Request for additional sanctioned flights

Chili,

I'm aware of the "need" for Cat V and VI Econ flights. I built the "econ engine" used to calculate revenue and cost for each of the existing flights based on a number of input parameters, including, particularly, the weight (GTOW) of the aircraft used. I did this work over several months during early 2018. I have a 4" notebook filled with the working notes for this project. I thought at the time ..."I really ought to annotate these pages with an explanation of my thinking and a clear definition of the form of these expressions finally used in John's code for the site.". Did I do that? The question answers itself. I do remember that my analytic (i.e. mathematical) expressions for the cost had problems, both at high GTOW and at very low GTOW. I did some tweaking for very low GTOW and let it go at that. Developing expressions for higher GTOW aircraft will be problematic, both because I will have to do a lot of trial and error work to find an analytic form which seems to work well for the heavies, and because I will need to connect this new expression smoothly onto the expressions I used for the medium weight aircraft.. I suspect it will take some time just to understand what I did almost five years ago, much less extend it to the larger aircraft.

So we would appear to have about five pilots who are using our current econ feature. I have no idea how many of these would be interested in an extension of the existing model. As always, pilots can use this forum to express their interest in this, or other unique features (e.g. 387th Bomb Group) of our site.

Mike

While it's likely that only a handful of pilots fly the official Econ mode flights, it appears that the majority of pilots fly regular flights with Econ Mode set on SPAACARS - or at least with the landing rate option checked.  I'm one who regularly flies with Econ Mode checked to enjoy the flight critiques that SPAACARS gives at the end of Econ mode flights and the added reality or excitement knowing that my flight is recorded upon landing.  A hard landing or a crash is recorded as is too much shaking passengers around during the flight - all having impact on the flight critique, even if the financials aren't being tallied like they are on the Official Econ Flight Page.  Even so, I do like to see a profit on my flights, even if the larger aircraft seem to exaggerate the profit and loss ratios.  So, I guess I enjoy the whole Econ Flight Mode additions, even if the larger aircraft financials are inaccurate.  

The current issues with Econ Mode really have nothing to do with adding additional scheduled flights to the MIA, MSP or EGL hubs, which was the original topic of this thread.  As I indicated, I can give any pilot an Excel Template to add new flight offerings to a hub schedule and add them to the current schedule.  I would like to have this done through, or at least have any changes to a hub schedule approved by the Hub Manager.

As for the later posts on this thread related to the official Econ Flights on the MSP hub on the Official Econ Hub page, the issues I and Mike described is why the official MSP Econ Flight page (different than the standard MSP schedule) only includes the lower weight class flights that Mike developed for the regular MSP schedule.  Basically, I just copied Mike's lower weight class schedule offerings and added them to the MSP Official Econ Flight page.  For those unfamiliar with the Econ Mode flights, they are split into separate "hubs" that are different than the assigned hubs and schedules of our regular flight offerings.  Each Econ hub has a different style of flight offering.  The Econ MSP hub offers continually changing flight offerings with required pax and cargo requirements and a running income total of all pilot's flying flights on the Econ MSP hub.

I would prefer any additions to the MSP Econ Hub be approved through Mike before adding them to the MSP Econ Hub schedule.

John

Chili,

Thanks for the offer of help with the heaver aircraft. It seems there are two possibilities here: (1) Do a separate, original development for heavier A/C and try to adjust it so it matches the existing model at the overlap weight, or (2) Recreate the original model and adjust its parameters to make it produce more realistic cost numbers for bigger A/C, perhaps by using MTOW dependent model parameters. The first approach would require a brand new development from scratch. The second would require that I resurrect the logic of my model, so that it can be modified. If I were doing it, I would take the second approach because I'm not sure I can think of a totally different way to approach the problem.

Mike