When does boarding start?

Hello All,

I have played the game for a few months and still not figured out what determines when boarding starts. Some flights start boarding only 20-30 minutes prior to scheduled departure while others start 2 hours ahead.

Turnaround services do not seem to matter because some flights sit with all passengers at the gate and services complete, but no boarding while others board early before turnaround services are complete.

Is there a way to know when boarding starts to improve flight departing on time?

Hi

It actually depends on the number of passengers. A full loaded plane of the same type starts earlier as when it has only a few passengers.

Ok, thank you. This logic seemed weird as the turnaround times are expected to be the same, meaning a flight with fewer passengers is expected to sit at the stand longer idling because all the services will be quicker.

Not sure what you mean, smaller flights have shorter turnaround times than large ones. If all services are completed and all pax are boarded, the flight will be cleared to leave.

I mean that some flights have all turnaround services done, but do not board. The flights could have left earlier, but they wait until the specified boarding time, which seems to be based off 1 minute per passenger prior to departure time.

For example, a medium flight in a smaller plane like an ATR will sit at the stand for an hour doing nothing because all turnaround services are done, but the flight boards 32 minutes prior to scheduled departure because there are only 32 passengers, all of whom have been sitting at the gate for that entire hour. The flight could have left early, but leaves very close do departure time and sometimes leaves late.

Large planes are the reverse as they leave early because their boarding times are much earlier. This A380 for example starts boarding as soon as the de boarding is done because it has so many passengers. Due to having more passengers than 300, the boarding is set to start before the flight lands. The flight is set to depart at 7:40, but boarding is scheduled to start 2 hours prior to the flight even arriving.

As a result, my smaller medium flights are late to depart sometimes while large flights leave an average of an hour early.

I have also seen the boarding times of the large jets to be before they are even scheduled to arrive. I sent a bug report on this a few days ago.

It seems that the medium flights have at least a 45 minute minimum to start boarding before scheduled departure. These two are both scheduled to depart 45 minutes before departure and are sitting for at least 45 minutes doing nothing while all services except for boarding are complete. The 30 something passengers for each flight are at the gate.

I think I know what you mean, yeah I have to say, this is the part that isn’t really realistic. In real world, typically the boarding starts 30 min to an hour before departure, and the game do follow this pattern, but the problem lies in the game took a minute (in game a sec) to board one passenger, in real world, it typically take 5 seconds to pass boarding desk and another 10 to 20 seconds to actually enter the plane, with the flow. So you could possibly board at least 3 to 4 pax every minute. So in my humble opinion, I would suggest the game dev adjust the number of pax boarding per in game second, but until then the solution I have is to have two boarding desk or more (self service if you want), it works for me especially I have 24 large stand that only accept large aircraft.

Hi and welcome

Game Speed and Real Life speed are something you cannot compare. Otherwise all people in game have to rush or run in light speed and you can’t enjoy wathching them. :slight_smile:

Yes, if you want to board a full medium or bigger plane, the solution is to build more boarding desks.
In my airports I use for:
Medium: A small desk + 1-3 self boarding desks
Large: A large desk + 3-5 self boarding desks
You can find screenshots where people place 10 or more desks, but I like to keep it realistic. And boarding finishes usuall on-time.

But the throughput at the boarding desks may could be increased a bit. It takes a bit long until the next pax moves to the desks.

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