are you a real world pilot?   Have you ever worked at a real air charter company?  Or have you ever had your own real world aviation company?

are you a real world pilot?   Have you ever worked at a real air charter company?  Or have you ever had your own real world aviation company?

 

Yes, Yes and No   :biggrin:

 

Cheers,

I also forgot to mention another factor you can add.

 

The total market for charter is usually stratified by aircraft category depending on location. (Piston Single, Piston Twin, Turboprop, Light Jet, Midsize Jet, Super-Midsize, Heavy Jet, Ultra Long Range Jet, VIP Airliner)

 

For example, in a small, rural town, the demand for charters on small piston aircraft (Cessna 172, 206, 310, 421 / Piper Seneca / Beech Baron etc)....would be greater than the market for Turboprops, Light Jets, Midsize, Heavy etc... This is due to the nature of the charters.....fishing trips....cottages....local businessmen etc.

 

In a larger city, the demand would be weighted more toward the jets. Some places have a mix of both because of local factors (e.g. Calgary is a major city, but is a huge jumping-off point for turboprop charters into the nearby oil patch)

 

The VIP Airliner category (BBJ, ACJ, Lineage) is something you only see a demand for in the major $$ hubs - Dubai, Moscow, Hong Kong, Beijing, Geneva, London, New York (less than you think). In Dubai and Moscow there is basically no demand for turboprops. It's mostly Heavy Exec Jets and some Mid/Lights.

 

DB

I've listed the types of flights one can do.. so yeah this makes sense for sure.

I would think most people sort of "fall into" a charter business.  They see a niche market and fill it.  They probably don't have  sales people.  They are mostly mom and pop like that show Flying Wild Alaska and the other one with single pilots.  They're on too much of a shoe string budget to have staff. 

 

Air Hauler does have different levels when you start like  easy and hard.

 

 

Size of Market - Total number of clients and total hours per year of flying available. This would proportionally affect everything below and would set the tone for the rest of the game (fleet size, aircraft types etc). Let's say the max market size is 40000 hours per year and 1000 potential clients**..... you could randomize the market size according to homebase location...so if you start in New York, you get 100% market size, but if you start in Lincoln, NE, you get 10% market size. 

 

this is the beauty of the buckets of dice method.. so the person say in NY get 50 dice lets say and the person in Lincoln might only get 5... so now rolling 6's on these even things out..Now it doesn't seem fair to me that the person on NY that gets 50 dice pays the same "entry fee" if you will than the person in Lincoln... what is the motivation to choose Lincoln over NY..  to me it would be cost.. wouldn't it cost more to "setup shop" so to speak in NY vs Lincoln?  otherwise every player will just choose NY over Lincoln.. there is no reason to choose on over the other, see?  Now, I feel I have to introduce a "game mechanism" to stop players from choosing NY.. that is why I came up with the "advertising fee" (used very broadly here)... basically you pay to play. this works out well in game format.. but how does this work in the real world?  Certainly a company starting in NY would have a lot more expense than that in Lincoln yes?

 

 

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I would think most people sort of "fall into" a charter business.  They see a niche market and fill it.  They probably don't have  sales people.  They are mostly mom and pop like that show Flying Wild Alaska and the other one with single pilots.  They're on too much of a shoe string budget to have staff. 

 

Air Hauler does have different levels when you start like  easy and hard.

 

 

yeah... exactly.. I was thinking small like this.. now brings up an interesting tidbit.. I think maybe I'm designing this from the wrong end of things.. I started out with this as a means to allow me to pick the area/airports I wanted to serve and then generating traffic/markets from there. (This is just an excuse to fly in the FTX/ORBX scenery areas, etc. I fly nothing but payware a/c and scenery).. but to keep things more realistic I guess I should have a niche market generator and then let players fill that.. not as fun.. because I then may not get to fly where I want to.. However this is a game.. and there will have to be made some decisions that do keep it fun vs realism.

 

What I want is basically very simple.. the choice to:

borrow money or not and play out the consequences.

raise lower the prices of my aircraft and have that effect the market.

hire/fire ai pilots to help me fly the flights.

be able to build an FBO, hangers, maintenance shop, flying school, etc and see how that effects it.

buy airplanes out right and/or lease them instead.

be able to change/upgrade the interior/exterior of my plane (new paint job/ new interior seats etc) and have that effect the market.

my pilot skill and reputation of the company/saftey record etc.. effect the market.

Wow! This sounds very interesting, Brian. Have you considered making your charter "game" available to everyone? I'd be willing to pay for it.

I would think most people sort of "fall into" a charter business.  They see a niche market and fill it.  They probably don't have  sales people.  They are mostly mom and pop like that show Flying Wild Alaska and the other one with single pilots.  They're on too much of a shoe string budget to have staff. 

 

Air Hauler does have different levels when you start like  easy and hard.

 

 

Unless you're the only game in town, not having sales people/account managers (or someone in that role) is a really bad idea. Even at a mom and pop outfit, someone is building and maintaining relationships with their clients. Even if the owner, pilot, maintenance guy and account manager are all the same person.

 

Operators like the ones in Flying Wild Alaska and Ice Pilots are well known outfits in small communities and have been around forever. Even then...they have someone who's role is client facing....for quoting...paperwork etc.....managing those accounts is part of that as well. That bit never makes the final TV cut though.

 

Once you move beyond the mom and pop outfit....if you're a pure charter operation, then having someone responsible for sales is essential to grow the business. Again, it doesn't have to be a dedicated role but moving into larger, more mature markets, the competition can be brutal, so just sitting around waiting for business to come to you is a bad idea. This person can still be one of the owners, pilots, or a high-level manager...typically at the turboprop / light jet level with a couple aircraft in the fleet.

 

Moving up into the larger jets and fleet sizes (> 2-3 jets) is a whole different ballgame. Companies have teams dedicated to maintaining client relationships and generating new business.....this includes charter as well as aircraft owners (for aircraft management contracts). Once you get to a company the size of Net Jets or VistaJet, their sales and account management teams can be massive (in comparison to the rest of the market).

 

DB

this is the beauty of the buckets of dice method.. so the person say in NY get 50 dice lets say and the person in Lincoln might only get 5... so now rolling 6's on these even things out..Now it doesn't seem fair to me that the person on NY that gets 50 dice pays the same "entry fee" if you will than the person in Lincoln... what is the motivation to choose Lincoln over NY.. to me it would be cost.. wouldn't it cost more to "setup shop" so to speak in NY vs Lincoln? otherwise every player will just choose NY over Lincoln.. there is no reason to choose on over the other, see? Now, I feel I have to introduce a "game mechanism" to stop players from choosing NY.. that is why I came up with the "advertising fee" (used very broadly here)... basically you pay to play. this works out well in game format.. but how does this work in the real world? Certainly a company starting in NY would have a lot more expense than that in Lincoln yes?

 

 

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yeah... exactly.. I was thinking small like this.. now brings up an interesting tidbit.. I think maybe I'm designing this from the wrong end of things.. I started out with this as a means to allow me to pick the area/airports I wanted to serve and then generating traffic/markets from there. (This is just an excuse to fly in the FTX/ORBX scenery areas, etc. I fly nothing but payware a/c and scenery).. but to keep things more realistic I guess I should have a niche market generator and then let players fill that.. not as fun.. because I then may not get to fly where I want to.. However this is a game.. and there will have to be made some decisions that do keep it fun vs realism.

 

What I want is basically very simple.. the choice to:

borrow money or not and play out the consequences.

raise lower the prices of my aircraft and have that effect the market.

hire/fire ai pilots to help me fly the flights.

be able to build an FBO, hangers, maintenance shop, flying school, etc and see how that effects it.

buy airplanes out right and/or lease them instead.

be able to change/upgrade the interior/exterior of my plane (new paint job/ new interior seats etc) and have that effect the market.

my pilot skill and reputation of the company/saftey record etc.. effect the market.

The barriers to entry in NYC would be the fact that it's a mature market. Tons of well established players, clients that are happy where they are and difficult to sway....... And you're coming in there with no reputation and no established clients.

 

I have a bunch of ideas for what you're thinking of, but I'll get to those in a bit.

 

DB

 

 

yeah... exactly.. I was thinking small like this.. now brings up an interesting tidbit.. I think maybe I'm designing this from the wrong end of things.. I started out with this as a means to allow me to pick the area/airports I wanted to serve and then generating traffic/markets from there. (This is just an excuse to fly in the FTX/ORBX scenery areas, etc. I fly nothing but payware a/c and scenery).. but to keep things more realistic I guess I should have a niche market generator and then let players fill that.. not as fun.. because I then may not get to fly where I want to.. However this is a game.. and there will have to be made some decisions that do keep it fun vs realism.



What I want is basically very simple.. the choice to:

borrow money or not and play out the consequences.

raise lower the prices of my aircraft and have that effect the market.

hire/fire ai pilots to help me fly the flights.

be able to build an FBO, hangers, maintenance shop, flying school, etc and see how that effects it.

buy airplanes out right and/or lease them instead.

be able to change/upgrade the interior/exterior of my plane (new paint job/ new interior seats etc) and have that effect the market.

my pilot skill and reputation of the company/saftey record etc.. effect the market.

 

 

Things are a bit simpler for a smaller operation like this. In real life their success is more dependent on timing and local economic factors.... and even weather. A VFR only operation can take a serious hit if the weather is really crappy one summer.

 

I see it being really fun to try to keep everything in the black on a shoestring budget (in the game at least). Decisions made early in the game about financing and budgets would really affect the way you have to play later on.

 

Just an idea, but why not have (based on location) a bunch of jobs posted that need to be bid on..... (pax, route, baggage, departure time, arrive by time) for local companies. The number of jobs available could be a function of the market size (if you want to factor that in). Initially, if you started with a small Cessna 172 or 206, you wouldn't be able to bid on many of the jobs, but you could still win a few of the smaller ones. These could keep you afloat if you're smart with the money and start growing steadily.

 

Conversely, if you started with a larger aircraft (and had to take out a loan) you could bid on some of the more lucrative (more pax, longer routes etc) contracts, but would have to deal with much higher fixed costs (financing, wayyy higher maintenance, crew expenses...big plane problems etc) .... So there would be a challenge either way.

 

You would have to set your pricing (and can get as detailed with that as you like), to compete with other outfits (whose rates are set in the background... Or you can use a randomiser as to whether you win or not.... weighted according to various factors (pricing, reputation, game difficulty etc.)

 

The difficulty level could just be tied to the local economic climate. Harder = less work to bid on,  more competition and more aggressive pricing by your competitors. For fun you could fluctuate any of the above three variables to simulate changes and trends in actual conditions month by month (within the set difficulty level)

 

 

 

Sales and marketing for a small operation is different (obviously). They're more dependent on reputation and word of mouth, so the longer you're around, the more regular business you'd get. A higher reputation could score you some regular clients (that you don't have to bid for) and can provide steady flights and income to help keep you in the black.

 

Reputation could affect the likelihood of you winning business (it's not always the cheapest price that wins it...though it's always quite heavily weighted toward price).

 

You could build a multiplier for reputation based on different factors that all add up (number of years in business, number of incidents/accidents, age of planes, skill of pilots...related to pay levels, condition of aircraft interiors etc).

 

Later in the game, you would be able to afford to allocate money to sales/marketing. This could start making it easier to win contracts, pull in regular clients, keep the ones you do have and get better business.

 

How's that sound?

 

DB

There is a saying...."If you ever want to be a millionaire, then become a billionaire and then start an airline..."

 

If what you are working on is extremely difficult to turn profits then it would be very realistic, sounds like fun 

whew!  really good stuff to chew on for sure... where do I start.

 

 

well, getting back to my original idea, of an overall "advertising fee" for every airport you want to service.. Would be a simplified way to handle, sales force, marketing, hitting the streets yourself, cold calling, etc etc..   My fear is since this is not a computerized game at this time.. each player will have to micro manage each little fiddly bit.. and the more fiddly bits you put in the more (I'm afraid) frustrating it will become.. 

 

there is just a lot of good stuff/thoughts/ideas for me to chew on for quite a while...

 

To the gentleman who offered to pay for the game.. first off, thank you, that makes my day.. I have thought about going commercial with this, but I don't think I can charge for it since it isn't computerized and automatic and it does require quite a bit of "manual labor" on the players part.. yes I used a spreadsheet but still.. lots to do.  At this time I won't be charging for it, however I will put up my paypal info so people can make a donation if they wish to.

 

I think what I might/should do at this time is to go over and start rewriting the rules.. I already want to do this differently already.  I think I might put up a blog and maybe work on it and keep that updated as to where I'm at and people can follow me over there and leave comments etc.. then I could keep people informed of my progress and it would help me be a bit more accountable and more motivated to keep at it and to finish it.. Now with that being said there will be many improvements and revisions over time.. I will probably write it pretty much as I envisioned and then maybe let a few go out or let people sign up for beta testing it and just playing it out a bit.. I mean for that mater you don't have to actually fly the actual flight on flightsim if you really don't want to you could just play the whole thing out on paper if you want.  It is designed to get you flying more and give you a real purpose to fly and try to make a virtual living.

 

Then those beta testers could write back with improvements, etc..and I could go from there..

 

The ultimate dream of course would be to take it to a commercial level, but then I would need a coder and set it up like FSEconomy (web based and a front end client)

 

I guess I got my new years project all figured out.. the good news is, I have a great wife who goes out and does the 9-5 job, I work at home, I'm an abstract artist and so I can easily work on this when the paint is drying! so... I guess then I better get to work!

 

http://myfltsimcompany.blogspot.com/

I'm in.

 

Let me know if there's anything you need help with. I'm never short on ideas and can usually find ways to make concepts work (I really enjoy the problem solving aspect)

 

Cheers,

DB

well thanks.. I'm sure I'll be contacting you for stuff.. 

If there anything in an help you with, let me know. I think you have a great idea here, even in spreadsheet form. If you ever get to the point of creating a manual, I can help you with editing (I've been a copy editor and peer reviewer for a couple of scholarly journals).