Oddities in Route planning

[Elouda]

 A little confused by what I am seeing when looking at the 'Airlines on this route' portion of the Route Planner, would appreciate someone more experienced providing some insight as to how this works. To illustrate here is a little description;

I recently started running a non-stop between Auckland (HQ) and Tokyo Haneda in GW#2. As this is a 4771nm trip, the B703 I fly it with cannot run it daily - the flights are little over 12 hours each way plus a 90 minute turn around, meaning I had to use a staggered arrangement to fit 5 flights into a week, as Mon/Tue + Thu/Fri pairs and single one for the weekend, as follows;

AKL-HND


HND-AKL


As you can see, even with this arrangement I had to cut turn around times a little at AKL due to slots at HND - regardless, it works and seems to get a fair number of pax.

I presume the other airline flying the route has a similar arrangement, though I am confused by the way it is displayed - since they are using a tech-stop at Noumea, their round trip time should be ~27-28 hours. I've tried to replicate that route myself since it would appear to allow me to fly it daily, but it seems physically impossible.

Looking at the times above, the aircraft are leaving AKL at 0035, despite the flight actually arriving at 0500. This is a little confusing given the way it is displayed, and leads me to conclude there must be multiple aircraft operating on that route, despite there only being one line in the report. I am wondering is this a display error, or are multiple aircraft flying the same route in this way meant to be bundled?

Apologies if this is a really stupid question, but I couldn't find anything about it in the manual so thought this was the best place to ask.

[Sanabas]

are multiple aircraft flying the same route in this way meant to be bundled?

They are. Can just give them the same route number, makes the route planning screen look a lot cleaner, as they display as a single route with a single number, even though they are flown by a different plane each day.

[Kadachiman]

A lot of players use 7 day schedules, meaning that 7 different planes fly the same route but on different days.
You can use the same flight number for each of the 7 days, hence the graphic looking like it does.

Sometimes you may see 4 or 5 days on one line and 2-3 days on a different line but with the same flight number same times etc, this happens when you use similar planes but a different model e.g DC8-53 and DC8-55

[Elouda]

Thank you for the explanations. It makes more sense now, particularly since I imagine the clutter on a busy route like LHR-JFK or something would make any other way of displaying it incredibly messy.

[fxtorres]

The question here is that,  although both of you are flying the same aircraft,  your competition is doing it at the same times,  so the flights appear in the same line. Your flights are the same number and the same aircraft,  but as they are flown at different times,  they have to appear in different lines.

[Kadachiman]

That is exactly the reason why the OP could not work out why he could not get a display like his competitor has...as they are flying the same aircraft.
He tried Departures at the same time of day for every day but could not fit the flight into a 24 hr day, which is why he staggered flights each day.
The OP was not aware how 7 day scheduling on up to 7 different planes is displayed.

[Wagster]

Can you still organize these flights when they all have the same number? That is, remove the flights from one plane, add to another, things like that?

[Kadachiman]

The routes can be treated the same as any other routes.
All it does it make it look a lot cleaner and make it easier for eh guys that use spreadsheets etc to keep track of

[chris.abrams67]

Yep.

They are actually all individual flights.

So Monday Dep 07:00 Arr 10:00 is one flight
Tuesday Dep 07:00 Arr 10:00 is another individual flight.

But they can have the same flight number as long as they are exactly the same, except for the day. (And the price, you could have different prices on each day if you wished.

If they were all of the same fleet group, but not model, they would show the same flight number but different models on the timetable so;

Days 12-45-7 Flight# AA001 Dep. 07:00 Arr. 10:00 Aircraft B733
Days --3--6-   Flight# AA001 Dep. 07:00 Arr. 10:00 Aircraft B734

But if you made any changes to a flight on one day (time of departure, turnaround time etc) and it wasn't the same as the others you couldn't have the same flight number and it would show as an extra line. So if you make changes to the flight on Mon, you make the same changes to the other aircraft on that schedule.

[Elouda]

Yep.

They are actually all individual flights.

So Monday Dep 07:00 Arr 10:00 is one flight
Tuesday Dep 07:00 Arr 10:00 is another individual flight.

But they can have the same flight number as long as they are exactly the same, except for the day. (And the price, you could have different prices on each day if you wished.

If they were all of the same fleet group, but not model, they would show the same flight number but different models on the timetable so;

Days 12-45-7 Flight# AA001 Dep. 07:00 Arr. 10:00 Aircraft B733
Days --3--6-   Flight# AA001 Dep. 07:00 Arr. 10:00 Aircraft B734

But if you made any changes to a flight on one day (time of departure, turnaround time etc) and it wasn't the same as the others you couldn't have the same flight number and it would show as an extra line. So if you make changes to the flight on Mon, you make the same changes to the other aircraft on that schedule.

(Emphasis mine)

Actually, as you can see from my example (OP), they can have the same flight number even with different departure times, as long as they are on separate days. In this case however they will show on separate lines in the schedule as you say.

[chris.abrams67]

(Emphasis mine)

Actually, as you can see from my example (OP), they can have the same flight number even with different departure times, as long as they are on separate days. In this case however they will show on separate lines in the schedule as you say.

Fair point. It does,  and I'm wrong.  But sort of defeats the object of having the same flight number,  I.e. to tidy the schedule up. And,  I also use it so I can search one flight number on Manage Routes to compare performance on different days but at the same time by searching the flight number,