Airline Mogul Forum

Airports available by date?

Commercial Air Services

  • Airline Operative
  • *
    • Posts: 52
    • View Profile
on: October 24, 2012, 12:56:00 am
This is something I stumbled upon researching destinations on the internet. I often do, simply because there are many airports in game that, although they offer a certain amount of passengers according to game data, would never in real life warrant any sort of scheduled service, or in some cases they would, but only from certain destinations either due to location or some other factor like demographics.

It was doing this that I stumbled upon the dates many of these airports were first opened or since closed. Good examples are for instance O.R. Tambo international airport in Johannesburg South Africa, that was first founded in 1952. Before its founding another airport called Palmiet Fontein was used. Another would be Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport in Egypt, that was only founded in 1968 as an air force base with added civilian access to serve a small settlement nearby that only recently became a major tourist attraction. Or in cases like that of Borg el Arab airport also in Egypt, which only became one used regularly by airlines in more recent years due the closure of Alexandria International Airport due to a re-development program that will take two years apparently. Yet in game one is still able to fly to these and other closed airports. Some of which have been closed until further notice even though they still exist like Agostinho Neto airport in Cape Verde.

I'm sure the above hints strongly towards my suggestion. I was wondering if it could ever be possible to implement a system that would see airports become available and , if applicable, unavailable later much the same way that the current aircraft system works where aircraft are designed, released & later retired and cannot be bought any more. This is of course very applicable to airlines like mine that operate in earlier years that have the option to fly to airports that has not even been founded yet or are forced to operate from them because the airport that actually exist at that time is not available. For airlines operating in recent years its only really applicable when operating to and from airports that are closed for whatever reason or have been replaced by another very close by. Not to mention only applicable to people that care about little details like that.

Now on the same note I was wondering, not knowing if this is actually fluctuating airports as I've never played a world with that enabled, if it would ever be possible to have airport passenger numbers correspond to the date. This would be particularly applicable to airports like Sharm el-Sheikh, even more so Dubai International, that now serve major operations that in the past were nothing but small regional or local airports. If what I'm talking about here is the fluctuating airports feature then please ignore this last suggestion.


dktc

  • Administrator
  • Airline Board Member
  • *****
    • Posts: 4622
    • View Profile
Reply #1 on: December 11, 2012, 01:50:15 pm
This is a suggestion that we have discussed among staff members before, and really haven't totally discounted it. The main hurdles are...
- Getting the year data as the traffic changes
- Implementing the switch of airport codes (and how they reflect on the maps)
- Researching all the opening and closing dates
- Possibility of transferring routes to a replacement airport, without the needs to recreate all the routes (and what is the criteria behind this...)

The other thing is of course that such a database would be of high value. Some consultants are selling these types of data and we really don't want to spend all the efforts just to be stolen (or worse.... "borrowed" for other similar games...)
D Express (id 616) 8)
AM Membership Officer / Official Broker


 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk