Gates and Landing

[Unknown98]

Alright so I ran into a bit of a predicament. What happens if you don't have enough gates at a particular airport when it comes time to land one of your aircraft?

For example lets say you have 1 gate at LAX. You already have 1 plane on-ground at LAX that is currently using your gate. Then, you launch a new flight to LAX. It would be wrong to prevent takeoff of that flight, because the aircraft en-route to LAX doesn't need the gate until it lands, which could very well be several hours from now. But what if when it lands, that first aircraft is still at LAX taking up the gate? 

In CA v4, I think the game would simply prevent you from landing until you cleared up one of your gate spaces, but this game lands planes automatically and I don't want to leave planes in limbo, flying around until a gate opens up. 

What I was thinking, is to put the plane into "waiting" mode - go ahead and land it, but don't offload passengers or reward the flight revenue until a gate opens up. This would essentially delay the flight. Have enough of these, for long enough periods of time, and your image will suffer, passengers will complain and so on. I assume there would also be extra costs associated with leaving a plane occupied and running on the ground for an extended period of time.

[Carde]

Most larger airports tend to be rather flexible with gates, I mean it is money to them if they are used and hence most are just assigned on a priority basis, so the best gates are the most expensive and the airlines who pay for those can get them, but if no one is around, meh you take less money anyway because having planes taking up space on the airport is not something airports have a lot of room for.

So I would say if there is a gate free you can take it, but it will cost extra and maybe give a small hit to reputation because you are changing gates which passengers don't fancy to much. This way it would not be killing, but it would definitely make you pay attention to your route planning.

[Unknown98]

That makes sense. Although what I'd be afraid of is people intentionally not leasing a 2nd gate because it's cheaper to pay the increased rate. I suppose that could be part of the strategy though, having to decide when your flight frequencies are enough to warrant leasing another gate.

Right now you lease gates and pay a weekly rate regardless of utilization, so I'd have to come up with some kind of formula to determine gate cost for 1-time uses. Would this then also open up the possibility to make flights to airports that you do not lease gates at?

[Carde]

Well you need to schedule your flights period so that would stop that one.

Also do it enough and maybe the airport itself is tired of your games and just boots you out, after all they are under no obligation to service your flights outside of emergencies if they don't want to.

On the other hand to keep it simply on the programming side you can just take a game move here and make a single use of a gate cost 1.5 times a weeks rent

[asianmattdog]

ooooh.... I like that idea a lot... :o

Yeah, airports aren't required to keep up with your lack of planning, and they can boot you out. In addition, airports also need to keep their flights landing and taking off, and if your gate's still in use then that's a factor to them running things efficiently and smoothly, so I could definitely see the airport charging a fee, and a rep hit to your airline. Possibly, even a boost to the other airline's rep for being able to allow such? Idk, that might be too much, but the prior two ideas are great nonetheless.

[Dokhu]

After some time in the air, make an emergency landing with a huge cost for the aircraft to be repaired.

[POTKC]

Diversions almost never bring on any repair costs, though...delays or reimbursements, sure, but not repairs...

[Frenchie]

Sort of building of Carde's proposal, could we say if 30 minutes after landing the plane isn't "sent to your gate" it would automatically be moved to an apron slot (without a gate, so you would use buses to ferry the passengers) which would also cost more due to the 'unplanned' nature of the solution, say 1.5 times the price of a gate, as well as a reputation hit (since passengers hate using buses and loosing time as they unboard).

[POTKC]

That seems like a good idea.

[skifans]

Sort of building of Carde's proposal, could we say if 30 minutes after landing the plane isn't "sent to your gate" it would automatically be moved to an apron slot (without a gate, so you would use buses to ferry the passengers) which would also cost more due to the 'unplanned' nature of the solution, say 1.5 times the price of a gate, as well as a reputation hit (since passengers hate using buses and loosing time as they unboard).

I think sometime like would be a good idea.

ooooh.... I like that idea a lot... :o

Yeah, airports aren't required to keep up with your lack of planning, and they can boot you out. In addition, airports also need to keep their flights landing and taking off, and if your gate's still in use then that's a factor to them running things efficiently and smoothly, so I could definitely see the airport charging a fee, and a rep hit to your airline. Possibly, even a boost to the other airline's rep for being able to allow such? Idk, that might be too much, but the prior two ideas are great nonetheless.

I think booting out the airline is a little much, maybe if, say, 10% of your flights land without a gate then you would be charged 10% next time you need to renew, in addition to the cost at the time for the remote stand. While I agree with a negative effect on your reputaion I think a positive effect on others is a little far.