MX Spare aircraft

[s.clark2002]

Forgive me if there is a way to do this that I am unaware of. Is there any possibility of being able to designate a specific aircraft as a maintenance spare that can automatically cover for aircraft that go down for C checks? For example, if I have 24 DC-9's that have C checks scheduled every 2 weeks, I'd like to have a 25th that would automatically pick up the schedule of the downed airplane for the duration of the check. Upon completion of the check, the schedule can revert automatically to the original aircraft. I understand that it would be difficult to do this for B checks, D checks, and unscheduled mx problems but maybe it can be done for C checks?

[EpicLimaBean44]

Honestly, just eat the down time. Doing this is WAY more expensive than the lost revenue! Airlines in real life don't have entire airplanes sitting around just to pick up the slack of Mx downtime, they adapt their fleet schedules constantly to accommodate their needs. Obviously that's not possible in AWS with how the scheduling works, but it's also not supposed to be 100% representative of real life anyway.

[schro]

Duplicate of this request from 2014 - https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,54631.msg314682.html

[Flightsimer]

Honestly, just eat the down time. Doing this is WAY more expensive than the lost revenue! Airlines in real life don't have entire airplanes sitting around just to pick up the slack of Mx downtime, they adapt their fleet schedules constantly to accommodate their needs. Obviously that's not possible in AWS with how the scheduling works, but it's also not supposed to be 100% representative of real life anyway.

This is not entirely accurate.

Airlines do have the equivalent of an entire plane picking up slack, But it's not one specific airframe that is solely covering for Mx.

In AWS, MX is almost an afterthought after flying schedules are made. In the real world, (using the AWS 7 day scheduling cycle) they would still operate 24 lines with 25 aircraft. However, they would schedule the entirety of the operation so that the plane returning from MX is put into service to replace the plane that is now coming out of service for Mx.

Essentially in AWS we swap planes into a static flying schedule to cover the flying while IRW the lines of flying themselves flow over a static maintenance schedule. The other factor is that IRW, the airline is not limited to 7-day schedules. They might run a flying line that is 30 days long, but in either case, they can tailor it to match their fleet size and Mx needs. Obviously this is an overly simplistic explanation...