* Changes to ground handling fee calculations, in order to make smaller aircraft more viable option. The handling has been one of the biggest expenses and problems for small airlines (thanks to Sanabas for documenting and experimenting earlier).
Like maintenance costs, ground handing fee has already always been a factor of aircraft size. But now it's tuned to be better and more realistic (not so expensive) towards very small aircraft which do not require almost any outside services for a turnaround. Like with the the maintenance cost change, the handling costs are also pretty much the same for large and very large planes but are now substantially lower for medium and small aircraft size classes. Update is effective immediately.
Another change is that handling costs are lower than before for smaller airports, for large airports costs are unchanged. Country's overall cost level is not yet a factor in these costs (like in salaries they are).
AWS assumes ground handling is done by the airport, but in the future separate handling contracts may be added as a new feature (similar to fuel contracts).
Examples (large airport [5], year 2010):
Plane | Old cost | New cost |
B777 (v.large) | $1850 | $2000 |
A320 (large) | $1200 | $1200 |
ATR (med) | $790 | $560 |
DHC6 (small) | $550 | $150 |
Examples (middlesize airport [3], year 2010):
Plane | Old cost | New cost |
B777 (v.large) | $1750 | $1850 |
A320 (large) | $1100 | $1000 |
ATR (med) | $690 | $420 |
DHC6 (small) | $450 | $94 |
Examples (tiny airport [1], year 2010):
Plane | Old cost | New cost |
ATR (med) | $480 | $300 |
DHC6 (small) | $240 | $50 |
(aircraft types mentioned above are rough examples and the actual cost varies between each type of plane, so costs above are approximations)
As noted by the previous post, another change is coming later which takes better into account how busy the airport is with these costs.
(this thread is locked to keep it organized, please post all comments to this thread)