New Flight Scheduler Logic

New Flight Scheduler Logic

Description:
My Idea of how a flight scheduler logic could be to add realism and challenge. Feel free to provide input and thoughts

The Logic

Runway slots
When upgrading runway you’ll get more slots. Ie. less time required for takeoffs and landing, at first for example just 10 flights an hour (10 arrivals, 10 departures), but when upgraded to full Cat 3 landing system you´ll have 30 slots an hour.

Gate slots (estimated arriving and departure time- requires runway slot to be available at arrivial and departure)

Diffrent slots for small, medium and large aircrafts. (As it is now) and then divided into sub categories as stated below

Turnaround
Requiring - Refueling, Service round, (Catering, depending on length of flight)
Overnight Turnaround
Requiring - Refueling, Service round, Catering, Cleaning, Hotel for crew (offsite with shuttle or onsite no shuttle), briefing room
Hub Aircraft Turnaround
Requiring - Refueling, Service round, Catering, Cleaning, Crew parking, briefing room, Maintenance hangar, Airline office with “Airline supervisor/representative” (can’t for my life remember what its called in english, “Plats ansvarig”, in swedish.

The concept of combining runway and gate slots into a total slot is to prevent that 2 aircrafts have the same departure time, they will be granted a runway slot and if its delayed it can either be placed on hold at a taxiway, if other aircrafts with earlier slots can taxi an alternate path to the runway, also it would be more realistic if you’ll have to have more runways or beter equipment to handle more flights. not just building 30 gates and the all 30 Aircrafts arrive at the same time and then 4 hurt later they all depart.

Why it should be implemented:

The concept of combining runway and gate slots into a total slot is to prevent that 2 aircrafts have the same departure or arriving time on one single runway, they will be granted a runway slot and if its delayed it can either be placed on hold at a taxiway, if other aircrafts with earlier slots can taxi an alternate path to the runway, also it would be more realistic if you’ll have to have more runways or beter equipment to handle more flights. Not just building 30 gates and the all 30 Aircrafts arrive at the same time and then 4 hurs later they all depart.

It would provide a new set of challenges as well as ad realism to ACEO :slight_smile:

7 Likes

Good ideas. For this to happen the timescale needs adjusted. See the other feature request about that.

Don´t see why the timescale needs to be adjusted?
Turnaround = 4/6 h
"Overnight Turnaround" = 9h (Example)
Hub aircraft turnaround 2h at gate unboard and unload, 4h in hangar / at maintenance stand, 3h at gate preparing for departure. (Example)

As it goes for “runway slots” i only meant that it would be proudent to prevent that you can smack up 30 gates and have 30 * 4 departures / arrivals each day on a single runway. it would only need a lock on the flight planner to prevent to aircrafts to be scheduled at the exact same time on one runway. the same way the auto scheduler does with time in between planes arriving departing the gate

1 Like

Am I seriously the only one who thinks this is a issue? I have a small airport with 4 medium stands. The auto scheduler places ALL 4 flights at an arrival time of 5 AM.This means that i will need to have 4 pushbacktrucks, 4 fuel trucks and 4x3 (?) + extra rampagents. If i had baggage system i would need to have 4 of each here as well. This is of course if i want the flights to leave on time.

It also means that my check in and my security will have to handle ca 400 pax at once. and then after the rush its completely empty and just costing me money. also it forces me to build more security checkpoints than i acctually need due to congestion ONCE every FOUR Hours. This prevents me from planning and making the most cost efficient choices for my airport. IF i could set the auto scheduler to have 15 or 30 mins between Arrival of aircrafts on different gates, then i could do with 2 pushbacktrucks and 2 fuel trucks.

So please, please, please. since it’s a management game and i want to build as efficient as possible and make the most profit as possible. Make it so i can either only have ONE aircraft arriving/departing every 5/10/15minutes per runway or make it possible to choose from what time the auto scheduler should put flights for each gate. For example if I have 4 gates A1, A2, A3 and A4. then i don’t want the scheduler to put arrival of flights at 05:00 AM on all gates. if i could chose to have the first arrival on A1 at 05:00, A2 at 06:00 and A3 at 06:45 and A4 at 07:30. Then all consecutive flights would have the same separation. This will make it so I can make the best use of both facilities, staff and viechles.

If I’m the only one feeling this way then so be it. and yes with 4 gates i could micromanage it and just put my flights manually. but what if i had 15 gates?

Some pics to illustrate.

Securitycheckpoint at 05:51 AM

I want more of a even spred on the Auto scheduler.

2 Likes

@88ekke no you are definitely not the only one. I have the same problem, which is only made worse by the vehicle requirements of remote stands. The auto scheduler schedules 8 flights to land on my one runway at the same time, and all of my busses and service cars are kept busy for around a minute, then they just go back to waiting for the next wave of flights.

Most airports have a system where the runway is constantly in use, which stops aircraft from having to queue/fly in a holding pattern for ages. In ACEO, what normally happens is that all your scheduled flights arrive and depart at EXACTLY the same time, meaning that at some times the runway has 10+ aircraft waiting, and at other times there are precisely zero aircraft wanting to use the runway.

A quick fix would be to make the auto scheduler stagger flights by a set time (eg, flight 1 is scheduled 2 hours before flight 2 which is also scheduled 2 hours before flight 3 etc) so we could service a large number of aircraft without having to have a ridiculous number of runways and service vehicles. Because IRL flights are scheduled at carefully selected times to make the most of the airports limited facilities. For example, Gatwick airport serviced 4.1 million passengers in May alone, despite operating as a single runway airport.

2 Likes

Okay, I’ve just had an idea which someone probably thought of ages ago, but I’m going to voice it anyway here:
For each stand, an offset time selector potentially could be implemented. So on any individual gate, you can select by what amount of time the autoscheduler will schedule the flight from the default.

For example:
A1 - 0 minutes
A2 - 30 minutes
A3 - 1 hour
A4 - 1 hour 30 minutes

So the autoscheduler here will schedule (assuming 1 hour between flights):
A1 - 05:00, 10:00, 15:00 etc
A2 - 05:30, 10:30, 15:30 etc
A3 - 06:00, 11:00, 16:00 etc
A4 - 06:30, 11:30, 16:30 etc

This would be implemented perhaps by using a drop-down list of hours and minutes for each stand, potentially next to the stand name. It would mean the user has an input as to when their flights arrive, without actually having to schedule them manually. Perhaps this could be done with other details as well, like airline-specific gates…

2 Likes

Love the idea :slight_smile: or instead of a dropdown list you could just have a field where you type the “schedule first flight at” XX:XX

Also i think that we should be able to have the separation time between flights assigned by stands and not just generally.

Then i’d like to have a dropdown list with tick boxes for “allowed airlines at this stand” just like we have on the staffroom

Add these three things to the list and we’ll have a kick-ass auto scheduler :smile:

Just to summerize the Idea:

  • Number of aircrafts allowed to have EXACTLY the same departure and/or arrival time = sum of runways set to both departure and arrival. (two runways, one for arrivals and one for departure = ONE runway = one departure/arrival for each “time slot”) “time slot” could be 5 min intervalls?
    *Option to individually control from what time the scheduler schedules flights for stands
    *Option to reststrict individual stands to specifik airline(s)
    *Option to set the separation time fo individual stands. Example Gate A1 has a minimum separation of 20 mins while Gate A2 has a minimum separation of 40 mins
    The scheduler schedules checkindesks as well. (this will require possibility to assign checkindesks to specifik secure zone and/or gates) note don’t know if you already can do this? This will prevent the need for a one to one ratio between checkindesks and gates to avoid delays
    *Different turnaround times depending on onground services demanded by airline

Why this should be implemented:

This adds complexity and the necessary tools to control the passenger tempo/ flow of your airport. Well organized flight plans will result in less congestion on roads, less wait time in terminal, and or retail/restaurant profits due to passengers have more time to “waste”

2 Likes

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