Maintenance and "spare" aircraft.

[odo]

Large fleet and maintenance is starting to be quite an issue now. I have 100 aircraft on my fleet and any given time at least few are in maintenance. On the real world large airlines obviously can't stop certain flights because of maintenance.

At current state, one would have to manually copy the schedule from aircraft to another while the aircraft is in maintenance. This is way to time consuming to do up to 5 aircraft each turn.

What I would like to see:
-You can designate aircraft as "spare" and when aircraft of that type goes into maintenance, the spare aircraft will take over the schedule of the other aircraft.
-There would be a warning if the spare aircraft couldn't fly all the routes of the original aircraft for some reason(like range). However, it would fly the routes it could.
-After the maintenance, original aircraft would resume flying normally and the spare aircraft would return to pool of spare aircraft.
-You could designate as much spare aircraft as you like.

[jmi]

Also you should take care about that planes have different cruising speeds and turnaround times. Solution could be that AC starts first flight in morning. And when it arrives back from route it will fly next flight If next route is not already departed. Otherway told, aircraft will depart to next route if it is back on time from previous route.

And how we do that is we have, for example, 2 spare planes and there is three planes on C-check. Whagt routes these 2 planes will fly? Easiest way is just to drop random planes routes from that week schedule.

But this start to be quite urgent thing with bigger companies.

- J

[Sami]

Should the spare planes be limited to the same aircraft fleet type, or should there be cross-fleet flying also?  So that A320 could spare for Embraer's for example? That's how it works in real life but due to the huge amount on variations in aircraft details (range, rwy requirement, turnaround times) and such things that may get too complex.

Also jmi's suggestion is a bit hard to make too perhaps. In my mind the replacement plane should stick on the schedule of the replaced plane only, so 1 vs. 1 situation. Otherwise it may be too hard to automatically pick the suitable flights from the schedules to fly, etc.

[odo]

I would say that no cross types. Spare could only be used to flight with same typed aircraft.

[jmi]

Yep, that could do it. Only check (when assigning plane to replace plane on maintenance) that it has enough range.

- J

[Sami]

I suppose original idea was to have automated spare aircraft in case automated maintenance checks are turned on?

If maint. is assigned manually then spare plane will be assigned manually too??  (there game could suggest that "you have xx planes marked as spare, do you wish to use this to replace the routes for the time of the maintenance")

[odo]

I really didn't think about that but what you are suggesting sounds good.

[Maza]

This could be veeery useful!!

Ps. 16 aircrafts in maintenance 

[crivabene]

Sami, is this still on the to-do list? I would love to see this feature implemented in the next game, am I dreaming??

[Sami]

Haven't done this yet, sorry

[Seattle]

Im in Hawai'i,  but this is a good idea. I also agree that a specific plane type in maintainance should be "replaced" by the same kind.

[AHToronto]

yes because what if your 747-400(for example)goes into maintenance from a Toronto to Moscow,long-way around, and all you have left is a de Havilland Canada DHC-8-100 as a spare.

[comet3506]

Probably what the real airlines seem to do.... cancel flights lol.

[AHToronto]

i know smaal airlines do that

[Seattle]

However, most airlines don't. 

You rarely see BA, UA, DL, AA, SQ, QA, LH, SK, SA, JJ, CX, .... cancel their flights due to a A, B, C, or D check...

[AHToronto]

AC for instance...they said online that say Fl.420 will be a 777-300, then when you see the plane you are about to get on at the airport, it's an E-175

[Seattle]

Sami, just my opinion, it would make it so much nicer if this could be implemented as soon as possible. (I dont know what your doing now, but it gets really annoying when this happens)........

[crivabene]

Sami, just my opinion, it would make it so much nicer if this could be implemented as soon as possible. (I dont know what your doing now, but it gets really annoying when this happens)........

I agreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 

[orca333]

If aircraft are incredibly under maintenance, will they crash or become grounded?

[crivabene]

If aircraft are incredibly under maintenance, will they crash or become grounded?

They will be grounded and you will have to pay fines. Also their condition will drop a lot if you are not performing proper maintenance.

....
BTW Sami this message was bumped to the top... I was going to do that yesterday but I felt guilty But I reeeeeeeeeallllyyy miss this feature!!!