I'm thinking of purchasing an airplane, but I'm not sure if i want the -200 or -300 variant. The -200 has less of a runway requirement, but the -300 is better for me since it has a higher capacity. However, I think the -300 requires more runway than what is available at the airport.
Is there a way to be 100% certain that I can use the plane I want at the airport I intend to use?
-matt
Each plane model tells you what the Runway Requirement is for that specific model, whether than be a -200, or whatever. Just compare that to the runway length at the airports you want to service. What is listed on the plane info page is the maximum runway length that a model will require if you packed it full and needed every last drop of fuel to be in the tanks to make it to destination.
Now, if you're talking about buying a higher MTOW variant of a particular model (i.e. one of those +1.8tn variants), that's a different story. To the best of my knowledge there's no way to see what the runway length is for those variants until such time as you take delivery of it.
So when the airport info says: "Longest runway - 2 132 x 46 m (Asphalt)"
and the aircraft info says: "Runway requirement (MTOW) - 2 460 m (Basic weight variant)"
Then that plane shouldn't be able to land there, right? For some reason, though, I thought the system would warn you ahead of time when you were in the "Open New Route" menu if a particular aircraft variant wasn't compatible with the airport.
-Matt
it can still land there, just with restricted amount of pax
Another factor is the range of the airplane.
I have a lot of Douglas DC-8-63's in The Jet Age, and it's annoying since they have a requirement for a 3300m runway, which many places don't have. That said, the range of the plane is ~5000 nm. If I fly to somewhere that far away, I need the full runway, or I need to sacrifice passengers. However, if I fly to somewhere only 2800 nm or so away, I can take a full load of passengers since the lower levels of fuel required for the trip ends up cutting down the weight, and thus runway requirements.
Have I figured out the exact calculations? No... For that I just go to "Create Route" and then use the type of plane that I'd be using and see what the requirements are. If it doesn't state there's a problem, unless you made your plane have more seats than the default configuration then you're good to go.
You can open a route without even having the aircraft - or in other words you can use the route open menu to 'simulate' the flight, it will show you the restrictions there too. Just select the plane, days, and dep time and you'll see them - no need to actually open the route.
;D You can ALWAYS be 100% certain your plane will land, but remember any landing your crew and passengers can walk away from is preferred. ;D
You can put a stopover on your flight if your a/c is limited in its performance by the runway lenght... Anyway, if you start to re-configue your a/c you'll note that the range will increase when you start to add first class, business class and decrease the number of economy class seats. This will help your a/c to fly the same distance with a lower MTOW... But I do not know if it will lower the need of runway! :-P
I'd love to explain to my pax that we landed in order to OFFLOAD fuel.