Quick beta available

[libertyairlines]

For me 44% was weather with scheduling at around 26% even though I have everything set to turn around at 1%, also after that I have 22% being Airport Traffic.

[AndiD]

Similar issues here - I have a punctuality of 51.5% (!), with 72% weather conditions and 22% route and traffic restrictions. The remaining few % are divided between scheduling, tech problems and staff.

Same with flight cancellations - 7.6% with 70% (14) due to weather, 20% (4) due to scheduling, and 10% (2) due to tech.

[Jona L.]

Sure. Done. A332.

What is the config?!

[swiftus27]

okay, now I am late for work

[Glob-Al]

Love the second one!

[schro]

Love the second one!

I'm wondering how the E145s got to PHNL myself...

[alexgv1]

I'm wondering how the E145s got to PHNL myself...

Flew there?

[ARASKA]

I'm down to 53.7% punctuality and 30% percent of this is weather. My CI has also been affected by this and is at -1. 

[Jona L.]

I'm down to 53.7% punctuality and 30% percent of this is weather. My CI has also been affected by this and is at -1.  

How about some advertising?

My CI is 92 and rising, despite 52.6% on time.... (71% of my delays [1931 mins] are weather).

Weekly result is +30M, spending 6.3M on Marketing.

Update:
Last week was +35M (if adjusted by newly leased a/c), spent 7.1M on marketing that week.

[Sami]

(another "for info".. Been stuck all day in MAD due to technical with the airplane, so updates to test world are delayed by few days... Cannot code with iPad and too many darn delays with this new game engine.. Lol..  )

[Glob-Al]

Sadly I still don't think the efforts to change the pax allocation are working. On my PVG > DUB route, I have lowered the prices on my 777 flights significantly but still it's not enough to cancel out the frequency advantage. The 777 flight pulls in 105 pax per day whilst the two 737 flights between them get 150. This despite the fact that the 737s tech stop, take more than an hour longer each way, have lower pax comfort and cost about $200 more one way in economy class.

My observation from this is that a more radical overhaul of the allocation system is required. It seems to me that at the moment the system first divides pax demand by number of flights and then applies modifiers based on price, aircraft size, CI, RI etc. So if Airline A flies a route 3x daily and Airline B flies it 1x daily the system would default to giving Airline A 75% of the passengers, all other things being equal. It's very hard to set modifiers that coud ever cancel out that huge advantage for Airline A, without having a system that would make things unrealistically volatile when airlines were competing 1-1.

But how about if the starting point was flipped on its head and the initial allocation was made based on number of airlines flying the route (so with two airlines on a route all other things being equal both would take 50%) and then modified to take into account the other factors mentioned above PLUS frequency. Frequency would be more important the shorter the flight, pax comfort more important the longer the flight, and CI / price equally important no matter what length. In this way frequency could still be a consideration but it would be a modifiable variable that could be tweaked along with the others to find the best outcome - rather than something every other variable was trying to counteract.

I realise this might well require such a radical rewrite of the code that it couldn't be implemented now but I'm really starting to think it may be the way to go in the medium term. Perhaps in the meantime swiftus' proposal about the number of slots an "out" airport will allocate you could be used as a stop-gap solution for the next few GWs (presuming that would be easier to code, which I realise it might not be!) But if I'm right about how the system currently works (which I also accept I might not be!) then I fear tinkering with the current model can never be as effective as we'd all like.

[Sami]

The flight time, and seat comfort are not even modelled there yet. And further, I have not taken a look at the calculation on that route yet like mentioned earlier (ie. if there is something odd .. The results surely do not correspond to the other routes that well, s may be a bug too?), so nothing has changed in that sense during last three four days. And like I mentioned earlier, seems that the settings need tuning and I will attend to it during this week.

Also .. The calculation does not work in the way you thought. Instead it compares all flights equally based on their data and then distributes the passengers - instead of first allocating passengers based on number of available flights or so. But I will check these things later indeed.

[JumboShrimp]

Sadly I still don't think the efforts to change the pax allocation are working. On my PVG > DUB route, I have lowered the prices on my 777 flights significantly but still it's not enough to cancel out the frequency advantage. The 777 flight pulls in 105 pax per day whilst the two 737 flights between them get 150. This despite the fact that the 737s tech stop, take more than an hour longer each way, have lower pax comfort and cost about $200 more one way in economy class.

My observation from this is that a more radical overhaul of the allocation system is required.

I think the change is really simple:  If the aircraft is smaller than optimal, pax are allocated strictly on number of seats available.  Number of flights (frequency) should play no role.  

Despite a lot of tweaking, Sami did not turn off the frequency boost on aircraft that is too small for the route.  A lot of things were done to mask this frequency boost but the boost is still there.

The end result should be that if you fly "ideal" 300 pax aircraft and competition is flying 3x100, you should be allocated the same number of pax.  (same LF).  No matter how small the competitor aircraft, no matter how many flights he flies, his aircraft shoujld never exceed LF of the ideal aircraft...

As long as LF of smaller aircraft exceeds LF of larger aircraft, the frequency issues will be with us...

[digifreak]

Sami... will you model people likes/deslikes regarding aircrafts on this new version? For instance using newer ac's vs 20yrs+ ac's competing on the same route? I want to believe that our virtual passengers prefer to fly brand new A330/340 or B777 to old DC-10 and B742/3.

[Troxartas86]

Sami... will you model people likes/deslikes regarding aircrafts, for instance using newer ac's vs 20yrs+ ac's competing on the same route? I want to believe that our virtual passengers prefer to fly brand new A330/340 or B777 to old DC-10 and B742/3.

The amount of MD-80s I see flying out of Tampa alongside brand new A-320s says otherwise. People have no idea they are 20 years old with a fresh coat of paint and refurbished interiors with modern entertainment. The only thing that makes them stand out are the streaks of black exhaust they leave behind on takeoff and the resulting black stains behind the engines.

[schro]

Sami... will you model people likes/deslikes regarding aircrafts on this new version? For instance using newer ac's vs 20yrs+ ac's competing on the same route? I want to believe that our virtual passengers prefer to fly brand new A330/340 or B777 to old DC-10 and B742/3.

Passengers in the real world tend to judge an aircraft's age by its cabin interior. You wouldn't beleive the number of people that I've had guess that a 35 year old DC-9-51 or a 20-24 year old MD-88 be less than 10 years old based on interior appearance.  I then proceed to tell them its real age, and they're white as a sheet for the rest of the flight.

I personally prefer the old Douglas jets. I'd take a Mad Dog over a Boeing or Airbii any day (in fact, I took a pair of MD-88's today - N919DL and N960DL).

The amount of MD-80s I see flying out of Tampa alongside brand new A-320s says otherwise. People have no idea they are 20 years old with a fresh coat of paint and refurbished interiors with modern entertainment. The only thing that makes them stand out are the streaks of black exhaust they leave behind on takeoff and the resulting black stains behind the engines.

Hey now, the black stains are far more noticable on the DC-9-51's. The MD-80's are clean as a whistle in comparison!

[Sami]

INFO:

Route history data is cleared. Making sure the delay data bug is fixed...

Also, $100mil given again to anyone below that.

[Sami]

Found a bug that affected for example long and thin-demand routes (intl/longhaul). Also still tweaked some settings, and you shall see some changes in the longhaulers now where there is a small vs. big aircraft situation present. Further settings tweaking may still be needed (for example regarding C/F class), but could be taken care of with the addition of seat comfort (etc) variables later on.

Also the route overlapping rule is effective again.

And do not also wonder if the test world time jumps back and forth a bit. It's me running it manually.

[schro]

Ouch. My A321's on KLAX-EGLL got nerfed with that change.  I was varying between ~80% loads and 100% loads before the change, now I'm seeing 50-60% loads.  Pricing is about 25% above standard and I haven't tweaked it yet.  Demand is right around being met...

[Glob-Al]

Looks a lot better on LH to me Sami.  My PVG > DUB route is now seeing ~165 pax on the 777 versus 25 on each of the 737s. This is however with the triple seven prices much cheaper so I'll reset them to the same just to be sure. Also that means that only about 210 of the 290 daily demand are actually flying, despite the fact there's no competition, excess capacity, prices below default and RI of 100. That might just be a statistical glitch though - I'll take another look later on.

Cheers,
Glob-Al