Has it been considered, since this is Airport CEO and not AirLINE CEO, to get rid of the airline contracts where we (instead of the airlines) have to control the schedule of flights?
I think it would fit the concept better if we could sign a contract with the airlines to provide a certain number of gates with so many food franchises and shops in their terminal as well as a certain number of baggage bays dedicated to their gates. They can also ask for X number of check-in desks dedicated to their gates. Maybe even have a contract asking for so many stipulatins that if you accept and build what the airline requests, that airline turns your facility into their hub.
A lease can ask for a monthly fee to be paid as well as a percentage of each ticket sold. The lease can also demand a minimum number of aircraft to be serviced in a period of time.
tl:dr
So, changing airline contracts to airline leases would change the contract to say the airline will land X number of flights per period, pay a “monthly” (or whatever period) fee of X dollars and pay X percentage of passenger tickets.
This would certainly be possible, though probably difficult to implement. It would add a lot of realism. Probably even too much realism for some. Honestly, I believe that the current contract-system works fine, although I could understand that others might want to have it be more realistic.
Right now I feel like I am playing Airline Contract Scheduler. I would like to see something along these lines also. I want to spend time working on my airport, not having to sign contracts every 15 minutes and then spending another 15 dragging the flights into the flight planner.
This is the only aspect of the game that is annoying to me. I understand it might be liked by others, but I would rather sign that contract once and then deal with the airport and deal with any disturbances or perturbations the airlines might have.
To me, the worst part of the game is scheduling flights. Like Daytac, I want to feel like an Airport CEO when I play this game, not like a travel agent.
I still love the game, I just think the whole flight scheduling thing has deviated away from the core of what the title suggests and is really more cumbersome than fun. I can see how it can be entertaining to those who like that sort of thing. But, when I play an Airport CEO game, I’d expect it to focus more on the Airport and not the Airlines.
Well…unless your airport grows to a certain size, this is o.k. managing 2-4 gates. But then, one of the board members should be able to take over and procure contracts and schedule the flights accordingly. I agree: this is fun in the early stages, when you micromanage almost everything. But later, when you have problems and happen to be occupied with expanding the airport, connecting conveyor lines and stuff…well, you are distracted and often miss the correct time to fill in new flights. There should be at least an assistant - or leasing the stands to airlines for certain hours. I can do a contract and allocate the flights once but I do not want to be bothered to do it regularly while having planning on my mind. I understand, that this is, what the daily flights are for - but you get those too seldom compared to your needs and stands available. I’d rather take only those and am fine for 5-7 days than to look for 5-7 fire and forget contracts to be renewed every other day. I would only do it when a contract is voided or I build more stands and allocate time for those or want to change something. But once running, it should go on. I guess the best interims solution would be to change the ratio of contracts offered for daily flights and those for “do 6 flights in 2 or 3 days” and prefer the daily ones. This would help a lot.
Guys, I totally agree woth you, planning flights is the most badly thing im the game. When you havea small airport it’s ok, but when you have big one, it’s a lot of micromanagement. I adressed this outlook in this post:
I would still love to see a way to lease gates to airlines, as stated at the top. But, if that isn’t feasible, then maybe add an operations officer who will handle the scheduling of flights. That way, if a player enjoys scheduling all the flights, he can. But for those who don’t care to schedule flights, we can just pay an operations officer to do that for us.
Maybe have sliders that will direct the operations officer how to fill slots. The player can tell the operations officer how many flights per day per gate you want scheduled and the operations officer will schedule them based on that info. Maybe even have a way to schedule only daily flights on a particular gate.
I don’t think these leasing and automatic scheduling should be mutually exclusive. It would be great to be able to assign / lease gate(s) to an airline and still have the auto flight scheduling in place. Any thoughts on this?