It would be really nice to add some backstory for an airline e.g. Maple Air Services Inc. was founded in 1948 as a small tourist service to serve the much-needed Toronto to Vancouver route - it would make the game lore a whole lot more interesting. Another thing is having airlines based around one country e.g. Maple is a primarily Canadian airline, therefore you won’t get Maple DHC-6s serving an airport in Russia.
Sure, this is a fan idea. It would still make an excellent read, though.
Yes and no. Stories offer depth but also limit possibilities. It would be interesting to see the airline receiving more of a character (as will supposedly be done in the next update) but the stories shouldn’t restrict the player’s freedom.
I love the idea of having region/nation specific airlines. I think it would add more sense of place, and make choosing a location for the airport a lot more meaningful. Currently the climate is the only thing impacted by location, and that is very immersive.
As far as back stories go, I think they should also seperate major carriers, from their regional counterparts. For example, SkyFly could be a major carrier, operating 737s, A320s, and 777s. SkyLink on the other hand could be a regional carrier owned by SkyFly, with the same livery, and operate CRJ700s, and ERJ-140s. Basically how most US carriers (and I assume most European carriers as well) operate regional aircraft under a different company (United has United Express, Delta and Delta Connections, american and american eagle etc).
Combining these features, the major carriers could operate international flights much further than their regional subsidiaries, so using your example Maple may offer a contract to an airport in England, or Russia, but Maple Express would only offer contracts to airports in Canada and the United States.
This is what they had back in Airport Tycoon/Airport Inc - each carrier had a home country and base airport, and their operations were tailored to where your airport was - e.g. if your airport was set in New York, then initially only local US based airlines would offer short-haul flights. Once you had the facilities (e.g. could handle long haul flights) you would get offers from other airlines, but they would only operate flights to their home country (ie a UK based carrier would only offer large aircraft flights, not small/medium flights). Only local based carriers would offer all sizes of flight. Equally, most major countries had a few airlines, some only offering small flights, some only large and some a mixture. Once you had gained enough approval from some of the bigger local based airlines, they would offer to hub at your airport, which would generate a lot more flights from that airline.
This is one element of realism that I do miss in Airport CEO, but appreciate that the amount of work required to implement this is large.
Absolutely agree with this idea and the two comments before mine. I feel like this feature would make the game more immersive and would go hand in hand with the gameplay update, while the terminal update could see international flights, meaning carriers that fly to other countries would use customs ect. This would mean there is a possible need for more carriers (vanilla game), to satisfy the multitude of options each country has: e.g USA 6 domestic carriers, Australia 4 and so forth. The need for more vanilla airlines would mean that another airline creation contest could be held, which brings more people to the game and new active modders could be found.
This feature would also be very useful for the modding aspect of the game. Where the “home base” could be set in order for the game to run the same way as the vanilla.
You can’t change your raisins…
This smells like a massive community event. Players create the stories/vote for favorite. Devs can merge/veto as they see fit. Itd add a cool depth to gameplay
Maybe we could create a fan AirportCEO wiki? Where we can share fanon ideas, airport histories, etc.
Just tried this - the Wiki has been closed…
Aw man 
Fun while it lasted though
I like the idea.
This topic was automatically closed 31 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.