extra features?

[Zortan]

I'd like to see these

Aircraft range adjusted based on seating capacity (which I believe is coming)

An efficiency penalty for multiple aircraft types. I get that there is a maintenance penalty, but the impact on logistics across the airline is much larger in real life and should have a bigger impact, which would make choosing aircraft types more interesting, especially when we're talking 10+ types

Connecting passengers - at least for one-stop routes. If it has to be done by creating a "technical stop" route as opposed to a "regular" stop that would be fine (and may in fact be a better way to do it)

Interesting idea for the penalties.

Connecting pax are in the future, but I think that there should be an option for connecting pax or not, because connecting pax irl don't make as much money as direct pax, since you need to charge a lower price to convince people to not fly direct, and you have to connect their bags and stuff for no additional cost to them. Therefore, connecting pax should maybe only pay 50% or so of the ticket price because of the costs you have to incur.

[sfk]

What about people who don't change planes? Are they considered as direct pax?

[Unknown98]

a lot of times when looking at RL airline tickets nonstop routes are the cheapest and flights with more stops are more expensive. not always but a lot of the time, especially for domestic US routes.

[Zortan]

What about people who don't change planes? Are they considered as direct pax?

Yes that would be the case.

a lot of times when looking at RL airline tickets nonstop routes are the cheapest and flights with more stops are more expensive. not always but a lot of the time, especially for domestic US routes.

Not in my experience. I can fly YVR-JFK direct for about 150 bucks more than with a stop in YYZ. Direct would be on AC, the YYZ would be on WestJet.

I find that direct is pricier when there are multiple flights per day. For example, if I were to fly SEA-CVG it'd probably be cheaper to stop. But if I'm flying JFK-ORD it's definitely cheaper to fly direct.

[Trogdor]

An efficiency penalty for multiple aircraft types. I get that there is a maintenance penalty, but the impact on logistics across the airline is much larger in real life and should have a bigger impact, which would make choosing aircraft types more interesting, especially when we're talking 10+ types

Seems interesting. Can you elaborate a bit? We do have a fixed family maintenance cost but I'm curious as to what the other costs/impacts would be for operating multiple aircraft families.

I don't work in the industry, I just like planes, so I'm not familiar with some of the more detailed aspects of airline management.

Things I can think of right now...

Crew logistics - different aircraft families require crew to be trained and then refreshed at certain intervals. Once a crew if trained on one type (or 2-3 from memory for cabin crew) they have to stick to operating that type. that means airlines need to have enough staff to cover rosters for all their aircraft families, sick days, crew downtime etc. This could potentially be handled via the "employees" section - each time a new family is added, the number of flight crew should go up by a multiplier (say 1.5), and cabin crew likewise.

Ticketing - each aircraft layout needs to be setup in the ticketing systems differently, which links through to ticket sales. If a type gets swapped out for another (doesn't happen in game but does in real life) re-seating/re-booking everyone on a new type complicates things.

Operations / Ground staff - there is a certain amount of type training for ground staff handling each aircraft. Operations at the airlines base also require some training for flight management. For example, what is an optimal flight regime for one aircraft family isn't necessarily the same for another, so operations and flight crew (and the manufacturer) will need to work this out and manage it for each type.

Maintenance logistics - not the pure maintenance cost, but for each family different spares need to be carried, meaning more storage, multiple setups in databases, training for maintenance staff, keeping track of spares, tracking maintenance requirements for each family and keeping it constantly updated with each manufacturer. Then there's interactions across multiple families with multiple manufacturers for safety bulletins and other running items.

For some real life examples - really large airlines like American (almost 1000 planes) have 10 aircraft families, China Eastern (500+) have 6 families, Turkish Airlines (300+) have 5, etc.

I'm sure other people can think of more 

[Anzatax]

One important factor is actually the pilots.
Different aircraft have different cockpits and therefore need different training programs. Switching aircraft for a pilot, especially for different manufacturers, may mean months of new training. For example, a pilot originally flying the A320 can upgrade to the A330 and A380 fairly easily and cheaply, taking a few weeks at most, because of the similarity between the aircraft piloting systems. Switching to a 777 or 787 though would cause the pilot to have to virtually restart his pilot training program to get him used to the Boeing philosophies of flight. It is the same with Boeing to Airbus and any other company.
This also holds true for flight crew and engineers and ground crew and all that staff.