conmanflyer wrote:You guys are all talking about smaller airlines with small fleets basically.. a major flaw to be found is what about the airlines that have small crews and a large fleet? how would they transition into this? I have over 50 aircraft right now... maximum of 10 a week go flying, i store my aircraft in Los Angeles, CA and Palm Beach, FL... what i proposed when this issue was brought up about a month ago, was ramps and gates... we all know that an aircraft will normally stay at a gate about 1 day max, 30 minutes minimum, to make room for more aircraft... why not have "RAMP" space where aircraft could be stored with a fee to the airline, but with-out the loading/unloading of passengers... and if a flight lands you go to a gate, then have the aircraft parked at a ramo or ready to go 30min from the time you parked at the gate, then a another aircraft could be pulled into that gate.
The bottom line here is, active commercial airports only have so much space. The majority of space at Class Bravo and Charlie airports are dedicated to aircraft turnaround. There really is no space for storage unless you wanna pay the airport the equivelent or more of what they would make for gate space and or ramp space. Again, this real estate is at a premium. An airline that has it's act together is gonna maximize revenue for every aircraft turned around and therefore will be able to pay a higher cost for active gate space. Remember the airport not only makes money on the lease for the terminal (gate space) but also makes money from the passengers transiting through the terminals at restaurants, gift shops, bars... So they would rather see the space ustilized for gates and not storage. So again, storage space at a very active airport will probably cost more than gate space considering the airport loses revenue if passengers aren't buying things in the airport terminal.
Read the first post... there are 3 things being included in this idea...
1. Gates: leased or not leased. If leased, you pay a monthly fee per gate with no landing fee or storage fee per aircraft per gate. If not leased, "Transient Gates" will charge the airline a loading/unloading fee at landing and client close. Any aircraft stored at "Transient Gates" for more than 24 hours will cause the system to charge the airline a "Transient Gate" storage fee per 24 hours.
2. Maintenance Facilities: Only can be leased at airports by airlines. Represents leased hanger space, open ramp space (for the maintenenace facility and any storage space for aircraft waiting to be maintained) and "X" number of gates. So, by leasing a maintenance facility from LAX for example, you have now defined your hub, or one of your hubs. The lease of the maintenance facility includes, the ability to maintain your aircraft at a discounted price when maintenance is done at that airport, it includes "So Many Gate Spaces" for shits and giggles lets say it includes 15 gates that are the equivelent of 15 seperate leased gates that you can use to store or load/unload pax at.
3. Low cost storage "Boneyards" that are scattered around the globe at very large airports. These "Boneyards" have vast open space that can be rented by airlines to store thier aircraft for a fraction of the cost when compared to the cost of using a "Gate" to store your aircraft. The one limitation to using these boneyards as storage facilities is that if you have aircraft stored this way, then you can't use the same storage spot to load/unload pax or cargo. You would need to lease a seperate gate or have a maint facility there to do so.
So, to answer your concern, I believe your situation would work this way....
With your 50 aircraft and your 10 flights a week... you would need to decide where your hub will be. Then lease your maint facility at that airport. That would give you around 15 gates to base your hub outa, with the maint facility there, all of your maint done at that airport is at a discounted rate. Now, you need to figure out where your airline wants to fly to... You juggle the costs and decide whether to lease more gates along your routes or just take the hit on your transient fees.. Whenever you have an aircraft away from your hub, that gives you one more open gate to hold an aircraft at no cost. So to figure out how many more gates you need to lease and if you need to store some of your planes at the boneyards is really dependant on the turnaround frequency of your aircraft. The more aircraft flying at any given time will allow for spaces available for your parked aircraft. So... your gonna have to actually plan the management strategy to maximize your profits through the scheduling of your fleet and active pilots. The safe bet would be in your situation would be to get the maint facility and one gate at each destination. Put 25 planes on the active roster and store the other 25 at a boneyard. Your 10 flights per week will keep 10 aircraft in the air and thus open up 10 gates at your hub, which can be used for the extra reserve fleet stored at your hub for an increase flight frequency after you have recruited more pilots and motivated the existing ones to fly more often. Take your 25 planes in the boneyard and offer them up for lease. If flight frequency picks up, then transfer a few planes from the boneyard to the hub. If flight frequency drops, then your not sucha good CEO and you need to liquidate some of your assets to cover loss created by idle resourses not being used. The idea here, is to get dinged for biting off more than you can chew, just like in real life.
JB