FsP Online Airline Competition

[Airliner]

Okay, forgive me but this may be a long one.

First, thanks FsP developer(s) for making this add-on! It has breathed new life into a fun but increasingly boring hobby - flight simming. I
just unlocked mine the other day and Eastern Airlines will soon be flying again! Anyway...

Along the lines of virtual airlines, I have coupled the idea of airline management into what could be a pretty wild idea, if it works. I'll go
through it in stages.

First, could there be a model in place that would generate pax between any two airports? Then, when you actually setup to fly a route,
your reputation will generate your load as normal, but only up to the limit of the demand. You would then be able to assign one of your
aircraft to "fly" that route.

This brings up scheduling. If anyone's seen 18 Wheels of Steel, you understand how you have to run routes yourself until you build a
reputation - then you hire a driver to run it for you while you find other routes. Same thing would happen here, only you just need a plane
to fly it - not another pilot. Anyway, you would then plug in the flight on a schedule and the schedule would then generate a traffic BGL for
your airline. You would just plug in the info on the aircraft line and the program would throw it into a simple .csv format, ready to be
compiled with Traffic Tools.

Okay, here's where the fun (and headache!) begins!

Other airlines that fly on the same route with you would also compete for the same pax demand. For example, if demand between A-B is
125 pax, and you and your competitor both fly 50 seat rj's at alternating times, first run gets up to 50, next up to 50, next up to 25. Of
course, you would get the % based upon your airline's reputation and fares as usual - the demand is only an upper limit cap. This would
encourage competition and point to the need for good aircraft selection. Also, an airline with a better reputation could in effect, steal pax
from another.

Now, the best part. If all this can work, then the final step should be the easiest - online play. Players would signup online and receive X
number of aircraft slots. These are for aircraft ID's in the aircraft.txt file of traffic tools - just to make sure there are no conflicts. Then, once
per week, each player would simply upload their current schedule, airline reputation, etc. to the website. Also, the player would download
all other flight plans and drop them into their scenery/world/scenery folder. If there are any new aircraft, these can be downloaded as well.

Now, what you have are tons of airlines flying around in the FS world, all competing for pax routes. The better your performance flying, the
better your chances of getting better loads. And, you're going against real competitors - those planes you see parked around the airport
and whizzing past in the sky are from other players schedules. Oh, and for each flight that you fly, that will equal one day's worth of flights
for your airline. So, if you fly a route on Tuesday, the game would simulate pax loads for all of a single day's flights, taking into account
other airlines' draws to influence yours. Then again, you need not fly at all - just update your schedules and see what's new. The reason
to fly is the same as right now - to gain experience to increase your pilot skill and make money to buy new planes. If you want to open a
new route, simply fly the route yourself to the satisfaction of the pax (whatever that might be - 3 consistent flights with satisfaction of 90%
or above?) and you are then able to assign an aircraft to fly it. At that point, everytime you fly, that route will be flown and pax generated
based on your reputation and that of all others on the same route. (There's a simple formula for this based on % values)

Anyway, that's my idea.

In all my work with developing my little airline management simulation (which still is no where near completion!), I have come up with
numerous formulas and ideas - all of which I would be willing to pour into this.

Thoughts anyone?

[Shady]

ehm, I cannot stop to think of two things.

1. That would be a HIT, I mean, a great feature

2. if only it could be implemented.

Fingers crossed!

[JayKae]

Great idea, I think though that this falls more under the "Airline Tycoon" denominator. We'll see what Dan has to say though

[Airliner]

To clarify just a bit more, everything about FSP would remain the same. You would advance the same way, you would generate loads the
same way, you would develop pilots and airline reputation the same way and you would save money for planes the same way.

The only real differences would be:

- The addition of a pax cap for any route, to limit the total number of flights that could successfully operate a route

- The addition of a scheduler that you would use to input flights for each aircraft you own - which would convert to a traffic bgl

- The online connection to be able to put others information into your system which will influence your pax loads as well as give you eye
candy.

Without going into great detail, here's a rough idea of the pax loads thing:

You have an airline reputation of 90%.
Let's say that in your 50 seat aircraft, you would, uder normal FSP rules, generate a load of 38 pax.
Now, there's another airline out there running the same route with a reputation of 97%.
This would then alter your draw value and so now instead of 38 pax, you only draw 31.

The rest is all the same - nothing special for service or fare - these are all figured in as normal.

The total pax is just an upper limit so that after that, there's no one else to fly. So if you generate those 31 pax and there's only 15 left to
fly, then you only get 15. You can either reschedule for an earlier time (before someone else gets in) or downsize your aircraft to
maximize loads.

Same could apply to cargo for all cargo airlines but we won't tax our brains over that.