737-1/200 pilot staffing vs 3 man planes (tridents) - no benefit?

[spiff23]

The 737 have a 2 man crew, but does anyone know if the game engine staffs pilots at a higher ratio of pilots than some of the 3 pilot planes?  The reason I ask, is there are always points in the game where you can start really noticing the pilot number reduction and can rebalance them as you add new flights.   I've got staff hiring on manual...so it's been noticeable that I'm not seeing much benefit of replacing tridents with 737s.  It might be very subtle, but I'm not seeing a noticeable drop and actually had to hire some large pilots to cover the schedule.

I have been getting extra pilots by grounding very large planes but the needle doesn't seem to be going lower on large plane pilot needs.

One other possibility is actually 727s vs Tridents.  I'd think pilots are a 1:1 swap, but maybe they have a higher overall staff compliment than the tridents as I am bringing in both 727s and 737s for stage 1 trident replacements?

Before wasting Sami time with a bug report, wondering if anyone has thoughts.  Going to watch more closely as next set of planes that get swapped will be only tridents to 737...so I'd think there'd be some reduction in the number of large pilots needed.

[Cardinal]

The # of pilots required is also influenced by the average trip length of the type. So the 727s are skewing your numbers as they have quite a bit longer range than the Tridents, and therefore require a larger pool of pilots. Replacing a Trident with a 727 1:1 (even a 721) will result in a higher number of pilots needed.

[spiff23]

Thanks...I didn't realize it was length based and that makes perfect sense as my large pilots have been about the same size since I started this project.

[Tha_Ape]

Yes, I definitely think that Cardinal got a point.
Not talking of the same category, and not the same amount, but I got:
~ 180 732 x 2 pilots = 1400 pilots
~ 150 DC-8 x 3 pilots = 3500 pilots

-> proportions have absolutely nothing in common.

[schro]

Yes, I definitely think that Cardinal got a point.
Not talking of the same category, and not the same amount, but I got:
~ 180 732 x 2 pilots = 1400 pilots
~ 150 DC-8 x 3 pilots = 3500 pilots

-> proportions have absolutely nothing in common.

Category makes a big difference. It's actually MTOW that will vary staffing within a category, not range (though, MTOW tends to correlate with range).

[spiff23]

Shro and cardinal...spot on.  I never realized staffing was correlated like this.  I just had a clean run of only tridents to 737s and the pilot staffing came down about 5-10 per plane...which also makes sense given the MTOWs varied. 

I can now do a run of 727s to put all those flight engineers back to work

[Tha_Ape]

Category makes a big difference. It's actually MTOW that will vary staffing within a category, not range (though, MTOW tends to correlate with range).

Category makes a big difference precisely because of MTOW and range -> same reason, only a big step.

[Luperco]

Category makes a big difference. It's actually MTOW that will vary staffing within a category, not range (though, MTOW tends to correlate with range).

So an heavier aircraft require more pilots than a lighter one? Why?

[Tha_Ape]

Because heavier aircrafts are usually made for longer routes, meaning shifts during the flight, and also because of more things to handle (before automation).