Argentina Airports

[ezzeqiel]

I'm not sure if I should post this as a bug or here, but since I don't know the policy on these matters, I'll put it here.


Buenos Aires airports (and Argentina in general) are very bad modeled in the sim.

In real life, SABE is a domestic airport, while SAEZ is an international one. SAZM on the other hand is mostly a seasonal airport, and is strictly regional, and SACO is the 3rd most important airport in the country.



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SABE. SABE is mainly a domestic airport. It also has some international flights, but they are all SH, and are very limited by govt regulations. Only international SABE destinations are:
Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, Asuncion, and Punta del Este. All others are mainly seasonal.
As you can see, destinations are only to contiguous countries capitals. Seasonal flights are also only made to contiguous countries (but limited to Brasil and Uruguay).


Let's take today's schedule as an example:

There where 108 scheduled domestic flights.
There where 32 scheduled international flights, only to contiguous countries.

PAX per flight to domestic and international airports are mostly the same, because operators at SABE uses mainly A320 and B737 family (with some embraers). Bigger airplanes are not allowed to operate regular schedules into the airport, being the only exception the presidential airplane (B757).

So, according to scheduled flights, 77% of traffic is domestic, and 23% is International (short haul-contiguous countries only) for SABE.



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SAEZ. SAEZ is mainly an international Airport. Historically Ezeiza was strictly international, but in recent years some domestic destinations (9 in total) were moved there, specially the ones with greater distances after an accident in SABE, making them more dangerous to operate since they have to TO with more fuel in SABE short RWY.

Anyway, domestic market in SAEZ is really marginal.

On today's schedule:
78 flights were International (both long short haul)
8 flights were domestic.

This means 90% international, 10% domestic for SAEZ, but if we take into account that international flights means bigger planes (A330,340, B767,777,747, etc), domestic may fall to 5% of the market (or maybe less). Domestic is really marginal in SAEZ.



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SAZM. SAZM is a very small airport. It's flights are only domestic with no international schedules flights at all. It's a very seasonal airport, with summer being the busiest, but it has tourism year round.

Today schedule for SAZM:

6 flights total (for the whole day).

3 of them to SABE with small jets. The other 2 to nearby cities with small turboprops. And the other is going to an air force base.


In the sim, SAZM is even bigger than SABE, and has international long haul which is (at least) hilarious (or sad).



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SACO. SACO is the third major airport in Argentina. It has several domestic destinations as well as some international ones including one long haul (to Panamá)


In the sim it appears as the 6th airport in the country which is inaccurate as it's the third in importance.



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Others. The remain airports in Argentina (except for SAAR), are strictly domestic and very centralized, meaning that almost every scheduled commercial flights out of domestic airports are bound to SABE.

Seeing international demand out of airports like SANC, SASA, SARP, SASJ, seems like a joke for the ones that are familiar with those airports.



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I know there has been said that the game cannot model every RL route but i think this is a different case, since we are not talking about a route, but the whole system of airports in the country.


Argentina airports working like this is the same as modeling international traffic out of LGA, DCA, CGH, SDU or HND. Or not modelling international out of JFK or NRT. Or not modelling a strong domestic in ARN, etc etc...


And SAZM case is even more extreme. 6 RL flights (2 props 3 to SABE 1 to air force base) against international long haul in the sim.


Source: ME and scheduled flights on www.aa2000.com.ar

[ArcherII]

Agree completely.

I'd like to add that the amount of demand out of SABE/AEP IRL is big, so much so that Brazilian and Chilean carriers always fight for slots, but since there are no open-skies agreements (just bilateral agreements), Argentinian government can veto most of those requests, not all as it'd mean that AR or AU would loose their SH intl. flights to Brazil form AEP.

I don't have the numbers here but the most travelled route in the country is SABE-SACO, with several frequencies between AR, AU and 4M. Then SAME, SANT, SASA, etc etc.

Special mention to SAWH, during summer there are around 14 flights per day, not long ago one of those flights was operated by an AR's B744, now A343/A332. Not compnting charters as they're not modelled here, otherwise I could count Air Austral, Lufthansa, Thomson, TAM...

The only data I can provide of the top of my head since I've seen the numbers at my office (ARO-AIS), is the passenger traffic between SABE and SAWE (my base), around 250 pax each leg. Two full AR flights.

[juanchopancho]

I brought up the same issue in 2010.

Still not fixed, domestic demand is a joke.