I think this is very demoralizing to players when they see this.
I think there is remedy:
Excluding the period when production slots can go gray, if the production queue for the next year or two is full, let's say > 95% full, just increase the production rate by 1 each month until the equilibrium is reached (that there are 5% of slots that are open).
This will not take advantage from the players who had money early and were able to place orders early, but late comers can still get a handful of deliveries per year.
As Sami said he'll now introduce variants for different engines at their RL date (announced it for the 747), there will be even less interest/need in rushing on a newly released model. And it means that the people rushing on the slots will have only "bad" engines, thus forcing either to:
- way more "cancel to reorder" schemes, impoverishing the rich a little more (can't be a bad thing)
- a little more care and patience on order, leading to less clogged backlogs.
Won't solve everything, but could already be a move in a good direction.
Won't work for the old planes for which a different engine means a new model (Connies, Brits, etc.), but will for everything from 70 onward, more or less.
