some thought about more realistic

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joefremont
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by joefremont » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:32 pm

Cat wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:36 pm
On it bossman, here's some scary stats: Fly Vegas/Wrangler Air Charters has 91 planes. Only 28 of those have "current annual inspections/service".

That means we have 63 aircraft that are not "legal" - probably looking at $40-50 million to get them all done. YIKES! :shock:

If this is typical of other FSAirlines VA operations, there would have to be some sort of transition period to requiring all aircraft have a valid annual inspection certificate. Like say an entire year LOL
Good point on when the inspections would be required. It occured to me that if we reset all the inspection timers to 'now' when we deploy this feature, exactly one year from that date I will get a lot of angry support requests as to why all there aircraft are locked.
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Cat
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by Cat » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:53 pm

yup, might have to make it an "advisory" like the exceeded max weight advisory until such a time you get enough feedback to decide whether to adopt it as a "rule" or just drop it due to negative feedback.

Maybe something on the page where you book the flight linked to the aircraft page "annual inspection expired"
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by Cat » Thu Oct 11, 2018 12:56 am

More number crunching results:

For Fly Vegas' entire fleet to renew annually all inspections the cost out of our bottom line will be $61,740,804.00. That is for 91 aircraft ranging from a Cessna 185 to Boeing's 787-900.

If the decision were made to make the inspection requirements bi-annually (every two years), the annual cost is reduced to $30,870,402.00.

To be honest for our business with just under $7 Billion in cash and assets that is a drop in the bucket - cost of doing business.
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VegasTim
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by VegasTim » Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:53 pm

The cost of performing A services on all aircraft every year is prohibitive. For our purposes Cat, let's go with every other year, make it bi-annual. We can put this policy in place for our operation and not need an FSA directive. 8)
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by joefremont » Mon Oct 15, 2018 6:05 pm

Some more thoughts on this subject. I did some analysis of flights over the last year and found the average reduction of repair status per flight is a little over 0.2%. So here are some ideas.

For airlines using the extra fees:

If an aircraft is not flown within 60 days its repair status is reduced by 0.2%
All aircraft must receive a maintenance check every two years to fly although officially 'passed due' at one year.
All aircraft up for sale must have received an maintenance check within the last year.
Airlines would be able to build maintenance centers at airports to reduce the cost of the fees.
Parking fees (Details later)

For airlines NOT using the extra fees.

All aircraft up for sale must have received at maintenance check within the last year.
The maximum multiplier the airline would use would be a step lower than those using the fees.
No maintenance centers.
No Parking fees.
All aircraft sold would be subject to a 'tax' paid by the seller to make up for the fees other airlines have to pay, rate not decided, maybe 5-10%.


Maintenance Centers.
An airline would be able to build a maintenance center at any airport and would be assigned as part of one of the airlines fleets. I have not worked out all the number but the basic idea would be that it would cost 10X to build and X a month to maintain and would be able to work on an aircraft up to a given size, the cost of the center would determine the size of AC it could handle. The cost of doing the maintenance would greatly reduced to where the cost would be only 25-50% of normal and as long as the center was 10-50% active the airline would break even. The airline could even make the center available to other airlines and charge from 30-100% of normal rate and keep the difference between there cost and what was paid.

Do any of these ideas appeal to anyone?
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wings138
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by wings138 » Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:15 pm

Ok, some more thoughts to toss into the mix here. So to be far to all levels of operations of airlines, that is the starter to the established, I think having a landing fee/gate fee/parking fee/ground crew fee/ all sounds great, but don't make it much, like a few dollars. But now if you are going that route, you will have to figure out this, each airport that an airline (VA) has a hub at, or focus at, would possibly have a different amount they would pay instead of a destination that one just lands at. Example: Alaska Airlines, Hubs are Anchorage, Seattle, and LA, with lots of destinations. Take Seattle, Alaska has about 1/2 of that airport to itself. Then there is Denver, they have I think just one flight daily to Denver. So, their fees at Seattle would be way different then in Denver.

How in the heck would you figure it all out. So...

To be fair to all interested, I would put in a simple system maybe like $10 or $20 to land there. Remember the guy flying a C404 or C208 isn't making a ton of money on his flight. Or maybe it could be like 2% of the income of the flight. See that way everyone participates, and it's showing something.

FSEconomy does that, if there is an FBO, there is gate fees and ground crew fees, but I don't know how they do it. I would just say do a small amount and take it from the profits.

And why your at it, make the darn Cargo flights actually be able to make good money like passengers, they do in the real world. This way, even an all cargo airline could be up there competing with everyone else.

Other wise great job with the client and fixing the penalties...
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by VegasTim » Tue Oct 16, 2018 4:32 am

If an aircraft is not flown within 60 days its repair status is reduced by 0.2%
All aircraft must receive a maintenance check every two years to fly although officially 'passed due' at one year.
All aircraft up for sale must have received an maintenance check within the last year.
Airlines would be able to build maintenance centers at airports to reduce the cost of the fees.
Parking fees (Details later)
.2% for "weed shades" is fair - maybe have to extend to 90 days if too much negative feedback from others.

Bi-Annual checks: we are in the progress of bringing our fleet up to date - for our fleet of 91 planes that's just over $30 million a year to maintain the fleet with Bi-Annual checks. For Annual checks it would be over $60 million per year which shows annual checks would really stretch small operators with large fleets to be profitable year to year. Maybe institute a 10% payload reduction if a plane is "past due" on their annual but within 2 yrs?

Posted For Sale Aircraft need an up to date check: Good rule to avoid dumping aircraft onto the "buy back program" that will need extensive service.

Maintenance Centers: LOVE the idea - Suggest two types to keep it simple - 19 pax and under for GA/bush operators and over 19 pax for airline operators. So for an operation like ours we would need two separate Maintenance Centers at the minimum for our fleet. In reality we would probably have 2 or 3 bush division maintenance centers and one mainline maintenance center.

Parking Fee's: not a fan, I think it just gets too complicated especially for small operators with larger fleets. Unless owners are allowed hubs they can park for free .... We currently operate many hubs, especially our bush division - 14 hubs alone. Our mainline fleet operates out of 8 hubs. How would the parking fee's be assessed? additional part of the flight expenses? How long is a parking fee good for? What if you are just doing a 24 hour turnaround? Same fee as if to park a week? a month? a year? How will parking fee's be assessed to aircraft that are not flown? As I said, it gets complicated quickly. Parking Fee's alone may drive smaller operators away …..
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by joefremont » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:13 am

Juat a note on some of the research I have done on parking fees, I know many airports have separate landing and parking fees but I think this is more than we need and the parking fee for the first few hours can include the landing fee.

Some airports have no landing fees, KSFO I noticed has a minimum 220$ landing fee for GA aircraft. I figure the fees would be based on airport size, how populated the area is and how many aircraft are actually parked at it.

Another thing I noticed is some airports, like KSFO, use MLW to calculate the fees while others, like KOAK across the bay use wingspan. We have never collected wingspan in our database so I am inclined to use weight but if there is a consensus that wingspan would be better I would need help collecting all that data.
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by Cat » Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:09 pm

Weight makes most logical sense to me and you already have the data
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by flugkapitan » Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:55 pm

Hi Joe,

Sounds like your initial plan has a little something for everyone. One item I do not like is that aircraft being put up for sale by "non-participating" airlines need to have had a maintenance check within the past year. For airlines that have a ton of unused aircraft they would like to rid themselves of, that could be very spendy. Additionally, instead of the non-participants taking a hit by a lower multiplier, I think it would be more fair to bump up the multiplier for those airlines who participate.

Parking, gate fees....much too complicated.

Cheers,
Scott
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by Matthew » Fri Oct 19, 2018 12:43 am

Another thing I was thinking, Was about the amount of aircraft available to lease and trade.

I would like to see maybe, Instead of getting millions per flight we do, perhaps thousands, to Encourage more leasings of aircraft and buying second hand.

Also If a VA for example wants to buy aircraft of there own they could get a loan? and the amount they can borrow depends on the amount of pilots they have. Say one pilot would effectively cover the cost of a loan for 2 A320 or 1 A380 etc.

It would be nice to actually see aircraft being leased than just sitting on the market for months

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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by joefremont » Fri Oct 19, 2018 6:37 am

I have been thinking that the multipliers are a bit too generous and small party VA's can get to very large size very quickly then they have more money than they know what to do with.

BTW, a loan system is very much in the works and i have though that pilots starting VA's should have the option of getting a loan based on how many flights they have done rather than the standard 25m grant. Of course with a loan system we need a bankruptcy system for when VA's can't pay there loan payments and some sort of financial market where loans can be acquired and even possibly traded.
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by Cat » Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:46 pm

In regards to the multiplier, maybe remove the 1000x .... and make it so you can choose between either "dynamic" or 25 but nothing in between, and once you switch from one to the other, you are "locked in" for say 30 days. Or you get one "free" change in multiplier, after that it starts costing a fee.
The dynamic multiplier can be adjusted down to where the multiplier drops far more quickly than currently. How many billions is enough anyway?

This would stop the people who flip multipliers daily to gain advantages.... I still don't see who they are cheating, only themselves..... I guess I just don't understand the whole "cheat" philosophy ....if one's self esteem is so low they have to gain satisfaction over being top of some list in a virtual world via being dishonest, they need to get a life in the real world.

EDIT_ADD - Also as a side note, the tighter FSA gets regarding money made and higher expenses, the more certain people will look for new ways to cheat. And so it goes.
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by VegasTim » Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:04 am

In looking at our fleet of 91 aircraft, right now today 28 of them would be in the "over 60 days not flown" penalty of .2% status hit.

Will there be some sort of notification via FSA message when aircraft are assessed the over 60 days not flown status penalty? That sure would be helpful.

Will the status drop continue if the not flown period exceeds 120 days or will it double? Would the 180 day penalty be triple of the 60 day penalty?

This would bring us back full circle to the point Joe made earlier, operators will then just be flying planes to get them off the not flown list. It is not necessarily a bad thing, for when operators discover it's too much like work to keep all their planes current they may decided to sell some of their fleet off or put them up for lease.

With respect to the current Lease system: there is no plus side to leasing, only down sides unless an owner simply does not have the cash on hand to buy the aircraft in question at that time. Unlike purchased aircraft, you cannot let a leased plane just sit, you still have to make the lease payments, so you better have someone flying it or you will lose money on the deal big time.

The question has come up in some of our internal airline debates that "museum/aircraft collectors" in FSA would be the hardest hit by the proposed new rules just as FSE lost quite a few customers when they implemented their monthly payment system. I would point out that unlike FSE, the new FSA proposed system will still be an option to each owner, they do not HAVE to participate in the advanced financials system that will be offered.
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Re: some thought about more realistic

Post by joefremont » Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:23 am

As far as "multiplier flipping' goes I think we have that situation solved some time ago. Back in the day, the biggest thing the flippers did buy lots of fuel at a low multiplier at a loss, then fly at a high multiplier without buying any fuel, we took care of that by comparing both the quantity and value of the fuel, taking into account the multiplier used to buy the fuel, making sure that neither the value nor the quantity increased on the next flight.

Part of the reason for the multiplier is so that if a large group of pilots come in they can build up there fleet quickly and fly there routes, but if we had a loan system they could build it up that way. Right now I think it tops out at 10B when 25x is the maximum, Maybe reducing it and including the value of leased aircraft would make rapid collection of billions a little more challenging, but being able to manually set it to 25x (or lower) might be an idea.

As for no maintenance after 120 and 180 days, I am not sure there is any need to increase the rate of reduction, I like 0.2% as its about the same amount of reduction you see on an average flight, that way the hammer over there heads does not seam too much of a burden if they don't want to fly. If it did double, triple, etc, after each 60 day interval, after 1 year the AC would be down 4.2% and 15.6% after 2. As apposed to 1.2% and 2.4% if it stays a constant 0.2%, which as I think about it, does seam a bit low, may ponder this some more.
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