivals. Secondly, by having both of them nearby, we reduce the overall taxi time for many planes, which is especially crucial for commercial aircraft who need to avoid delays.


This runway can’t be built fast enough. Look at the line that is forming! The airlines are not going to be happy about this. The worst part is that delays tend to cascade for hours and destroy a whole day’s timing. It’s gonna happen, watch.


Dear lord help me. We have 5 flights departing late that are either still at the gate or waiting in line for takeoff with another 4 that should have been here by now but can either not land or don’t have their gate available yet. I’m feeling my seat warming up already, and I’ve been on the job less than a week.


An hour later, and we are still on the same boat. One plane departed, and one arrived, but overall we still have a huge problem, and that’s not even getting into the general aviation mess. Isn’t it great to fear for your job when you’ve barely gotten started?


Must I continue to stress this point? We need the second runway now. I’m trying to push flights out as quickly as possible, but that is resulting in stranded passengers and empty fuel tanks. This cannot end well.


Look at this! I swear I’m going to have an aneurysm. This plane should have left an entire hour ago, and it just arrived.

One eternity later…


Finally! Hallelujah! All hail the contractors who finally built this thing!


I’ve gone ahead and researched/installed jet fuel for the airlines, who use prop planes… hmmm… something feels odd here and I can’t put my finger on it…


Our load for today, 21 flights. I’m sure we can handle it, what with this swanky new runway.


You’ve gotta be kidding me.


At least that was an easy fix. As you can see I have created an alternate crossing point so planes can safely cross runway 36L/18R. This gives them a place to cross without facing the traffic that the endpoints have head on. This will be a temporary solution however, as next chapter I will introduce the next phase of development for our airport, the Runway and Tarmac Improvement Project! How hard can it be?

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Great creativity!
I look forward to seeing it grow to handle larger aircraft!

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Can’t wait to see more! I love this series!
(Also, Olympus only has an A320 model currently, so you unfortunatly won’t get Olympus contracts until you have Medium Stands :sweat_smile:)

I’m really loving watching the development process here :slight_smile: Looks great!

If I may offer a suggestion, build your taxiways to the very end of the runway, you’ll save time since aircraft won’t have to taxi to the end and do a uturn. Might help with some of those delays :wink:

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Sweet story line !

:smiley:

I think its time for more?

i have bookmarked this for easy viewing later

Still nothing… :cry:

please i want an update. you said you already had chapters 3 and 4 ready

i’m guessing this is dead

i think so, the game ver. he was using looks really old