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Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 10:45 pm
by VegasTim
For the record, I am not against the parking fee idea with regard to making things more realistic. I just think the way we track stats at Fly Vegas it will be "difficult at best" for us to incorporate the billing of said fee's to individual aircraft, not to mention the man hours required to post to each and every aircraft log sheet.

I also have a question regarding Maintenance Centers.... 3 types, let's assume A B C Will they be so tiered that "A" can service all planes, "B" all but the largest planes and "C" for general aircraft only? Or if we wanted to combine our service center for both bush planes and jets would we need to buy two facilities, one for jets and one for GA?

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:16 am
by joefremont
One thing I was wondering about was do we record parking by fleet or by aircraft, by fleet would be fewer transactions generated, but by aircraft would allow tracking by aircraft. So by what your saying Tim doing it by aircraft would be more valuable. It would not be difficult to create as either part of the XML interface or as downloadable csv spreadsheet, all the transactions for a va/fleet/ac/time period. Infact one of the things I am getting ready to add to the 'finances' page is an income statement where for the va/fleet/time period you can see profit or loss, it would not be hard to add 'by aircraft' to that report.

It's not generally known but in the transactions we record in addition to the change in v$ for the VA, we also record change in aircraft value that resulted, so when you buy an aircraft, while your v$ goes down the value of your aircraft goes up by normal accounting rules it would have no effect on your 'income', and when you fly a flight we record the depreciation on the AC due to any decrease in repair status. Since we separated finances by fleet when you transfer an aircraft between fleets you will now see two transactions of 0 v$ in the system, that is to record that the value of aircraft in the 'from' fleet went down and the value of aircraft in the 'to' fleet went up.

As for the Maintenance centers sizes Tim your correct Small could do up to a Short 360, Medium up to a 707-320C or Super VC10, and large everything above.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:37 am
by Cat
On the subject of parking fee's, we are having an airline staff discussion - if you post a lump sum monthly by the fleet, that would be far fewer transactions for us to enter and we can just write them up in our records as "Fleet Parking Expense" .... not have to actually bill any particular aircraft in our airline records. We have similar columns set up for MISC transactions like pilot bonus fee's, cancellation fee's, etc. in our main ledger which allows us to balance daily to the dollar to FSA cash on hand.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:43 am
by VegasTim
Well the fleet idea does not let us see how much parked hangar queens are costing us but it's a pretty valid compromise.

If there is a way to get FSA data to talk to Google sheets via some magic formula, that would be ideal, we could then have our finance guy Mich pull specific data to specific areas in our reports.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:54 am
by VegasTim
One more thought tonight and I will cease and desist:

Instead of just "delcaring" an airport as a hub, require owners to actually build a maintenance center there and when they do, they will get "preferred parking rates". This will allow larger operators to have multiple places to get breaks on parking fee's.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 3:08 am
by Cat
You would have to set it up so the parking rate discounts only apply to the aircraft the service center can handle. AKA, you can't put a small service center in JFK and expect to park your big fleet of jumbo's for a discount.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 7:46 pm
by joefremont
As discount parking at hub or maintenance center. I can see some limited discounted/free parking where there is a center but the number of spots would probably be limited. It might be simpler to allow a VA or fleet to rent a number of spots on a monthly basis and then they can park there aircraft in the spots for no additional cost. Say the cost of the monthly spot would be equivalent to 40% of the daily rate. We can say each maintenance center comes with two reserved /free spots of the maximum size they can manage. But I can see that such a system might be very complicated to manage. Let's think about this some more.

Many places have different rates for 'signatory airlines' as opposed to 'non signatory' airlines. Maybe airlines/fleets could 'sign an agreement' with an airport and then they would get discounted parking there, then for some fixed price based on airline size all aircraft from that fleet/va could park there at a reduced rate.

Just idea's.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:31 pm
by VegasTim
Honestly with the path we are down, I don't see how it's going to be anything but complicated. There needs to be a way to keep it simple for it to work at all in my opinion. While it's true the "simple method" won't emulate full real world operations, I don't think there are any FSA owners out there who want to spend more time calculating where to park than they do fly.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:03 am
by joefremont
VegasTim wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:31 pm
Honestly with the path we are down, I don't see how it's going to be anything but complicated. There needs to be a way to keep it simple for it to work at all in my opinion. While it's true the "simple method" won't emulate full real world operations, I don't think there are any FSA owners out there who want to spend more time calculating where to park than they do fly.
Your probably right, lets keep it simple, we can always add complexity if there is demand.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 5:48 pm
by Cat
joefremont wrote:
As discount parking at hub or maintenance center. I can see some limited discounted/free parking where there is a center but the number of spots would probably be limited. It might be simpler to allow a VA or fleet to rent a number of spots on a monthly basis and then they can park there aircraft in the spots for no additional cost. Say the cost of the monthly spot would be equivalent to 40% of the daily rate. We can say each maintenance center comes with two reserved /free spots of the maximum size they can manage. But I can see that such a system might be very complicated to manage. Let's think about this some more
This is about as "simple" as I can think of yet fair where heavies pay more than GA:
Flat rate times two factors - airport pop x aircraft MTOW Categorize the airports A B C with A the highest factor, major metro airports, B regional airports with airline service, C all GA sized airports. Set a threshold population so dinky grass strips and such have no parking fee. Then Categorize the aircraft to match service centers A B C assign a multiplier factor to each category of airport and airplane and then the fee rate thus determining the daily parking fee. This would allow easy adjustments to the system on the fly as we progress and work out the bugs.

One cheat I can see coming already is guys flying 747's into GA airports to get a lower parking fee. Not exactly "creating a more realistic environment".

Not sure there is any "simple solution" :shock:

[added] It may come down to having a flat rate x MTOW globally to prevent this type of cheating.

[added more} - and how are you going to handle helicopters? Hospitals going to charge landing fee's? LOL

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 4:28 pm
by Cat
Regarding the potential for "long term storage" with free parking at designated FSA locations: We were discussing in chat this morning that perhaps there should be a minimum time required to "mothball" an aircraft, say 60 days lockout from the time it is declared to be parked long term. When the owner wants to retrieve it, an A service will be required to unlock it. The only problem is how to "declare it" parked long term. Some of those airports are active airports and there would have to be a way to distinguish between daily ops and long term storage. Something like anything left 48 hours without booking shall be considered parked for the long term storage? Again it would have to something simple that is relatively easy to administrate.

[added] - maybe a new icon where the others are: transfer, sell, maintain, etc. "mothball" icon would be the way to officially declare it to long term storage. When you click on it you get a warning: This aircraft will be locked out for 60 days in long term storage and will require an A service to unlock it. Do you want to store this aircraft long term? yes no And of course one of the parameters is location, it would have to be at a designated FSA long term storage location.

Once the aircraft has been mothballed, icon changes to the mothball icon with line through it (much like sales). Just click on it to start the retrieval process: you get either of the messages - "This aircraft is not available until (date)" or you get "This aircraft requires an A service ($xxxxx) to unlock - do you wish to unlock this aircraft?" yes no

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 5:51 pm
by joefremont
Hey Scott,

I like the mothball idea with an A-Check to unlock. Not sure we need all the time delays, as the cost of the A-Check and maybe 2-5 days to un-mothball it will be a pretty good deterrent to abusing it.

Currently the storage airports are:

EGBP - Cotswold Airport, Kemble, England
FAUP - Pierre Van Ryneveld Airport, Upington, South Africa
KGYR - Phoenix Goodyear Airport, Phoenix, United States
KIGM - Kingman Airport, Kingman, United States
KMHV - Mojave Airport, Mojave, United States
KROW - Roswell International Air Center Airport, Roswell, United States
KVCV - Southern California Logistics Airport, Victorville, United States
LFBT - Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées Airport, Tarbes, France
UAFM - Manas International Airport, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
YBAS - Alice Springs Airport, Alice Springs, Australia

Right now there just used as places for FSA Aviation to store the aircraft it has up for sale but they would be the starting point for this. No reason we can't have more airports designated as storage, all they need is a dry climate, lots of space and not a lot of curious locals breaking into things.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 11:43 pm
by VegasTim
Sounds like a really good option for guys who want to keep all their planes but haven't got the time to fly them to keep them current.

If the maintenance status hit for planes not flown does not exceed 5% annually, it really becomes a non issue as the aircraft will need an annual A service anyway. I am not saying it should not be implemented, I am saying owners should not get all excited over a plane that sits losing a little bit of status.

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:35 am
by VegasTim
Is there any timeline or projected general date when some or any of the ideas posted may go live?

Re: some thought about more realistic

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2018 4:44 am
by joefremont
Not actual dates yet, I was thinking about doing a loan and bankruptcy system first, but these fees might be easier. In any case all these new features we have discussed will probably have to come one at a time.