No penalty on PAX flights over 4000nm

[Cornishman]

It has always perplexed me as to why penalty exists on Pax. flights which are deemed fairly LH or definitely LH,  even on all the early aircraft up to the 1980's.  In RL, I spent my life as a child and youngster flying between South Africa and Europe, Australia and Europe, etc.  and we ALWAYS had fuel stops.  It beggars belief that anyone back then who wanted to go from London to JNB wouldn't fly just because the route had a fuel stop.  I think it was SAA who were the first to have non-stop JNB to Europe flights with their 747SPs ....   so why the heck do we have such penalties on the LF of any pax flight right throughout the games from start to finish?

Surely at very least, lets not have penalties on LF if a flight is 4000nm or more?

(I know... I'm probably just wasting my time as always making any suggestions at all for this game) 

[LemonButt]

There are 757 variants that can go 4000nm--that means you could have 8000nm range on a 757 with a single tech stop.  That is the exact reason these penalties exist because IRL no one is flying these routes.  I don't know how the code calculates it now, but I do think that it needs to provide a penalty IF there is competition.  However, with city-based demand for pax coming at some point, being able to enforce this "if there is competition" is going to be opaque.

Similar to what you stated, the longest flight I've ever been on was a 16.5 hour flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Dulles/Washington DC on a 767 that included a tech stop in Rome.  I think the penalty needs to exist, but perhaps it's based on MTOW to make sure that an aircraft is "sufficiently large" for long haul?  So a tech stopped 747 won't be penalized for a tech stop, but a tech stopped 757 will?

[JumboShrimp]

The penalty should only be there if someone else is flying non-stop.  If there is only one option, with tech stop, there should not be any penalty - IMO.

[Cornishman]

I'd agree we don't want competitors with little "mosquito-type" aircraft creating tech-stop routes against a carrier with a sensible plane flying the same route without needing tech stop.  But again, the rules of this game means the "tail is wagging the dog" on this subject too.  But why are talking about 757s here?  I specifically mentioned the RL situations before the '80s and in the days when in RL, 1 or more tech-stops were normal and necessary.

If we just cannot find some ways to spice up and liven up this game... my goodness it really needs some fresh life breathing into it, then we'll continue to see our friends drifting away from the game in complete boredom.  I too am there ... there's just nothing I haven't really tried and done one way or another.  It's so frustrating to hear the same old rhetoric in defence of not changing.... "thats not what would happen in RL"

This is meant to be a GAME and by that definition we are seeking some fun here.  It is not fun to go around the same old thing over and over and over ad-infinitum.

[Cornishman]

The penalty should only be there if someone else is flying non-stop.  If there is only one option, with tech stop, there should not be any penalty - IMO.

100%  agree !

[tungstennedge]

There are 757 variants that can go 4000nm--that means you could have 8000nm range on a 757 with a single tech stop.  That is the exact reason these penalties exist because IRL no one is flying these routes.  I don't know how the code calculates it now, but I do think that it needs to provide a penalty IF there is competition.  However, with city-based demand for pax coming at some point, being able to enforce this "if there is competition" is going to be opaque.

Similar to what you stated, the longest flight I've ever been on was a 16.5 hour flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Dulles/Washington DC on a 767 that included a tech stop in Rome.  I think the penalty needs to exist, but perhaps it's based on MTOW to make sure that an aircraft is "sufficiently large" for long haul?  So a tech stopped 747 won't be penalized for a tech stop, but a tech stopped 757 will?

The problem here is not tech stops, but the way demand splits based almost purely on frequency. If this were not the case, we wouldn't worry about people techstopping 757's everywhere since the economics would be s*** versus fly a single larger plane. Demand should be split based on a mix of frequency, and seats provided, this way rules like a reduced tech stop penalty for long range routes. I personally agree with jumbo where there should only be a penalty if the route has competition.

Also, additionally, I feel like the even bigger factor here should be flight time. I don't think anyone IRL really cares much if a slight has a stop if the arrival is faster anyway.

[RALLX]

In my opinion, the penalty should be to the "attractiveness" of the flight, and not by capping the pax demand.

1. If there is no competition, all the passengers will still fly even if the flight has tech stop. In reality, people would not not fly just because the flight has tech stop.
2. If there is competition between non-stop flights and flights with tech stop, non-stop flights would be preferred by the passengers. All things being equal (CI, price, plane size, etc), most passengers would choose the direct flights (perhaps a small number would still prefer their national carrier or other reasons). The leftover demand would then be fully served by the flights with tech stop.

I read somewhere that flying non-stop is economically less profitable than flying with tech stops beyond certain distance as more fuels carried means less passengers onboard. However in this game, the maximum passengers remains the same even if the plane is flying shorter. Well, technically you can increase the seats by having high density seats but this will affect the route attractiveness. The ability to adjust seat pitch without tying it to the seat configuration would help. With more passengers, the flight can then be made cheaper, which would be an incentive for flying with tech stops.

[Cornishman]

Dear Sami and team, I have to bring this subject up again about completely unrealistic penalties in the 1960's and 1970's (and some extent into the '80s too).

This is such a great game and it has kept me subscribing for years now but this one facet is just soooooo WRONG !

Take a look at the 1968 LH route I have shown below as to an example why I keep saying what I'm saying. I am old enough in the tooth to remember real travel in the 1970's on many many LH flights.  If you wanted to go anywhere - you HAD to expect a fuel stop. It was normal. It did not mean that planes were half-empty of passengers who wanted to go on a nice holiday to Thailand but who decided to stay home just because there was a fuel stop on the way back home after their holiday.

I'm determined that this sort of heavy penalty you see from my schedule below is just WRONG. It's unrealistic and I plea and urge some change on this.  You can see the effect most vividly on the example below because outbound I don't need a fuel stop, but return flight do. Below shows a VC.10 route with  80% pax. load on the way out to HKG  from Rome with no fuel stop, then only 39% on return ??  You put into the game a while ago, more realistic wind-effect onto flights which was fine... but where's the same level of realism in this crazy fuel-stop penalty in the 60's to '80s on flights over about 4000nm ?

Thanks for any attention you might give to this.
Jack

[groundbum2]

if anything the penalty shouldn't be due tech stop, but due to the massive distance and arduous journey before modern aircraft came along. But this I mean maybe 1000 people in Indonesia want to travel to the UK, but since in the 60s and 70s it's only for the elite and very expensive the demand should really be perhaps 200. Then in the 80s and 90s as 747s come along and travel is opened to the masses then demand climbs to the natural 1000. As Jack says tech stops were normal back then, and part of the journey.

Simon

[DanDan]

why not just consider travel-time instead of tech stops, and also, consider competition:
- in reality, noone minded a techstop in 1970 or even 1980 if they had to travel - but many prefered a direct flight
- in AWS passengers prefer 20 hours on a L1649 to 12 hours with techstop on a DC8

in my opinion, the number of passengers shouldnt change due to techstops, but, the passengers should prefer direct flights if they are supplied sufficiently

but also, more importantly, with the number of seats available in planes, the number of passengers rose by a lot. thats something that is really poorly displayed in AWS over the course of the years, with passenger numbers growing by 2% per year. these numbers are/were often much higher, in average about 6% between 1970 and 2019. so once bigger planes arrive, many in AWS are holding on to their DC6, L1049, Britannias (thats me!) instead of trying to catch the higher passengers numbers with newer, bigger planes.

means: in AWS, a route with 100 pax in 1955 has about 300 pax in 2000. in RL, it would have about 1300 pax. (which is also a reason why techstops arent all that common anymore: the planes didnt go from london to cairo via athens and carry passengers for both destinations, instead there were direct flights to both). oh yeah, and techstops usually werent just for refueling, but to let passengers board and disembark, therefore making the network bigger.

but yes, i feel with you, when it comes to wind data and climb rate, Sami is very eager about details; not so much about other things sadly.

[Flying_ace65]

Dear Sami and team, I have to bring this subject up again about completely unrealistic penalties in the 1960's and 1970's (and some extent into the '80s too).

This is such a great game and it has kept me subscribing for years now but this one facet is just soooooo WRONG !

Take a look at the 1968 LH route I have shown below as to an example why I keep saying what I'm saying. I am old enough in the tooth to remember real travel in the 1970's on many many LH flights.  If you wanted to go anywhere - you HAD to expect a fuel stop. It was normal. It did not mean that planes were half-empty of passengers who wanted to go on a nice holiday to Thailand but who decided to stay home just because there was a fuel stop on the way back home after their holiday.

I'm determined that this sort of heavy penalty you see from my schedule below is just WRONG. It's unrealistic and I plea and urge some change on this.  You can see the effect most vividly on the example below because outbound I don't need a fuel stop, but return flight do. Below shows a VC.10 route with  80% pax. load on the way out to HKG  from Rome with no fuel stop, then only 39% on return ??  You put into the game a while ago, more realistic wind-effect onto flights which was fine... but where's the same level of realism in this crazy fuel-stop penalty in the 60's to '80s on flights over about 4000nm ?

Thanks for any attention you might give to this.
Jack

To bring this topic back up on your point there is a bit correlation missing to be mention, most travel anywhere in the world is round trip, not one way and this is even reflected on ticket prices, where 2 one-way tickets are almost always more expensive than 1 single round trip ticket; now I understand why this is not a topic of discussion because modeling this implies a ridiculous amount of work and changes, but if we hold the premise that most pax will buy a round trip ticket, it means that on a route like this (with no direct options available) the load factors should remain fairly similar, I'm not saying it has to be the same, but even if 20% of the current traveling pax are not returning on what seems to be the quickest and cheapest overall option, your return LF wouldn't drop to the mid 30s%.

This adds to the point that other make about the fact that the penalty should mostly or completely be on total travel time round trip on currently available options, so close to full with no competition with tech stops one or both ways (one tech stop, not two or more, that's a different argument) if no other options are available, and if there are other options, travel time vs tech stop penalties cover flying an old prop plane direct vs a jet with a tech stop (given price, CI, type of seat and all other factors remain the same) the jet with a tech stop should have a higher LF if the travel time is significantly less; on a short route this gives equal footing to both jets and prop planes at any point in history since over a short distance the time difference will be minimal protecting prop aircraft on later years of the game.

Additionally as many mention, tech stops are a thing of the past, but this was replaced with stopovers and that's is something we all know know that happens; when the pax city demand functionality starts, this takes care of it, but in the mean time there is no way to replicated, unless we penalize routes by travel time if competition is available. One vey good example of this is IRL there are no direct flights between Asia and South America (partly affected by ETOPS limitations, but this is besides the point) however travel between the 2 continents very much occurs, this happens today with stopovers and there is no other way to get from one continent to the other unless you make at least 1 and people will gladly do it, so since stopovers are not a thing in AWS because of the "no pax transfer" we have right now, why should I take a LF hit so massive on a perfectly good route with no other options other that mine between the 2 continents if the first aircraft that can even begin to attempt such a thing at a very high fuel cost are the A340-500HGW and the 777-200LR and sending this planes on +8500nm routes is usually a waste of money and tickets are so expensive due to the fuel cost, that most pax will just take a stopover somewhere (in our case a tech stop) to reach their destination, no penalties on tech stops with no competition takes care of this, competition with 2 airlines doing tech stops works fine if LF is allocated with no penalties other than more demand for shortest travel time, and at any point in history where direct and economically feasible flights become available, no alterations to game mechanics or rules need to be made, since the shortest travel time will take care of who gets the pax and who doesn't given all other things being equal. 

[Cornishman]

Sadly, I think we may as well write these feature requests to our pet dogs. Still nothing would get done about anything but at least you'd know the dog is listening to you.

[Chicago_Airways]

Considering the current flights from NZ to NYC, Sidney to London, etc., this penalty has no reason. PAX DO FLY these routes. Can it NOW be eliminated? Please?

[Cornishman]

woof woof ! (doggy talk for... well seems only I'm hearing ya mate!" )