Early Aircraft Orders

[Fitch93]

 Not sure if it's been suggested yet, probably has, but here goes.

 How about the ability to order new aircraft early. As in before they're introduction into the Market.

 This is how it's done in the real world. Boeing nor Airbus wait until the Aircraft is ready to be delivered before taking orders. I'm not talking crazy early times, maybe at the beginning of December we can begin placing orders for aircraft introduced in the next year. or Maybe even December 16 or 17. i.e. the Week before the year change.

 Just a thought.

[StephenM]

It has always been something I have been tempted by. And the implementation I would do is the year of entry - time to deliver an aircraft. So for a smaller aircraft you can order from 1 Dec of the previous year allow deliveries to arrive on 1 Jan. Same for an A320 which takes two months, so it would be available for order on 1 Nov of the previous year. I never sat down to see how difficult it would be for me to amend the code to allow that, I must do that in the near future.

[Calebrw]

That would be sweet! Please do so!

[aeroglobe]

I would like to make a suggestion about aircraft orders and I feel this is the right place to do so (as opposed to opening a new post).

I think it would be nice to have a "Launch Customer" feature.  Here's what I would suggest:
Under "Aircraft">"View Latest Aircraft">"View Aircraft From Next Year" there should be a button that says something to the extent of "Become Launch Customer" (very similar to the "Buy" option on the "View Aircraft From Current Year" screen). This should probably lead to a screen where you would pay a certain amount of money to the a/c manufacturer, and this amount should probably vary with every a/c. After paying said amount, the reward should be having exclusivity on the a/c for six months or so.  During these six months (first 6 of production) only you can buy this aircraft.  After 6 months it's on the open market.  Maybe another perk could be that you have a 10% discount on the airliner for the first six months.

Okay so I know that I went in to great detail, so here's an example of how it would happen:
Let's say I'm playing in January 1983, I head over to the "Aircraft">"View Latest Aircraft">"View Aircraft From Next Year" section and see that the Boeing 737-300 is being launched in 1984.  I click on "Become Launch Customer" and pay €61,809,789 (Price of one a/c) for the rights to become the launch customer. From January through June 1984, only I can order the a/c and it would be for €55,628,811 (10% discount). After it's on the open market (July 84-) I would pay €61,809,789 as would everyone else.

This can be enhanced even more by being able to sell the rights to become the Launch Customer to another airline.

Anyways, I hope this is something that might be taken under consideration, and ofcourse the numbers shown here are just examples and any variation of this idea would be welcomed as well.

Thanks for your time,

Ben