Have you ever seen Dash-6 or Cessna Caravan flying across oceans? Have you ever though that is not something realistic? That’s because ETOPS rules are not applying in the game.
ETOPS (Extended Twin Engine Operations) is a rule that was stated by The ICAO for twin-engine aircraft operation further than one hour from a diversion airport at the one-engine inoperative cruise speed over water or remote lands, on routes previously restricted to three- and four-engine aircraft.
So basically not all aircrafts can fly in between all destinations. As to make things not very complicated, I made an excel sheet that shows which aircrafts can fly in between which destinations on which continent. So for example an airline can use all aircrafts while flying in between South America with North America. However that airline cannot use all aircrafts in between North America and Asia. It has to use one of “ETOPS ONLY” aircrafts.
Game code can check these informations before creating a flight.
Do arrival and departure airports are in ETOPS ONLY list? Yes Does airline have ETOPS ONLY aircraft in its fleet? Yes Then that flight can be offered to CEO
EDIT: For confusion; A320 means “Airbus A320 family which includes A319, A320, A321 and their sub models like regular and NEO” Same goes for other models as well.
You will find 737’s on transatlantic routes though…
Correct even A320s and Embrears can fly. Actually BA1 is an Airbus A318. However they are not generally used on transatlantic routes so they are not “used in general”. I choose like this to make things easier to be impletented to the game.
Hmmm shouldn’t Asia be broken up further? I don’t know much about ETOPS in practice, but I reckon flying from, say, Dubai to Melbourne, ETOPS might be more crucial than Singapore to Melbourne, as, say, Colombo to Dakar vs Dubai to Dakar.
I’m not convinced that it needs breaking up further.
ETOPS is about the amount of over water flight in one go (essentially how much flying are you from a safe divert airport).
Fun fact: ETOPS is time not distance based eg. ETOPS 60, ETOPS 120. Each each ETOPS rating allows your route to be that many minutes from a suitable divert airport.
Even on a hypothetical 10 hour flight a 60 minute ETOPS rating would be sufficient if your route is never far from a suitable airport.
