Increasing Slots

[isuzu777]

Sorry, I searched bu couldn't find the appropriate place to ask this.

When does an airport get an increase of slots? I am based at DFW (Dallas) and there has been a slot shortage for a long time. Even though it is one of the busiest and largest airport in the world, with many runways, it is only 46 movements per hour? I just checked Newark, and they have 65 per hour. What is with that?

Dallas may have an average of 46 movements per hour in the real world, but I think it's capacity is much greater. It has several runways and 6 or 7 huge terminals (some which are hardly used). Also, there is still so much demand but no way to expand unless you put flights leaving at 3am.

[thorsen]

I asked the same question some time ago, but didn't really get an answer, so good to have it brought up again  .

https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,5156.0.html

[orion_airways]

DFW is very slot restricted now.  If there is another airport so heavily "red," I'd like to see it.  I can't complain, though, as I have about 30% of the DFW slots.

[jagalubnan]

(some which are hardly used).

Maybe that's why?

[isuzu777]

That is exactly what I am saying though, while the average movements at DFW in the real world may be 40-50 movements per hour, that might not reflect its CAPACITY. DFW is huge and could support much more, definitely more than Newark which has 50% more slots (65/hr I believe?). Newark handles 35mil passenger per year while DFW does 60mil. So the fact that DFW has far fewer slots isn't quite right.

DFW was the 3rd busiest airport in the world in 2007.

[isuzu777]

*To clarify the above post, it was 3rd busiest in the world in terms of movements, which makes it odd that it would be restricted to far less movements than Newark.

[alec25283]

The other part to this is does tha game take itno account the change in Airports?

Does it take into account, increase in passenger numbers year on year and does it take into account the change in internal structure for example the addition of runways etc?

[Sami]

First of all. Slots = runway capacity. No matter how huge the aprons are or how many runways an airport has, but if the procedures and systems do not allow more traffic, then it's that limit.

And slots are the takeoff slots, and if we are accurate the word 'capacity' actually includes departures and arrivals, but we're only counting the departures here for the sake of simplicity. So if you read somewhere that airport has '100 movements per hour capacity', then it should be close to 50 in AWS. And the system also increases/reduces the number of slots based on the game year, with the assumption that previously ATC procedures, radars and such have not been so sophisticated as today. So this number 50 would be around 40 in 1990s games actually.  (all in all ... number of slots in AWS is actually some 10-40% higher than in reality, depending on the airport .. but the lack of slots is not supposed to be the main limiting factor here)

Now for how it counts the number of slots.. System knows what runways each airport has and uses a method to calc. the max slots based on this, and other factors like country and navaids. There can be also a manually set capacity number for an airport, as the system cannot know if apron is the limiting factor or something like that. (ie. if we have two airports with both single 2500x60m runway, at the same country, the calculated capacity is the same .. but if in reality the other airport can only allow max 10 planes a hour due to limited terminal, we can set up this for that airport only)

If some airport is totally off then make a separate request (thread) to change that, with some reference data. For EWR and DFW, I think that other has the specified capacity number set and the other hasn't and this causes the thing mentioned here.


Airport history on runways and terminals (etc) is not modeled. That's impossible as there is no data for 3000 airports over the last 50 years on this.. (and it must be that most of the airports has this data before it could be even thought of, as otherwise it would be unfair if some major airports are more restricted by this than others just because they have the extra data)

Also. For a game with 300+ airlines, you are supposed to run out of slots at some time at the peak hours. Any major airports in reality such as Heathrow are limited by the number of available slots..

[isuzu777]

Okay, then I request that you review DFW's slots. If it is based on runway capacity, here are the stats on EWR and DFWs runways:


EWR (3 runways)-


Direction    Length (F, M)              Surface

4L/22R    11,000    3,353    Asphalt/Concrete
4R/22L    10,000    3,048    Asphalt
11/29    6,800    2,073    Asphalt



DFW (7 runways)-

Direction    Length (F, M)            Surface

13L/31R    9,000    2,743    Concrete
13R/31L    9,301    2,835    Concrete
17C/35C    13,401    4,085    Concrete
17L/35R    8,500    2,591    Concrete
17R/35L    13,401    4,085    Concrete
18L/36R    13,400    4,084    Concrete
18R/36L    13,400    4,084    Concrete


Does it still not seem a little odd that EWR has like 40% more slots???

I know these are present day stats, but I am pretty sure DFW was just as big in the 90s as it is now.