I have two DC6A's on order with delivery dates in late 1957 and 1958 that I ordered in May of 1954. I figured that it was just sold out. Then I saw in Aircraft Order news that Pacific ordered this week and has a delivery date late 1955. I scroll back at the history and see that Ride the Lightning ordered last week and got a delivery date in August 1955.
I figured that maybe it was because they had the 6B instead of the 6A variant. So I went over and priced a new delivery 6B and got a delivery date of 1958. What is going on? I see multiple slots available in 1955, 1956, and earlier in 1957. What is the mechanics of this penalty? I assume that it has something to do with the fact that I'm a new airline. But I'm trying to haul cargo, and getting squeezed. The DC-3 doesn't have the range I need. The C46 cargo variants are generally unavailable to lease. I can't lease a passenger plane and convert it. I can't get a loan to buy them and convert them. I'm not whining but leasing new is really my best option at this point and I've realized that I'm being put at an unfair disadvantage with delivery dates.
the delivery dates are determined when you ordered, so it could be at that time all the slots were full. Now there are earlier slots due to cancelled orders or bankruptcies and people have jumped in. Your orders may have shuffled down a bit but clearly not much. And new orders from you will go behind existing deliveries. Not terribly fair but it's how it works.
Solution is to either (1) cancel you two orders, and place a new order which should get a new earliest possible delivery date or (2) join an alliance or find somebody not using the same place who will order some for you. Depend on cash of course early in the game.
The production rate might have gone up, or some orders might have been cancelled from there. Either way, in some cases it's normal that some minor gaps are present in the order slots, but these are always very minor (one or two here and there, but nothing major) to allow first deliveries of new orders to get delivered faster. That's intentional.
So an airline that has no other orders on the line at all might be able to pick up an odd plane here or there, but in the big picture the big orders are allocated rather evenly and keeping in mind the last-come-last-served principle (but still trying to get at least a few initial planes delivered as soon as possible).
There are over 100 green open slots ahead of my initial delivery. This isn't a one or two open slots over a short period of time. This is game years delay between me and multiples of whomever wants to order between now and then.
My slots haven't moved at all. If I cancel I get hosed on the fees that I paid upfront. It would make more sense to bankrupt my whole airline and start again but that doesn't seem terribly fair.
Can someone get Douglas on the phone and move my order up?
I checked and the production rate has recently changed. The production line re-allocates the the productions slot times some time after the rate increase, so you will see it compact with the higher production rate and eat up the empty slots. But depending on the total amount of orders, there will be some gaps left so that a new order from other airline won't be years and years away before the first delivery happens.
(At no point have your orders been pushed back or caused a delay to what you originally ordered, but instead thanks to the increase in the production rate they are most likely moving forward)
So = is there room in this game to allow players to each manufacture one type of aircraft and price them?
Be worth a try surely, or maybe just a rich airline could buy new, or spare aircraft, for sale to other players?
That would also allow me to avoid bankruptcy!!
11Air.
Actually, that isn't true. My order was pushed back. I didn't pay super close attention, but my automated press release has my first order arriving on October 1, 1957. My current slot and New Aircraft on Order says January 6, 1958. (My Airlines - News and Press Releases)
And the issue is, is that I am some "other airline" that is now years and years away from first delivery. This isn't a matter of weeks or months. I'm not going bankrupt, but I'm getting seriously penalized. I was fine with waiting until 1958 for delivery because the DC6 was a core part of my strategy and getting in line was the fastest way to getting those deliveries started even if those deliveries were years away. But it seems unfair that tying up my capital and making that commitment to lease now means that larger/ older /newer airlines can make this commitment to lease after me and take delivery years before me. In real life I would be able to call Douglas and move my production slot up to the same spot to someone else who was ordering today with no penalty. As is, I can cancel and reorder but I'd be walking away from $1,000,000 of my startup capital. It would take me a year to earn that back in profits at this point.