VC10 & Il-62

[Beni]

Is there any reason to justify that the turn aroun time of the VC10 is 60 minutes and the one of the Il-62 is 100 minutes if they are almost similar planes? (Of course, I know that the game is set to hurt the companies using soviet planes, but I'm asking for a technical reason.)

[chiveicrook]

My guess it's because first versions of Il-62 lacked any cargo bay roller systems (it was Aeroflot's decision afaik). Il-62M and later modifications had all the needed equipment but turnaround time is shared among all models so they are all punished. Rather sad that something like this is in place while famous ease of servicing and longevity of Il-62 is not modeled (Il-62 is punished in this regard as well, having higher maintenance costs).

[battlecast]

I agree that the models are heavily biased towards the western planes

The Russian ones have so many downsides but some of them are truly remarkable aircraft in reality

[MikeS]

While Soviet designs were solid, they had bad support. Sourcing spare parts was much harder and engines were generally less reliable.
I am glad AWS doesn't punish us with low dispatch reliability rates but rather translates it into longer turn around times and higher staff and maintenance cost.

Always keep in mind, though, that AWS does punish Soviet types in that they are less desirable to passengers. So when competing on a route with a Western
type, all being equal, the Soviet airliner will sadly attract less passengers (which is/was true in real life as well).

Mike

[MuzhikRB]

then if follow your logic - it should be banned to to use western type acs in USSR till 1990

otherwise lack of spare parts cannot be arguement - basically they were much cheaper then western ones. but because of trade bans it was difficult to export them.

[chiveicrook]

Maintenance costs need overhaul imho anyway. It would be nice if maintenance costs were directly or indirectly related to:

• Production volume (popular types - cheap, rare aircraft - more expensive to maintain)
• Existence of the manufacturer (still in business? -> cheaper)
• Whether the type is still in production or not
• How much time has passed since the production ended
• Manufacturer recommended flighthours before engine/body/whatever service or overhaul

But that's a topic for another lengthy discussion and (for the last point) a lot of work.

[Beni]

While Soviet designs were solid, they had bad support. Sourcing spare parts was much harder and engines were generally less reliable.
I am glad AWS doesn't punish us with low dispatch reliability rates but rather translates it into longer turn around times and higher staff and maintenance cost.

Always keep in mind, though, that AWS does punish Soviet types in that they are less desirable to passengers. So when competing on a route with a Western
type, all being equal, the Soviet airliner will sadly attract less passengers (which is/was true in real life as well).

Mike

There are several of that old soviet birds of the 70´s still flying, so maybe they are not so bad or so hard to maintain. Less desiderable than western ones? I'm not sure that passengers of eastern block had many options to choose.

[Beni]

then if follow your logic - it should be banned to to use western type acs in USSR till 1990

otherwise lack of spare parts cannot be arguement - basically they were much cheaper then western ones. but because of trade bans it was difficult to export them.

IMO, yes, of course, in order to keep some realism it should be banned to use western planes in the eastern bloc until de 90s.

[MikeS]

There are several of that old soviet birds of the 70´s still flying, so maybe they are not so bad or so hard to maintain. Less desiderable than western ones? I'm not sure that passengers of eastern block had many options to choose.

This is how it is programmed in AWS, which is a bit annoying when trying to operate an all Soviet fleet.
I worked as a ramp agent back in the late 90s at Munich Airport. We regularly handled TU-134As from Pulkovo flying to St. Petersburg.
I loved those planes. The navigator position in the glazed nose was just plain cool 
The aircraft cabin looked extremely dated, however. They had old style curtains on the windows and open overhead bins. The seats looked very old too.
I would have loved to fly on one but I'd imagine the average German passenger who was used to flying 320s and 737s wasn't too keen.
And yes, they were loud!

Mike

[Beni]

This is how it is programmed in AWS, which is a bit annoying when trying to operate an all Soviet fleet.
I worked as a ramp agent back in the late 90s at Munich Airport. We regularly handled TU-134As from Pulkovo flying to St. Petersburg.
I loved those planes. The navigator position in the glazed nose was just plain cool 
The aircraft cabin looked extremely dated, however. They had old style curtains on the windows and open overhead bins. The seats looked very old too.
I would have loved to fly on one but I'd imagine the average German passenger who was used to flying 320s and 737s wasn't too keen.
And yes, they were loud!

Mike

I think that the "quality" of a plane has not to be measured according to how it has been maintained. I mean that when we saw soviet planes in western Europe during the 90s, what we saw was de decadence of the soviet economy with planes without the basic maintenance and even flying with failures. This fact is different from the original technical quality of the planes.

A different question is the aspect of the plane. Of course the eastern bloc countries had different standars of what could be considered "cool", but once again, this has no effect in the technical quality of the plane. Today we fly in planes full of people with no place for our legs, with no place for our arms and with the crew acting as if they were in Cairo´s street market. This can be (it is) uncomfortable but it does not mean that the plane is unsafe.

My original question was about the higher turnaroun time, the higher maintenance costs, the extremly higher fuel usage,... and this can not be explained without assuming that for any reason (unknown for me and hard to explain with realism) Sami has decided to seriously penalize the soviet planes in AWS.

[MikeS]

My original question was about the higher turnaroun time, the higher maintenance costs, the extremly higher fuel usage,... and this can not be explained without assuming that for any reason (unknown for me and hard to explain with realism) Sami has decided to seriously penalize the soviet planes in AWS.

If you dig a bit into google on the subject you will find some reference on the reliability issues. Eastern block airlines, being state operated rarely criticized their
own equipment, but after they started introducing western jets in the 90s the language became clearer. Engines were always a big issue.

This is on the PS90, powering the IL96 and TU204

"The engine has come in for severe criticism recently from Aeroflot general manager Yevgeniy Shaposhnikov, who says that in 1995 Aeroflot technicians replaced 31 faulty PS-90A engines on five Ilyushin Il-96-300 airliners.

Shaposhnikov says: "It is more profitable to give up altogether operating Russian-built aircraft, the Il-96-300 in particular, because all our profit is being spent not on renewing the fleet, not for raising efficiency of services, but for repairing engines."

And this one on the AN148:

"Rossiya claims that remedial work to fix the aircraft did not improve reliability. In the three-month period, the aircraft had removed one Ivchenko-Progress D-436-148 turbofan and two AI-450 APUs. The airline says the aircraft requires 3.8 times more man-hours of Class A maintenance than its 50 hour specified amount"

Both are sourced from Flighglobal.

The support system & network was a lot more efficient in the west. The situation improved a lot with the introduction of the Superjet as they made a big effort in improving the supply chain and worldwide support. And indeed this is also reflected in the game.

This should explain the higher maintenance cost and turn around time in AWS. As for fuel usage, I am sure a big effort was made finding the correct figures. But if you find any numbers are incorrect through a reliable source, you can file a bug report and have it checked.

Cheers!

[Beni]

If you dig a bit into google on the subject you will find some reference on the reliability issues. Eastern block airlines, being state operated rarely criticized their
own equipment, but after they started introducing western jets in the 90s the language became clearer. Engines were always a big issue.

This is on the PS90, powering the IL96 and TU204

"The engine has come in for severe criticism recently from Aeroflot general manager Yevgeniy Shaposhnikov, who says that in 1995 Aeroflot technicians replaced 31 faulty PS-90A engines on five Ilyushin Il-96-300 airliners.

Shaposhnikov says: "It is more profitable to give up altogether operating Russian-built aircraft, the Il-96-300 in particular, because all our profit is being spent not on renewing the fleet, not for raising efficiency of services, but for repairing engines."

And this one on the AN148:

"Rossiya claims that remedial work to fix the aircraft did not improve reliability. In the three-month period, the aircraft had removed one Ivchenko-Progress D-436-148 turbofan and two AI-450 APUs. The airline says the aircraft requires 3.8 times more man-hours of Class A maintenance than its 50 hour specified amount"

Both are sourced from Flighglobal.

The support system & network was a lot more efficient in the west. The situation improved a lot with the introduction of the Superjet as they made a big effort in improving the supply chain and worldwide support. And indeed this is also reflected in the game.

This should explain the higher maintenance cost and turn around time in AWS. As for fuel usage, I am sure a big effort was made finding the correct figures. But if you find any numbers are incorrect through a reliable source, you can file a bug report and have it checked.

Cheers!

I know that entering politics could be riskly, but this three images resume what Russia became after the fall of USSR.




I´m sorry but IMO no "official" source of that time can be credible with respect to the defense of Russian interests or the Russian industry. Yeltsin was a puppet working for the USA and the american industry interest and he did no effort to modernize or to improve the russian aeronautical industry.

It`s all politics. 

[SP7]

I'm not even going to bother to respond to the Yeltsin stuff - but even if it were true, how exactly does that that affect the poor design, build, and maintenance of aircraft engines?

The answer to your question was in the first reply - the original IL-62 did not have cargo bay rollers. Any luggage or cargo was manually loaded/unloaded. While this was changed for the IL-62Ms they would need to become their own fleet to not include the turn penalty which would be a bigger nerf than just keeping them as is.

The IL-62 is also significantly bigger than a VC-10 which is probably also contributing

[Zobelle]

I'm not even going to bother to respond to the Yeltsin stuff - but even if it were true, how exactly does that that affect the poor design, build, and maintenance of aircraft engines?

The answer to your question was in the first reply - the original IL-62 did not have cargo bay rollers. Any luggage or cargo was manually loaded/unloaded. While this was changed for the IL-62Ms they would need to become their own fleet to not include the turn penalty which would be a bigger nerf than just keeping them as is.

The IL-62 is also significantly bigger than a VC-10 which is probably also contributing

Then the VC10 should be recategorized to a large aircraft.

[schro]

Keep in mind that turn times are designed to be relevant to both the time period and typical mission flown for a particular jet. If you compare the IL62 to a 737NG, there's a bit of a difference in time, but no so much in passengers. However, the IL62 is used on long haul routes instead of short haul, where the times can certainly vary...

Then the VC10 should be recategorized to a large aircraft.

It was recently reclassified as a very large. The goal of the change (which this also caused the BAC 111 to go from medium to large) was to make it such that the size classes are relevant to that particular era and not relevant to different time periods. In its time, the VC10 and IL62 are significantly larger than other planes, thus they're now classified as such.

If you extend the logic of making it smaller, then the 707 and DC8 should also go to large class as they have the passenger capacity of a 320/737NG.

[Zobelle]

I can agree with that change.

The VL shouldn't actually be until Widebodies came

[Tha_Ape]

What would be more even more interesting would be a dynamic change in class.

While the 707 and DC-8 are actually very large by the time of their introduction, at the end of the 70s they are not anymore. Same for the BAC when its in front of the 737 Classic rather than Jurassic.

And this is also interesting from a gameplay point of view, as an old plane get a slight help towards the end of its life: while the advantage is not enormous (thus nobody will choose it for that reason), it gives a slight edge to those planes that sits astride both categories when they're becoming old.

[Zobelle]

What would be more even more interesting would be a dynamic change in class.

While the 707 and DC-8 are actually very large by the time of their introduction, at the end of the 70s they are not anymore. Same for the BAC when its in front of the 737 Classic rather than Jurassic.

And this is also interesting from a gameplay point of view, as an old plane get a slight help towards the end of its life: while the advantage is not enormous (thus nobody will choose it for that reason), it gives a slight edge to those planes that sits astride both categories when they're becoming old.

Well yes, if airports can move up and down in their scale of traffic when why not aircraft?

[Beni]

I'm not even going to bother to respond to the Yeltsin stuff - but even if it were true, how exactly does that that affect the poor design, build, and maintenance of aircraft engines?

The answer to your question was in the first reply - the original IL-62 did not have cargo bay rollers. Any luggage or cargo was manually loaded/unloaded. While this was changed for the IL-62Ms they would need to become their own fleet to not include the turn penalty which would be a bigger nerf than just keeping them as is.

The IL-62 is also significantly bigger than a VC-10 which is probably also contributing

http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=250
http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=392
¿Significant bigger? Both were quite similar.

The reality is that soviet planes were not bad designed but after the fall of the USSR they were badly maintained. 250 Il-62 were built and some of them are still flying vs. 52 VC-10 flying half time.

Il-62M has the same turnaround time in ASW that Il-62, so maybe such "technical explanation" is not the real reason.

[SP7]

http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=250
http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=392
¿Significant bigger? Both were quite similar.

The reality is that soviet planes were not bad designed but after the fall of the USSR they were badly maintained. 250 Il-62 were built and some of them are still flying vs. 52 VC-10 flying half time.

Il-62M has the same turnaround time in ASW that Il-62, so maybe such "technical explanation" is not the real reason.

For the third time, the most likely explanation is the lack of cargo rollers. If you want the Il-62 and IL-62M to be in separate fleet groups so that the 62M gets a faster turn time you should petition Sami. You might want to be careful of what you wish for.

The Il-62 has larger dimensions, carries more passengers, and has a higher MTOW than the VC-10. In game that results in slightly higher min turn times. As an example, see the 767-A320/330-777 turn progression. They're all VLA and have increasingly higher turns.