Passengers/cargo available flight loading

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MMattyK
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Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by MMattyK » Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:12 pm

Just a thought for competetiveness...
I know its a huge ammount of work, but can the booking system take into account the number of passengers available for a rough route by percentage of total number of passengers/cargo available at an airport? For example, if there is about 300000 pax per day available, and there are 300 airlines operating from that airport, can the client generate a rough guess of how many of those passengers would be flying to a particular type of destination? Shall we say for example 35% long haul, 55% medium haul and 10% short haul (I have no idea what real figures are likely to be). It might be a way adding flight planning interest... and using the correct aircraft types for correct routing... it would certainly add to any competetive aspect... and perhaps another aspect of this could also be booked flights only being valid for 30 minutes prior to logging into the client and starting the flight, after that time period, the passengers are released back into the airport population.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by joefremont » Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:13 pm

This is something I have been thinking about for some time. Our current model is that there are some number of people who what to leave an airport, they don't really care where they go. We also don't have a limit as to cargo.

I would like to come up with a model where you have some number of passengers/cargo at an airport, and they each want to go to a specific destination and have some semi random limit on how much they are willing to pay to get there. So they will get on a flight if the flight gets them either to there destination or at least closer to there destination with the chance of getting a connecting flight to there final destination. But I still haven't figured out the formulas.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by joefremont » Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:29 pm

I would think when you book the flight, it would continue to calculate the maximum passengers and cargo as it does now but when you actually start the flight it then selects the actual passengers/cargo from the pool that is at the airport. If the flight is aborted or restarted for some reason they passengers would be released back to the pool and would be available for the next flight. Once the flight arrives they would be moved to the next airport, if the airport is the actual destination of the pax/cargo, the pax would be reset to return to there starting point and the cargo would be removed.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by CAPFlyer » Thu Apr 14, 2011 11:40 pm

The problem with this is that the client locks you from being able to change fuel or payload once it gets to the screen that'd show you that. Unless we coordinate the release of this new system with a new client version that allows for the changes in the cargo and fuel up until you start the flight, then it's not feasible to have the client show the final load.

Honestly, we need to rework the planning process on the client and server side to allow the pilot to plan the fuel prior to starting the flight and being able to customize the passenger and/or cargo load to fit because there's times when you need max fuel and less than max payload to make the range of your flight due to various reasons and I think we need to account for that. Once that ability is present and you can edit the fuel and payload until you actually start the flight in the client, then we can start working more dynamic passenger behavior.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by MMattyK » Fri Apr 15, 2011 2:46 pm

This is a good start on discussing the issue; my initial thoughts were that we could somehow deplete the passenger numbers/cargo avaialble for loading as each flight leaves, and reset it to its daily maximum at an arbitary time on a daily basis, without adding available loads from incoming flights over that period. Does that make sense? I know what I mean, but I don't know if I've explained it very well. Basically it would be possible for airports to 'run out' of passengers and cargo, as the day progresses...
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by CAPFlyer » Fri Apr 15, 2011 3:49 pm

As it is now, airports can (and do) run out of passengers. Everything resets at midnight (don't know if that's server time or local) for the next day.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by MMattyK » Fri Apr 15, 2011 4:52 pm

Ive been fortunate then, as I've never seen that at all...
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by joefremont » Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:17 pm

It actually resets at 2:30 am server time, which happens to be California time which is 9:30 am GMT.

Right now when a flight arrives the incoming passengers are added to the pool in the airport, at reset time half of the pool is removed and new batch if passengers is added. The number added is a function based on the population near the airport. In practice the way this works is say there is an airport that would normally have 1000 pax waiting, and someone comes and takes them all. If no other flights arrive the next day there will be 500 pax, 750 the next, 875 the next, etc. Likewise if someone were to deliver another 1000 pax to the same airport the next day would be 1500, 1250 the next, 1125 the next until it returned to 1000.
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Re: Passengers/cargo available flight loading

Post by CAPFlyer » Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:31 pm

We've setup some airports to be intentionally generous in the number of passengers available because we know they're popular airports. We wanted to add some challenge to the system, but not deny VA's from being able to serve the really popular airports. Between that and the fact that their very popularity helps to re-fill the passenger count means that unless you're flying to Timbuktu with 10 empty 747's and flying out, you'll probably not run out.
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