[ATC/Economy] - Replace contract capacity with airport slots

[dh16dh]

I wanted to preface my suggestion by expressing my sincere thanks to the dev team. As a player since the 1.0 days, I’ve seen how much hard work you’ve poured into this game, and it’s truly appreciated. The suggestion below is quite a significant one, and I see it as a potential foundation for a 4.0 update. While it’s a big proposal, I firmly believe it would bring a new level of realism and strategy to the game. Thank you again for all you do, and I hope this idea resonates with the team.

What is your suggestion?
I propose replacing the current contract capacity system with a scheduled airport slot system. This would be integrated with the upcoming scheduling feature. Instead of a fixed number of contracts, an airport’s capacity would be determined by a time-based schedule of arrival and departure slots. When signing a new contract with an airline, players would be required to assign a specific arrival and departure time slot. This also builds on a separate suggestion of splitting up the arrival and departure stages.

The baseline number of available slots could be set dependent on the number of stands unlocked, number of runways available. When purchasing a new stand, multiple slots are awarded. The number of slots can still be expanded on by purchasing extra with silver planes, however, now there would be an upper limit based on the number of stands and hours in a day/week. However, I think that forces players to be strategic with their slots, as airports can become slot restricted, like LHR.

How would it work in the game?
The new scheduling system would be the backbone of the proposed change. When a player signs a contract, they would be given separate arrival and departure slots for that specific aircraft and airline. The player would then assign these tags to a specific, recurring time slot on the schedule. This could be designed to repeat weekly in-game or daily, depending on balancing.

This would also enable the signing of multiple of the same contract as suggested by someone else, without distorting balance, since they must be scheduled appropriately. This allows for a more realistic schedule since high frequency must be manually planned in and would therefore appropriately cost the player more with the benefit being higher XP payout. Since they are separate contracts, they can also be given appropriate flight numbers to better match real life for routes with multiple daily frequencies.

Another potential benefit is that the departure slot does not necessarily have to be directly after the arrival slot, allowing for extended ground time if so desired. Furthermore, if multiple arrival and departure slots for the same airline and aircraft have been signed, they could potentially be mixed and matched. This would also allow for greater flexibility; for example, an aircraft arriving from one destination could depart for a different one, effectively enabling true hub operations, fifth freedom flights or triangle flights. This decoupling of arrival and departure would add a new strategic element without disrupting the game’s balance, as the number of flights is still limited by the available time slots. Extra slots could be purchased with silver planes, giving players a new way to expand their operations.

Why is this a good idea?
This change, I strongly believe, would bring several key improvements to the game, enhancing realism, strategy, and potentially game balance.

1. A major benefit is the ability to introduce short-haul widebody contracts without disrupting the game’s progression balance. Currently, these types of contracts are restricted because their high frequency on short routes grants a disproportionate amount of XP. Under a slot system, a contract’s XP would be awarded for a single, scheduled flight, regardless of distance. This would prevent players from “gaming the system” by spamming short-haul widebody flights, as the time-bound nature of the slots would naturally limit frequency. Signing a contract would only net you one arrival and departure within an in-game week for example. This would open up new strategic possibilities and increase realism at airports like BKK where such flights are common.

2. It would make managing a players own fleet more interesting and strategic. Signing a contract with a destination would only take up a small percentage of the aircrafts usable time within the schedule window. Players could therefore assign their aircraft to operate flights to multiple destinations but would have to be strategic in their decisions to minimise down-time and maximise profits.

3. It enhances realism and can provide better insight into how airports really operate, as many airports such as LHR are slot restricted and so from an airports point of view, the management of these slots becomes a core component of the game.

4. Allows for die-hard realism fans to also number flights based on the inbound and outbound flights

Optional: Image or reference
Nothing yet, but may try and create mock-ups if time allows.

[DHC8]

This could definitely take the game to the next level, just enough that it can emulate a Simulator

[Hirohitoswaifu]

This would be fantastic, especially for airline lovers like myself who aren’t too bothered about running our own airline in-game. But for those people, they could easily fit their airline in there and would be better for free players who aren’t able to take advantage of the widebody spam. Great suggestion

[Mitya]

If I understood everything correctly, then overall the idea is great — I like it.

Since we don’t know much yet about the upcoming scheduling system, this already feels like a step towards assigning a specific aircraft to a certain stand.

But am I right in thinking that it would still be possible to assign multiple flights to the same stand within one in-game “day”?

For example: one arrival and departure NRT–BKK–NRT, and later on (according to the schedule) an arrival DOH–BKK–DOH, and so on — all without repeating the same flight within a single in-game day?
Right now, there is really a lack of full scheduling.

First, this concerns widebody aircraft on short routes, especially if these routes are busy.

Second, it would be useful to be able to use the same type of aircraft on one route but with different flight numbers.

Third, as part of something special, it would be possible to assign personal numbers to such flights (although this can already be done, in the proposed system it would make more sense).

And finally, when planning, it would be possible to more flexibly assign narrowbody aircraft so that they don’t try to take any free slot anywhere and disrupt the rhythm of arrivals and departures.

[dh16dh]

@Mitya

But am I right in thinking that it would still be possible to assign multiple flights to the same stand within one in-game “day”?

Yes of course it would still be possible to assign multiple flights to the same stand, as long as their times don’t overlap. I would imagine that you assign first the arrival time slot, then assign the departure timeslot. There would be a minimum turnaround time that would depend on the aircraft as well as whether it is a LCC or not, similar to how currently full service carriers have additional turnaround items like catering.

This would give flexibility since you can extend beyond the minimum turnaround. A longer ground time for hub airlines is quite common, which could maybe be a strategic choice if you’re lacking ground crew, or perhaps you can recreate a curfew during the night at LHR (be nice and let the poor people sleep)

For example, at BKK you can sign a contract with Thai Airways for a B77W to HKG. You assign it to stand E1 and to arrive on Monday 15:50 and have it depart at 17:20. You can then sign a separate contract with a Scoot A21NX to arrive from SIN to use the same stand at 17:25. (Maybe you could assign earlier but then risk delay propagation. Could be another interesting strategic element to manage.)

To allow the realistic hub operations, you would need two contracts from the same airline and the same aircraft type. So if I also have a Thai Airways B77W to LHR for example, I could create a HKG-BKK-LHR turnaround and vice versa by assigning the appropriate destination in the departure slot. Obviously this is only an idea and not considering the immense amount of work to prototype and get a functional and intuitive UI, but it would be easier to enable this if the concept of slots is in-place I think.

The key thing is that these contracts are only valid for those singular arrival and departure and so you would need to wait an in-game week before it repeats for example. Signing contracts would cost fewer Wollars to compensate, but duplicates would be allowed so you can have multiple per day or week.

This gives much finer control over the frequency of a specific route and makes it more realistic. There could be a limit per aircraft type so you don’t spam sending A380s every possible timeslot between BKK and HKT, but you could in theory have it be once per in-game week for example.

Hope this clarifies my idea and sorry for the massive wall of text.