Econ 2018 is Live

After a couple of months of development work, we are happy to announce that the Econ 2018 Module has gone live. You will find a link to the new Econ 2018 page in the menu on the left of our home page. The new module is based, at least in spirit, on real world data for the costs and revenue of commercial aviation. It will present you with a series of flight assignments, including passenger and cargo loads, and let you determine how to fulfill these assignments in the most economical way. To use the new module, you will need to download the latest version of SPAACARS, version 10.5 and check the Economics option in the Options Menu. You will certainly want to read the instructions available from the Econ 2018 page and try several test flights using the Econ Practice Flights link before you begin. Happy Flying!

Mike Daugherty
MSP Hub Manager

John Rogers
SPA Webmaster

My thanks to Mike for helping take this econ project to the 'next level' by working on an improved cost/revenue formula to add additional realism to the latest Econ project.

Due to the significant changes in the latest model, the old Cargo-Econ page has been 'closed' for additional improvement. The older 3 flight groups will still be available for pilots to fly under the old model that only applied penalties against a $1000 revenue base.

Regardless, pilots must update their version of SPAACARS to version 10.5 (available for downloading and install as previous versions) if they wish to have any econ function - even in the practice page and accessible from the "Daily Flights" area on the main SPA home page. Using SPAACARS 10.5 you should be able to set econ mode on any flights and see the results on the Econ Practice Flights link on the Main Menu under Economics.

I strongly agree with Mike that pilots make several practice flights prior to an actual econ flight to see how their flight planning is evaluated under the new model. One thing I've noticed is that it seems better to fly with a bit extra fuel rather than get hit with fuel penalties. My few practice flights are showing on the Econ Practice page and I'll be trying at least one more before I try an actual flight. As with the past model - your first official flight is the one that counts for that flight number, and while you can make additional flights and get hourly credits for them in your logbook, they will not show on the official econ page - only that first flight of a given flight number.

Lastly, on the new Econ Page, when you're logged into the SPA site, you can click a link to create or edit your 'regional airline' name. This will be the name that appears on your official Regional Flight Activity. If you leave this option blank, then it defaults to your pilot name as has been displayed in the past.

We're hoping that this Econ-2018 project continues to add new and exciting challenges for our SPA pilots.

John

Jim,

Indirectly aircraft takeoff weight is considered because cargo, passenger and fuel are significant factors, but the Max Takeoff Weight of the aircraft a determinate factor, as Mike indicated in the instructions, ie. the larger the aircraft - the more it will cost you to fly. Thus, if you take a large aircraft and under-utilize it's capacity, you'll likely suffer a loss of net income for the flight.

Bill, I don't think so, which is too bad, because I also have used GSX (at least when I was using FSX - haven't looked for the p3d v4 version yet). I would have to set an alternate method of starting the 'safety message' audio - which could be done in future release. It's the same with some payware aircraft like the Aerosoft CRJ700 I think. The landing lights are configured outside of the standard simulator settings so they don't trip the audio "prepare for takeoff/landing". Again - may have to come up with an alternate for such things.

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Mar 13, 2018 - 05:20 PM</em><!-- end editby -->