Airport staff

Why does it make us pay for our own airport staff? In real airports the airline would provide the workers for the checking and boarding desk. So why do we have to spend our money when the airline should be providing it.

Not in every airport. At larger ones yes but not at some smaller ones. I guess long term you could have both in the game. Airport hiring some but certain airlines providing their own (for reduced airport fees)

I’ve worked at a checkin agent and it was a usual misperception by passengers that we (the check in agents) were employed by the airline we did the checkin for. At most places (at least in Europe) checkin is outsourced to handling companies or the airport.
Also big airlines like Lufthansa contracted handling companies for checkin. As far as I know, only at their hubs in MUC and FRA there is still LH-employed staff behind the counter.

This is 100% true. Most large airports in Europe have turnaround handling outsourced to Swissport

In general this decision was made to reduce complexity. As mentioned above, the relationship between airlines and staff varies a lot. So for this reason it was more easy come up with a generic airport staff role which would be under the airport’s control. :slight_smile:

I just bought the game this week and have played quite a bit over the past few days. I’ve done a couple different airports to see what works and what doesn’t and I plan on eventually doing a post that goes through things that have been good or bad as a new player. this was one topic I had on the list and thought it deserves a deeper dive than other topics since it is part of what I consider the core game and effects a bunch of other game systems as well as design. Before I continue I want to make sure that you realize I’m posting this well aware that this is a work-in-progress and that things aren’t optimized. I also am aware that what I see this game possibly being may not be what you see this game as being and I’m fine with that (it is one of the inherit dangers of buying into an early access game). But these are my thoughts on this particular system after my initial play-throughs.

I think that the generic airport staff role may cause more headaches than a slightly more complex system would. Using generic airport staff right now that fill both the front airport (check-in) and back airport (boarding) already seems to cause pathfinding issues in my relatively small one terminal airport (7 check-in desks, 6 small stands, and 3 medium stands). Occasionally I’ll see staff coming from the front check-in area to the furthest away stand for boarding despite there being plenty of staff in a closer staff room. I also think I’ve seen staff come from the front staff room through security to the closest stand because it is marginally closer by pure distance. However, due to layout of security it ends up taking longer to get there. I’d need to actually look at it closer though to see if that is what is happening all the time.

If we had the option of assigning stands/check-in desks to particular airlines or even just lock staff to boarding or check-in desks for specific times that would alleviate some of these issues. If the player knows that they have assigned 2 staff each to 6 different check-in desks and 10 to boarding desks (just an example here) then they know they need 22 staff (12 for check-in and 10 for boarding). As the system works now you know you need at least 22 staff but have no clue how many you really need because the staff wanders about. As the game works now the best option, to me at least, is to just buy a ton of staff and hope things work out.

I think there are ways that both methods could be implemented within the systems you already have in the game that wouldn’t add too much complexity (above what complexity is already in the game). Now, I’m not sure how much complexity it will add on your end for coding, but I think eventually it will actually be less complex than what you are going to get into with the current systems pathfinding (particularly as you add in multi-level terminals and such). Now, I know you are working on the pathfinding and that it has improved over what it was. And maybe you guys will nail it on the head and it will work flawlessly in the end. But I do know that one of the things that has always ruined games like this, for me, is when you are making concessions in design (be it city, village, tower, hospital, or airport) to accommodate the game’s pathfinding. I’m willing to see what you guys do with this over the long term, I just think that there might be ways to add complexity while reducing a possible future frustration.

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