Hey!
I think that the Airport CEO airline way of functioning is very unrealistic, when you think about it. The way the airlines provide you with flights is in my opinion wrong. It is almost like all the airlines operate a base at your airport, because they operate many flights to many different destinations. They also don’t say a time frame in the day they want to operate the flight in.
Firstly, I feel like a good start to improve the airline contracts is that airlines only accept you to schedule a flight between times they set out, for example 14-18. This would add realism to the game play as airlines usually only want to operate flights at a certain time, to fit with their operations.
Secondly, I feel like the some airlines should only operate 1 or 2 flights daily at the maximum. This would be more realistic as well as not all airlines operate tens of flights a day to a specific airport. For example, Qatar Airways only operates a flight once a day to Brussels.
Adding to this, I feel like airlines could ask for flights to be every 2 days, during a period of 10 days for example. This would be a nice addition to the game, as you would have the possibility to do some more complex flight scheduling. On the other hand, this more complex game play would disappoint some people, so it could be turned on and off.
Extending the topic, I feel like passengers who travel on an airline that is based at your airport should be able to have connections. This would allow the option to create facilities for connecting passengers, such as more shops. Your airport facilities would also have a big impact on the connecting passenger experience, as if you do not have the correct baggage handling equipment, passengers might need to collect their bags, check them in again, and re-check through security… This would impact the passenger satisfaction.
Elaborating even more, I feel like airlines should sometimes terminate contracts. This could be done because of multiple reasons. For example, they could terminate the contract because they are unsatisfied with your airport. Or, they could terminate you contract because not enough passengers would travel on the flights, or simply to your airport (more about this below). This would add a lot of realism to the game, because airlines do terminate contracts with different airports for different reasons.
Going in more depth with passenger demands, I feel like demand should vary on routes airlines operate to your airport. This would mean that even though an airline operates a Boeing 737-800 (for example), you would only have 50 passengers coming to your airport if the route has a low demand. And if the airline thinks it should change the aircraft, it would do so, and if it thinks the only thing it can do is cancel the contract, it would. It would also mean that we might simply make less money if we only have airlines operating low demand routes with big aircraft, because we would make less money because less passengers would come to our airport.
So yeah, i’m done with this essay! Hope you agree with me on the idea!