Aircraft fleet size classes

[Sami]

Now when the aircraft "sizeclass" variable is getting a bit more meaning (staff groupings, maintenance..) I would like a bit of assistance on checking if the values are good in your mind.

Currently they are just divided according to the max passenger seats but some models like E120 are perhaps not classified properly. As E120 is "medium", whereas that class goes all the way to B737 class. There are only three classes, small, medium and large. So technically it's a bit of a bad choice to compare E120 with Piper Navajo, but again a bad choice to compare E120 with a MD-83...

These are only small exceptions though but please look at the list and see if you can spot something that is not logical.


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[ali5541]

The only one that comes to my attention is the:

Aérospatiale Concorde             Large

I think that this is a medium and not a large. However it does vary quite a bit.

[Sigma]

Personally, I'd do it by a combination of Range and Capacity.  But you're never gonna get a perfect rule of thumb and people will argue about it until the end of time.

Namely you shouldn't have planes like the 737 sitting in "Medium" in my opinion.  Since they seem to make about 1/3rd the money of "Large" pilots, you now just gave a HUGE income increase to the majority of most airlines as those type aircraft are the backbone of most fleets.  As if we weren't making enough money before, everyone's making a lot more money now.  No one operating modern major passenger jets should have gotten a salary reduction with these changes, but I think we all did.   If you're going to make "Medium" a lesser pay than we had before, and include predominant aircraft like the 737 in that category, then I would say that "Medium" should be the same wage that all pilots used to get paid, and "Large" should be a much higher wage (which would actually make more sense to me, and it would cut down at least somewhat on the incredible margins of flying "Large" aircraft in the game.

But, if you're going to leave wages as they are, I'd simply make "Small" anything 50pax or less.  "Medium" anything "regional" -- which I would argue is anything under 1500NM.  And "Large" anything else.

This puts all modern Airbus' and Boeings into the "Large" category, except just a couple variations of the 737/320 familes which are borderline, and those can be manually edited into "large".  And a couple regionals bleed over into the 1550 range, but can be edited down to "Medium".  But, by and large, the 1500NM delineation works for segregating the regional jets from the 'airliners'.

Actually if it were up to me:

"Small" would be dirt-cheap labor, only applicable to under 50 pax.  
"Medium" would be for regionals (under 1500NM) and be equal to what wages used to be
"Large" would encompass anything with a base variation of up to 2500NM
"Extra Large" would be everything north of that (330/340/777/747/etc).  

Putting a lot more planes into "Large" with a higher salary than before would reduce the bloated margins at least somewhat (wouldn't be popular to do this change mid-game), and putting another level above that for the dense/international routes that often have staggeringly huge margins in AWS, the added "Extra Large" category would help reduce that somewhat.  

[Yb]

Personally, I'd do it by a combination of Range and Capacity.  But you're never gonna get a perfect rule of thumb and people will argue about it until the end of time.

Namely you shouldn't have planes like the 737 sitting in "Medium" in my opinion.  Since they seem to make about 1/3rd the money of "Large" pilots, you now just gave a HUGE income increase to the majority of most airlines as those type aircraft are the backbone of most fleets.  As if we weren't making enough money before, everyone's making a lot more money now.  No one operating modern major passenger jets should have gotten a salary reduction with these changes, but I think we all did.   If you're going to make "Medium" a lesser pay than we had before, and include predominant aircraft like the 737 in that category, then I would say that "Medium" should be the same wage that all pilots used to get paid, and "Large" should be a much higher wage (which would actually make more sense to me, and it would cut down at least somewhat on the incredible margins of flying "Large" aircraft in the game.

But, if you're going to leave wages as they are, I'd simply make "Small" anything 50pax or less.  "Medium" anything "regional" -- which I would argue is anything under 1500NM.  And "Large" anything else.

This puts all modern Airbus' and Boeings into the "Large" category, except just a couple variations of the 737/320 familes which are borderline, and those can be manually edited into "large".  And a couple regionals bleed over into the 1550 range, but can be edited down to "Medium".  But, by and large, the 1500NM delineation works for segregating the regional jets from the 'airliners'.

Actually if it were up to me:

"Small" would be dirt-cheap labor, only applicable to under 50 pax.  
"Medium" would be for regionals (under 1500NM) and be equal to what wages used to be
"Large" would encompass anything with a base variation of up to 2500NM
"Extra Large" would be everything north of that (330/340/777/747/etc).  

Putting a lot more planes into "Large" with a higher salary than before would reduce the bloated margins at least somewhat (wouldn't be popular to do this change mid-game), and putting another level above that for the dense/international routes that often have staggeringly huge margins in AWS, the added "Extra Large" category would help reduce that somewhat.  

to be honest this is one of the best ideas I have heard here. 

[Sami]

For pilot salaries, medium and large classes are higher salaries than before, small much lower..

[swiftus27]

I agree salaries for the concorde should be set to large.

For anyone in BA to fly it as a Captain, they'd have to have been a captain of another plane prior to (intercontinental).  Its not like you take a pay cut to fly this aircraft.

[Sigma]

For pilot salaries, medium and large classes are higher salaries than before, small much lower..

I stand corrected.  For the week that you made the changes, my salary went WAY down -- like HALF of what it was.  And in the changeover, about 1/3rds of my pilots went to "Medium".  Therefore I concluded that Medium got paid a lot less than before.  But I see that, since then, my pay has returned to what it was.

There must not be a very big difference in pay over what it used to be though and not much difference between Medium and Large.   Despite going to about 1/3rds Medium and 2/3rd Large, my total salary only went up about 5%.

EDIT:

Looking at it further, I don't see how "Medium" could possibly be higher salaries than before.  "Large" is approx. 50% more wage than "Medium".  If Medium was also higher than the wage was before, that means that "Large" would have to be at least 50% larger than the pay was before.  If that were the case, then my salary would have had to increase by $2-3M/week just to account for the Large pilots alone.  But I didn't see that at all.  I only had a $800,000/week increase.

[TommyC81]

Now when the aircraft "sizeclass" variable is getting a bit more meaning (staff groupings, maintenance..) I would like a bit of assistance on checking if the values are good in your mind.

Currently they are just divided according to the max passenger seats but some models like E120 are perhaps not classified properly. As E120 is "medium", whereas that class goes all the way to B737 class. There are only three classes, small, medium and large. So technically it's a bit of a bad choice to compare E120 with Piper Navajo, but again a bad choice to compare E120 with a MD-83...

These are only small exceptions though but please look at the list and see if you can spot something that is not logical.


But comments please.

Like you said, the classifications are a bit to widespread, I assume they are currently just divided according to their wake categories (0 -> 7 -> 136+ tonnes).
Maybe the only way to solve it is to make use of more categories, how about "medium jet" and "medium turboprop"? In that way there wouldn't be a need to create more aircraft classes, as I'm sure the type (jet/prop) is already in the database.

I'm of the opinion that there must be cheaper and more pilots available for medium turboprops than medium jets, as in the case you mentioned: Employing someone to fly the E120 should be slightly cheaper than for a B737, it's kinda tough to break even on those smaller/slower planes already, especially since there is an built-in preference for jets over props.

In the same way, there needs to be some modification to how the staff numbers are calculated. Running a lot of short-distance (less than 1000nm) must be a bit cheaper in terms of the need for route strategists needed (you're only able to cover a small area, no need to have people to research the entire world), and also when only having relatively small PAX numbers (typical for an airline running lots of short low-capacity routes) there must be less need of customer services personnel.

As an example, I needed more staff running 5 E120's than 10 F100/B734's, even though I was covering a much smaller area and had much less passengers. Just doesn't seem right.

[Dasha]

In my humble opinion, the Tupolev 154 should be in the same class as the Tupolev 204. The 204 is now a large aircraft, where as the A321 is still classified as a small aircraft. So again I don't know what the criteria for a large aircraft is but I think it would be best to fit the Tu204 family in medium as well.

Or make a 4th class (or fifth) like 0-50 pax 50-100 pax 100-250 pax and 250+ pax. Mediocre, Small, Medium, Large. Or whatever you want to call it

[coopdogyo]

I think you should bump small up to 60 pax to inculde the saab 2000 and fokker 50

[Jona L.]

Actually if it were up to me:

"Small" would be dirt-cheap labor, only applicable to under 50 pax.  
"Medium" would be for regionals (under 1500NM) and be equal to what wages used to be
"Large" would encompass anything with a base variation of up to 2500NM
"Extra Large" would be everything north of that (330/340/777/747/etc).  

Putting a lot more planes into "Large" with a higher salary than before would reduce the bloated margins at least somewhat (wouldn't be popular to do this change mid-game), and putting another level above that for the dense/international routes that often have staggeringly huge margins in AWS, the added "Extra Large" category would help reduce that somewhat.  

I agree if Concorde was medium or maximum large, because of being leased it can only make peanuts with an all business config!!

But basically after reading this whole book of text, I am very satisfied with the Idea!!

[ekaneti]

Please make turbo prop and RJs under 70 seats small. It is hard enough making a commuter airline work here without having to pay Saab pilots "medium" salaries

[SirRyan]

Sami

Maybe having a 4th category of "light" could help.  That would move aircraft like C208, Embraer Bandirante and maybe even the DC2/3 etc out of the small category where their payload or performance just doens't cut the mustard.

cheers

Dave

[Branmuffin]

Sami

Maybe having a 4th category of "light" could help.  That would move aircraft like C208, Embraer Bandirante and maybe even the DC2/3 etc out of the small category where their payload or performance just doens't cut the mustard.

cheers

Dave

What SirRyan said  

I don't think just the three categories are enough to accurately cover the full range from a little Caravan all the way up to an A380.

Also,

Please make turbo prop and RJs under 70 seats small. It is hard enough making a commuter airline work here without having to pay Saab pilots "medium" salaries

another good point^

I don't understand how a Saab or one of the smaller ATR's falls into the 'medium' category.  According to the payscales posted here, real life Dash-8 captains make around $80/hr, while a 737 captain may make twice that.  And yet the game doesn't differentiate between that :/

[L1011fan]

This would be a great help and I think the input of the other players is great too! I think it could help with budgeting your routes and aircraft as well.

[Sami]

Yes probably 4th category is needed.. As putting Saab 340 and C208 to same group isn't fair either. And having S340 with MD-80 isn't fair too. And having MD-80 with A380 isn't quite right either.

[freshmore]

VFW Fokker- 40 pax - Small
All Dash-8 A/C - Small
An-24/26 seems odd - Small
ERJ135/140/145 are odd, only 40 pax or so aren't they should be small#
ATR42's should be small 72's borderline med/small
F27 and F50 should be small
All med Saabs i think should be small.

also if this is going to affect the slot costs, i think MTOW should be taken into account for those, e.g putting a 747 with a 757 is odd because there is 100's of tonnes of difference between the two which I think for slot cost purposes superlarge jets like 747's and 380's with heavy MTOW should have to pay more than a large classified 757 with a much lower MTOW. What i am suggesting her is a small superlarge jet category.

[Sami]

The new classification will be roughly:

* Small, less than 37 pax
* Medium, less than 107 pax
* Large, less than 220 pax
* Very large, all others.

(pax = max capacity of the aircraft, combined average of the whole fleet group)

There are some exceptions to this rule.


So, B767+ would be very large, DC-9+ will be large, Fokker27 / Dornier 328+ will be medium.. Small includes J31, EMB-120 etc.

[freshmore]

could we have a pie chart to show the distribution of aircraft size classes within out fleets. would be nice little feature

[Jona L.]

The new classification will be roughly:

* Small, less than 37 pax
* Medium, less than 107 pax
* Large, less than 220 pax
* Very large, all others.

(pax = max capacity of the aircraft, combined average of the whole fleet group)

There are some exceptions to this rule.


So, B767+ would be very large, DC-9+ will be large, Fokker27 / Dornier 328+ will be medium.. Small includes J31, EMB-120 etc.

So the category will be calculated individually for each player's fleet?!
I do not get that right I think,
so if I have a fleet of lets say CONCs, which are usually at 108 pax, but have max at 128, and I reconfigure them to 100 HD business seats (my standard for CONC), will they than be medium or large ones?!

thanks for explaining that to me!

have a nice evening (locally it is 23:15 for me)