Econ Page

More
8 years 9 months ago #13090 by jer029
Econ Page was created by jer029
Pilots,

I'm pleased to announce that I've begun working on the new Economic page for SPA.

Some of the basics answers thus far:

Do I have to play?
No - like most things here at SPA, you can opt in if you want.

What do I need to play?
You must be able to use our SPAACAR's program. This means that FSX and perhaps P3d will be the only simulators that are currently supported (as these are the only sims I own and can test and fix things on .

What does this Econ thing do?
Well, it's basically an economic module attached to our regular flights here at SPA. Hopefully it will allow you to work on getting fuel and passenger/cargo balanced correctly so that your flights are profitable. It will track various things that we can take into account and tweak to make our flights even more interesting (if you want to).

Not sure how all this will work yet, but here is my first test data to show you some of the factors considered:

Total Revenue: 1369.71
Fuel Cost: 11.29
Crew Cost: 70.00
Maint Parts Cost: 218.17
Maint Labor Cost: 589.87
Landing Fees Cost: 31.56
Traffic Cost: 44.13
Communication Cost: 15.80
Direct Costs: 819.33
Gate Costs: 0.00
Advertising Costs: 4.63
Reservations Costs: 0.00
Administrative Costs: 67.19
Amortization Costs: 53.97
Food Costs: 0.00
Misc Passenger Costs: 0.00
Misc Transport Costs: 125.69
Indirect Costs: 526.56
Total Costs: 1345.89
Total Profit/(Loss): 23.82

This shows the data fields I'm working with and it's based on my last flight today PF20 to KXA in the DHC-2 (Beaver). Since this was a postal flight (cargo flight) the passenger costs are zero. Also, my plane was fully loaded with fuel and very short - so in reality this flight should have probably shown a loss in revenue rather than a profit, but I'm still tweaking calculations to work for cargo, as the original code was created for passenger flights. I'm adapting it to work with both types of flights.

I intend to display the econ data on a separate page here at SPA in such a way that pilots can compare their 'company finances' with other pilots.

I'm still in the early stages of updating SPAACARS and changing the SPA databases to accommodate this new feature.

I'll update you as I go.

John

<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Mar 28, 2016 - 04:34 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

John Rogers
Webmaster

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
8 years 9 months ago #13094 by jer029
Replied by jer029 on topic Econ Page
Thanks Yoland, but it's really only an enhancement of the routes you and Mike work so hard to create.

John Rogers
Webmaster

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
8 years 9 months ago #13098 by jer029
Replied by jer029 on topic Econ Page
Yes Steve, it will be. That's the easy part. The difficult part is figuring out a corresponding penalty for carrying too much fuel for the flight - which increases cost. This might be offset enough by the way it limits the amount of passenger/cargo you can carry before exceeding takeoff limits, thus diminishing your profit for passenger/cargo revenue, but I'm not sure that will be adequate.

I'm hoping I can tweak it so that improper flight planning will cost revenue ie. too much fuel, also hard landing will result in repair penalties - and perhaps a certain landing rate will be treated as a "crash" with a severe penalty.

Then there's the interesting issue I've noted on some of the postal flights. I believe there are a string of destinations that all have no fuel available. When I was flying along using non-gps nav skills (which took more fuel...sometimes lots more), I found myself with insufficient fuel to reach my next official destination. To keep it real I would land at the nearest airport with fuel. Somehow I need SPAACARS to recognize intermediate stops and communicate necessary econ data related to this.

Even assuming there is enough fuel to get to each stop before fuel is available, I have to figure out how to account for the intermediate stops that will show as a completed flight with negative revenue because you're carrying lots of fuel and only flew a short distance (ie my first test flight).

So...as you can see, this will likely be a work in progress with many tweaks along the way to get it the best it can be.

Also I've noticed that if you happen to park your aircraft too close to the fueling area it will refuel automatically, and then when you stop your flight in SPAACARS it reads the end fuel as a full tank! This results in a negative fuel-burned number. I'll have to fix that as well.

John Rogers
Webmaster

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
8 years 9 months ago #13100 by Westcoast
Replied by Westcoast on topic Econ Page
Interesting stuff John. You touch on one point that has occurred to me. Several times I've had to divert from my originally planned destination to an intermediate alternate because of weather, fuel or equipment issues (some Alaska strips are only compatible with a parachute or a hang glider). My approach has been to log the flight with the original flight number and to fly the second leg later with a modified flight number. SPAACARS does not detect that I've landed at a destination other than the one specified in the flight plan. So, it seems to me that one of the first things we need is for SPAACARS to have the ability to detect an interrupted flight, with the capacity to recognize a later continuation.

Mike

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
8 years 9 months ago #13101 by jer029
Replied by jer029 on topic Econ Page
Not sure if this helps Mike, but SPAACARS was designed to 'not recognize' intermediate airport stops provided you don't apply your parking brake. The parking brake signifies the end of the flight block - although I think it will still let you fly even then. I think the only thing that ends the SPAACARs flight is when you click the Stop Logging button.

Again, the problem arises when fuel is added in the middle of the flight - this SPAACARS doesn't yet know how to handle, so a refuel in the middle of a flight (before the 'stop logging' button is pushed) will screw up the fuel burn data.

In summary, I believe you can fly your plane from point A to point B, take off again and fly to final destination C without SPAACARS caring. The issues with this will be an incorrect fuel burn rate if you refuel at point B, and your flight plan will only show your flight from point A to point C if that was your original flight plan. You can, however include Point B in the 'route' section.

I believe I've been using this method successfully, ignoring the faulty burn rate data for now, but that will be a problem using the econ thing and must be fixed.

The only need to stop logging in SPAACARS is to record the flight to SPA website.

Does this give you a workable option, or am I still missing something?

John

John Rogers
Webmaster

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
8 years 9 months ago #13103 by jer029
Replied by jer029 on topic Econ Page
Correct Steve, the alternate airport field in SPAACARS does nothing (nor does it in any of our other ACARS programs). We currently don't record an alternate airport field in our database at SPA.

We do record route, and with SPAACARS, if you do decide to end your flight at an alternate, I believe SPAACARS will allow you to change the Dest field before you send it to the SPA website, and your alternate will be recorded as your destination in the database.

John

John

John Rogers
Webmaster

Please Log in to join the conversation.

Time to create page: 0.098 seconds
Powered by Kunena Forum