Cessna 172

[Anders Kvamme Stemland]

Hey.
Possibly in near future to add the c172 to the charter fleet?

And happy if there is more GA in our fleet

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

Hi,

And happy if there is more GA in our fleet

Airlines don't have GA aircraft. I don't believe we changed our policies on that. If a lot of pilots want to go the GA way we have to change a lot of things because GA aircraft don't generate ticket sales etc.

But I actually think adding the Cessna 172 or another small single-engine plane would be a good thing. It would be a good trainer. It could be added as a step in the Advanced career. And another thing; most of us have it available as a default plane so it makes our VA more accessible. I often see a lot of short flights in the reports because people just have limited spare time. So adding a bit of "Air Taxi" would probably make a lot of us happy.

 

[Jesco Freund]

Airlines don't have GA aircraft. I don't believe we changed our policies on that.

Indeed correct, but there is no written policy we don't allow usage of GA planes. You even can use a C172 in your sim to fly a B738 route - our ACARS won't notice (other than FSE we don't have enforcements for aircraft and position in place, as we don't control payload and/or fuel through our ACARS).

If a lot of pilots want to go the GA way we have to change a lot of things because GA aircraft don't generate ticket sales etc.

For the time being this wouldn't be an issue as we have no economic model in place. There's just some basic fuel consumption and flight time calculation, but for charter assignments these even ignore the entered route and use the great circle distance between departure and arrival airport. And the maximum number of passengers is agnostic to the number of crew required, so it's technically just a number entered into the database. Once we get to defining an economic model, we might have to consider training missions or air taxi and model them in a different way than standard scheduled or charter flight operation (so we're talking max of 4 different models).

But I actually think adding the Cessna 172 or another small single-engine plane would be a good thing. It would be a good trainer. It could be added as a step in the Advanced career. And another thing; most of us have it available as a default plane so it makes our VA more accessible. I often see a lot of short flights in the reports because people just have limited spare time. So adding a bit of "Air Taxi" would probably make a lot of us happy.

I think the simplest solution would be to provide GAs only in the charter fleet, so pilots have to plan their routes in accordance with the capabilities of the selected plane (in terms of range, max FL, etc.). That should work without needing to touch the code base...

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

but there is no written policy we don't allow usage of GA planes. You even can use a C172 in your sim to fly a B738 route - our ACARS won't notice (other than FSE we don't have enforcements for aircraft and position in place, as we don't control payload and/or fuel through our ACARS).

The usage of any plane was never restricted. But this is about officially adding an aircraft type. In the past request for GA type planes were always rejected in the forum. The line "We're not a bush flying VA" was often used. I have personally no problem with small aircraft. The only thing I think we shouldn't do is add museum pieces.

For the time being this wouldn't be an issue as we have no economic model in place.

We have no real ticket sales at the moment, that's correct. I mainly meant our future plans and the way we think about ourselves. Peter was always going to add the ticket part so we thought of ourselves as a commercial airline.

Once we get to defining an economic model, we might have to consider training missions or air taxi and model them in a different way than standard scheduled or charter flight operation

Yes, we should agree first about how we think of ourselves. Are we a typical medium sized airline, a flying club, an air taxi service or all these things?

I think the simplest solution would be to provide GAs only in the charter fleet, so pilots have to plan their routes in accordance with the capabilities of the selected plane (in terms of range, max FL, etc.). That should work without needing to touch the code base...

That would indeed be the simplest way and satisfying enough for most pilots of small aircraft. But about the code base, isn't Christopher going to completely replace that anyway?

 

[Jesco Freund]

The usage of any plane was never restricted. But this is about officially adding an aircraft type. In the past request for GA type planes were always rejected in the forum. The line "We're not a bush flying VA" was often used. I have personally no problem with small aircraft. The only thing I think we shouldn't do is add museum pieces.

Oh noes, I love flying the PMDG DC-6B (though ATC would hate me for the abysmal climb rates :rofl: ). I agree we need to limit fleet diversity when talking about scheduled service (otherwise the dispatch management would gain horribly in complexity), and certainly we have to review from time to time how our fleet matches what the market offers in terms of aircraft models (e. g. you hardly find acceptable Fokker models to date for all sim platforms supported, and on the turboprop end, you find good models for a Q400, but not for an ATR-72). On the other hand we have the charter fleet for exactly this purpose - availing aircrafts to the community that would rather not be used in scheduled service, but are fun to fly. The tradeoff for this service: the pilot has to do the flight planning by himself.

We have no real ticket sales at the moment, that's correct. I mainly meant our future plans and the way we think about ourselves. Peter was always going to add the ticket part so we thought of ourselves as a commercial airline.

Well, that's to be discussed. As Peter never materialized those plans, it's now up to Chris et. al. to deal with that. We haven't defined yet an economic model, and whether it will build purely on schedule ticket sales or other economic factors (mind, we already have a charter department), will need to undergo evaluation. The risk of any economic system is it might potentially drive away those pilots who chose ACH for not having an economic system in place and thus offering a quite relaxed policy towards what you can fly and when and where. So I would rather plead for a system that's not too restrictive and does not put unnecessary pressure on pilots (for the same reason we have to be careful about pilot ratings etc.). Furthermore, first priority is to secure ACH operations at the level we currently have. Once that's done, we can talk about enhancing ACH (there are many things on the to-do list, the economic system being one of them).

Yes, we should agree first about how we think of ourselves. Are we a typical medium sized airline, a flying club, an air taxi service or all these things?

To my reckoning (but here I can only speak for myself), ACH's strength was always that it was to pilots whatever they wanted it to be. In fact, when looking even only at our scheduled services, ACH is not clearly positioned - we do have regional, commuter, domestic and intercontinental routes in our portfolio, operating with aircrafts ranging from the Dash-7 to the 744. In real life, an airline with such a portfolio would operate with different divisions and brands. This is a compromise trading off realism vs. attractiveness for as many pilots as possible.

I wouldn't mind adding untypical aircrafts to the charter fleet and let pilots fly mission-oriented routes (i. e. bush / air taxi / training) if they like to under the umbrella of ACH charter - that wouldn't turn us into a flying club or air taxi service (would be the first with 773 and 744 in their fleet ).

Besides, I have a very good idea about why Anders requested to have a C172 - it's one of the most popular entry level models in FSEconomy. FSE pilots typically don't fly schedule-based, but mission-based (otherwise you'd lose a lot of money when flying an empty tubeliner), and the typical aircraft size used in FSE ranges from 4 to 20 seats (there are some bigger ones, but operating them gets really expensive and mostly doesn't pay off well...). So probably the question we have to ask is whether ACH and FSE match, or if there's a too big gap between both approaches (as far as I can judge, we don't have much FSE activity anymore, it's just perhaps a hand full of pilots).

But about the code base, isn't Christopher going to completely replace that anyway?

Indeed, he is, but that's not for next week (and also not the week after, I suppose).

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

I love flying the PMDG DC-6B

It's a beautiful plane, indeed. I personally love the BT-67 more and more. Especially because Manfred Jahn made such a good freeware for it. Although it's contemporary it's also not really realistic to add.

On the other hand we have the charter fleet for exactly this purpose - availing aircrafts to the community that would rather not be used in scheduled service, but are fun to fly.

I think charter was not made for this but has become more and more used for this purpose.

I wouldn't mind adding untypical aircrafts to the charter fleet and let pilots fly mission-oriented routes

Maybe we should make a separation; charter with realistic airline planes and "free flight" with all these other planes that everybody requests. And indeed just present the free flying pilot with an empty flightplan without fuel amounts, passengers or anything. This would also have the advantage of not having to include this in the future ticket economy.

The risk of any economic system is it might potentially drive away those pilots who chose ACH for not having an economic system in place and thus offering a quite relaxed policy towards what you can fly and when and where.

I don't think we should have an economics system that would limit pilots. Just something simple that says: "You flew x miles using x fuel with x passengers. You earned x Euros/credits/Simoleons whatever minus x maintenance costs." A bit like FSPassengers but not as realistic as FSE. Pilots who want that should just join FSE. I toyed with VA software in the past,

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I believe it was. It did something like that. I was a bit disappointed by it but I see they have been working on it in the meantime. Is this what Christopher is going to use or will he build something custom?(By the way, maybe I should tinker a bit with this new phpVMS version too :idea: ).

 

[Anders Kvamme Stemland]

Hello.
It was meant in the charter place of course as I like very much to fly GA on fse.
I see all your points juts thought it would be nice to actually select the correct aircraft instead of the smallest we have who is actually not so small

I'm okey with what you all decides

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

the smallest we have who is actually not so small

That's exactly my point; we don't have anything single-engine(do we?) so I think we should have the C172. Just 2-3 as trainers. I believe most airlines that do all the training from the ground up now use Cirrus. But because the C172 is default in a lot of flightsims I think it's a good choice as a trainer for us.