Propilot Additions????

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Hi Bruno / Armando,

Would there be any possibility of including some airline specifics in a "Future" version of ProPilot? What I mean is penalties for low occupancy, delayed arrivals and poor fuel economy... I know there is an incredible amount of data already be processed and that these additions would not be simple, but it's just an idea for the distant future.

Cheers,

[EHM-0361 Karsten]

In my opinion it would a bit tricky to add something like that, besides for all the programing stuff. First of all it wouldn't be fair to punish the pilot because there are only a few passengers for the flight he is flying. I don't think in the real world that an airline blames the pilot because there are empty seats in the aircraft. But of cause a smaller aircraft could be used. But then you might run into delayed arrival because the aircraft you use have a lower cruisespeed then the aircraft that the flight was designed for. Another thing is that I think it very few that haven't tried to have to go-around because of other traffic or having to wait in line to take off. That will also delay your arrival. Last but not least if you are delay taking off, then you need to speed up to catch the lost time, this means you use more fuel and might get punished for that. Also it would mean that someone would have to figur out how much fuel every aircraft that could this flight should use, that would keep the management busy for a very long time. I think, just one man's opinion that penalties like that would p**** (no swearing in here) people off, because a lot of them would be unfair. But of course if someone can come up with a fair system then I wouldn't have a problem with them.
Sorry have a small problem with stopping once I get started.

regards,

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Hey Karsten,

It's good to hear somebody elses point of view. Of course I understand your concerns, but I suppose I had better now explain my reasoning:

We can see the PAX count before we take a propilot flight, that way we may think twice about taking a flight that is loaded with fresh air on the same route over and over again, just because we know the airports or it is a short flight that can increase our FAC. (It may happen that a pilot flies the same short route over and over to increase their FAC, meanwhile there is no benefit for a pilot who flies transatlantic with a full load for 7 or 8 hours.... I know, I had matchsticks holding my eyes open as I completed my 3rd back to back crossing yesterday at 0300 Zulu! (Let me tell you, getting up for work at 7am this morning wasn't fun!) I could have taken 3 short flights with no pax and got the exact same score in about an hour and a half)

With regards the delay issue, this could include only flight time as the logger differentiates between flight time and block time. ATC delays are unavoidable but the flights have trip times built in to the timetable but we rarely consider these, I just think it would make the experience more realistic, after all real pilots have to maintain a schedule don't they?

The fuel issue was mentioned for entirely the reason you state above. I know, i do it myself. If there are 300 people waiting for a class 4 flight, I'll use a class 6 plane to carry the lot of them, yes it saves the company in the short term, but the route then sits there for a week with nobody wanting it because no PAX are waiting. IMHO, if we as pilots decide to fly a class 4 flight with a class 6 plane, I feel there should be a penalty. As above, Real World Pilots can't just decide to fly any plane they like on a route and they have bonuses based on fuel use, therefore if we save fuel, we should recieve a bonus.

I guess what I am trying to say is, ProPilot is not just about opening the throttles and going for it. It's about making it a "Pro" experience and the above are all just issues that real life pilots and airlines deal with on a daily basis.


Lastly, as you can see, I have the exact same problem with stopping once I get started.

Cheers

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Hi Philip,

First of all thank you for your ideas.
As you know our "policy" in EuroHarmony is to always hear to our pilot's suggestions.

Your ideas makes sense although Karsten still has also a point.

First the PAX. You are right and not right. On real life, airplanes do flights even if then had 1 or 2 passengers. The question here is the passengers algorithm that needs to be changed to inject more passengers then it is now.
Another question is that many pilots do the same PP flights. For instance, they do LPPT -> LEBL, and then LEBL -> LPPT and then starting again to LEBL .. So, there is no script algortihm that can beat this ...
Also, we could restrict flights with less than 60% of used capacity but that is unfair also.

About the penalty for delayed flights, Karsten said that some airplanes could not have a decent cruise speed to fullfill with that arrival time.
Well, in that case the problem is not from the airplane but from the timetable ... Normally that problem doesn't apply because the airplane is capable of doing the flights on the scheduled time interval.
Also, what we need to base here is not the start and departure time but the time interval that the flight was made. For instance, imagine a flight that starts and 16:00 and ends at 16:50. But when I do that flight I am at 23:00 ... So, what we need to count is the time that you made that flight and not if you start at the correct time or not. Or, we can think about giving a penalty if the pilot delays his flight as Philip said ...
Well, we need to think about it next year when we implement a second pack of penalties ...

The fuel economy is right. For instance we could consider of giving a penalty if the pilot lands with more than 50% of fuel on the tanks ...

Well, sure you both got points .. Let's wait for next year to see what happens ..

Regards,

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Phil/Bruno/Karsten

What Phil has suggested sounds a lot like what FSPassengers does, and I know from the FSP website that it is possible to integrate FSP into a VA system (they have a demo of such a system on their website)

I have an issue with FSP (you can't "inform the passengers" of en-route delays, so you end up getting penalties for a delay that you knew about a half hour ago... if you could "inform the passengers" it could be a little more forgiving with the penalties...), so it's not perfect by any means, but it does have a far wider brush in terms of the things it checks on: passenger happiness, flight times, crew performance and so on...

I'm still not suggesting this "out loud" (blue sky only Bruno, we both know that the devel list for next year, especially the early part,  is very full already), but might it be possible to hook into FSP (for those of us that have this add-on) and use the penalty structure within it to extend the existing PP penalty structure?

[EHM-0361 Karsten]

Hey Phil,

It makes a bit more sense now that I know what you mean with your ideas. It think I didn't mention that I didn't totally disagree with your ideas, simply because this is ProPilot. That's also why I said that would mind penalty as long as it comes from a fair system. Sounds like Bruno might be on to something.
Regarding what Murray talked about. I have fsp too, but if I remember correctly theres a difference between the penalty points in PP and fsp. So without knowing a whole lot about it, I would think it would mean we should change the whole penalty point system if we where to tap in to fsp. However on another note, I can only agree with Murray regarding the missing option to inform passenger about delay, that bugs me too. But perhaps that will come in an update some day.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Thanks Bruno, I didn't think you had enough to do so I thought I would just add some more :] Sorry, only kidding!