Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

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Cat
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Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:39 pm

After being involved in some other various simulations, I have noticed one thing about FSA that stands out is once an airline buys a plane, there is no cost to keep it, even if it sits for years on the ramp being nothing but a weed shade.

I think a fair and realistic status hit on all aircraft based on time since purchase would create a more realistic environment. Say .5% status hit every month which would require an A service before 95%. This means, regardless of flight time, all aircraft would need an A service say every 9 months.

It would be much simpler than trying to come up with ramp fee's for specific individual airports (based on size of airport). Daily Op Costs are a huge part of the real airline environment and we have been fortunate to have no incurred expenses other than maintenance due to wear and tear.

I looked through our personal airline log sheets and some planes have gone years without an A service as they have been parked more than flown.
Just a thought on an old topic ..... feel free to delete if not applicable
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by flugkapitan » Fri Jul 06, 2018 7:12 pm

Greetings,

An interesting idea and I can see the merits of it.

Having said that, I'm totally against it :D

The reason being: I inherited (for lack of a better term) an airline that has hundreds of aircraft on the books - admittedly, a vast number of them are museum pieces. I am also an airline of only one pilot - me. I have had a few applicants, but no one has stuck around. Due to that, there is no possible way one person could fly all those planes to avoid the ramp fee.

I have also tried selling some of them off in the Trader's List, but no one seems interested in buying any of them.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject.

Cheers,
Scott
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Fri Jul 06, 2018 8:01 pm

Yeah my airline owner "the bossman" I call him just pm'd me and said are you crazy? You know how much that will cost us with 122 aircraft?

LOL oops
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by joefremont » Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:09 pm

We had thought about other expenses from time to time but never came to a conclusion. I had figured some day we would have an 'advanced economics' feature that could include parking fees, gate fees and status decline for unused aircraft but there would need to be some plus to it, some increased revenue or maybe just access to the higher multipliers. No decision ever made but some day.

Lots of other things to fix of course, but then when I have free time I tend to want to fly.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Wed Jul 11, 2018 9:17 pm

Yes please take the time to get your flights in Joe!

I've seen what happens when people get burned out doing nothing but admin work, that's how our bossman started Fly Vegas, all he did at old VA was paperwork cause it was huge.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Tower » Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:50 pm

For those people who have dozens or hundred planes (bought or leased)... and only a handfull of pilots ¿Do you really need to own so many aircraft? In that way, is unavoidable to maintain several of them parked for long time.
Our policy is: no more than two planes for each pilot, I mean, 8 pilots, 16 aircraft, and so (not exactly, but near of that). The Company will grow in the future, and then will be the time to get some other planes.
I don't want to say anyone how to manage his own Company. It is only our policy inside Wingavia.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by joefremont » Sun Aug 05, 2018 4:10 pm

I have been doing some research in to airport parking fees, I found the fee schedules for several airports around the bay area (KSFO, KOAK, KHWD, etc..), it would be interesting to see how these fee's vary around the world. I figure if we were to do something like that we would probably come up with a formula that included aircraft size/weight, airport size, number of aircraft parked at airport, remoteness of the airport.

As for maintenance, something simple would be for all aircraft that have not been moved in a month reduce the repair status by 0.1% unless they are parked at a storage/mothball airport.

These are just idea's, no decisions have been made.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:57 pm

KIS? Keep It Simple - just use airport population numbers already in the system as your database for airport size, establish Class I, II, III airport sizes and set flat fee for each, a multiplier factor times the aircraft max ZFW.

I like the idea of a status drop for parked planes, maybe that's all that is really needed .... really keep it simple .... there should be some "penalty" in either maintenance drop or fee's for owning aircraft that are not flown. I would be more harsh tho LOL a full 1% every 180 days. fly the plane within 180 days, no fee/penalty.....
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:03 pm

"For those people who have dozens or hundred planes (bought or leased)... and only a handfull of pilots - Do you really need to own so many aircraft?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tower - you are absolutely correct about the "plane to pilot ratio" and I will testify that it is easy to let that get out of control. Sometimes we get into "collector mode" instead of virtual airline operators. Having said that, after a high level meeting we have decided to streamline our operation, especially our smaller plane operations.

But here is where some sort of monetary cost to own more planes than pilots fly would come into play, had it been costing us for all those "weed shades", we certainly would not have held on to all of them for so long.

Our owner has said over and over - "There is no upside to selling aircraft as they cost nothing to keep"
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by joefremont » Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:47 am

Cat those are good points about why someone would not like the idea of the extra fees/maintenance. If this was to be done there needs to be both a upside as well as a downside to it, a carrot along with the stick. What that carrot should be I am not sure yet, Something where you get more revenue from the flights in exchange for paying the fees so things stay in balance, and for those who really don't like the idea, you don't have to worry about it but you don't grow so fast. Maybe lower multiplier, maybe less bonus, really not sure right now, any ideas?
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Mon Aug 06, 2018 5:02 pm

The only upside I can think of with my 180 day system is there is no fee if you just fly each plane once within 180 days to show they remain "current".

Instead of adding bonus flight revenue to offset landing fee's ( if you charge every plane, flown or not) why not add "performance incentives" as part of the package? Like an extra x% for landings under 200 fpm .... present it as part of the ramp fee's package - the carrot to make back what you are being charged in new fee's. Don't tear up our runways with hard landings - no landing fee LOL

The only "downside" to a landing fee based system is you are actually penalizing the people/planes who fly the most. The whole idea i had was to penalize the people/planes who fly the least . . . . . or not at all.....

Why I personally would lean more towards a 180 day 'not flown fee' based on aircraft MZFW and leave the whole ramp fee spider web monster part out of the loop. Just hit the status with something that gets operators' attention - to the tune of you let it sit for one calendar year it WILL need an A service as it nears B service territory. Unless like you suggested, they are stored in an official 'FSA mothball location' where they are exempt but still owned by the VA.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by joefremont » Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:01 pm

I think one thing we may have to do something so that aircraft that aircraft that have been on the market for a long time are automatically bought by the system (FSA Aviation) so that airlines can get rid of their excess inventory.

Right now I am working on adding fleets and an 'all aircraft' option to the routes so maybe after that I will re-write the program that monitors the aircraft market.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by flugkapitan » Tue Aug 07, 2018 12:10 am

Greetings all,

Edit from what I posted below: Yes, It seems to me the 180 day trigger might work. Especially if there is a buy-out from FSA of all the idle aluminum sitting out there.

Original: Well, I am still against this for several reasons (see my post above).

However, I do like Joe's idea of FSA buying out aircraft that have been on the market for a certain amount of time to assist airlines in trimming down their fleets.

Once again, in my case (not by any means am I trying to sound/be selfish and I don't know if there are any other airline owners in my same situation), I am an airline of one pilot. I like to keep aircraft of various types stationed at various airports around the world, so that I have the option of flying what I want where I want during whatever season. For Example, in winter, I tend to fly in the warmer climes since in the "real world" I'm freezing my ass off up here in North Dakota. Therefore, those aircraft stationed in the colder climes probably aren't going to get flown as much.

I'm also scratching my head as to why this is becoming an issue: do the "pencil pushers" at the airlines need something to do :wink:

Anyway, if this is indeed what the majority of FSA subscribers want, then by all means go for it. I will try to make it work for my airline. If it doesn't, I can always depart the fix outbound - gracefully and quietly - without any hard feelings.

Cheers,
Scott
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by joefremont » Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:34 pm

Scotty, why now, well it's an idea that has floated around for some time and why not now, given my limited coding time its something we could actually do without too much disruption. Weather it's what the majority of FSA subscribers want is still to be determined, most of them don't visit the forum.

Again these 'Advanced economics' features should be something you can turn off, what the downsides of turning it I am still thinking about, the top idea's I have are reducing the VA's maximum multiplier by a step and maybe simplifying the formula for figuring out available passengers when booking a flight.

As far as the components for calculating parking fees:
Aircraft size/weight : The bigger the AC the most it costs.
Airport size: The bigger the airport, the more capacity it has for parking AC
Number of aircraft parked at airport: As the number of aircraft get closer to the capacity of the airport the higher the price goes
Remoteness of the airport: Airport population would be the determining factor, the higher the population in the area, the more demand there is for land and the higher the price goes.

These are just idea's, I have not gone as far as to start paying with numbers in a spreadsheet to see how it would actually work and I will do a poll inside the platform to see what FSA pilots really think about the idea.
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Re: Old Topic revisited - unused aircraft status decline

Post by Cat » Tue Aug 07, 2018 11:22 pm

Regarding sales of aircraft, we have a "60 day policy" - we post it at the "suggested" price or the price that will give that plane a "lifetime profit / loss" in our airline of $1. If it does not sell in 30 days, we will drop the price to the lowest allowed. If still no takers in 30 days, call in the scrap crew, we are done with it, take what we can get..

We too stock a lot of aircraft in different hubs, especially our small plane division so pilots can buy tickets instead of flying all day to get to a hub they want fly out of. We keep a spreadsheet on them to see what has not flown in 180 days .... they become "priority" aircraft - get em off the 180 day list.... go fly them! It's how I came up with the 180 day idea. And the driving reason we have decided to downsize our small aircraft division by quite a bit.

It is so easy for operators to get into "collector mode" - don't have it then must need it :shock: I fell into that trap with our small plane division which I am trying to correct now. Our owner told me "about time you came to your senses" :lol:
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