Overlay or not?

[Guest sfgiants13]

I'm wondering. Is it better to have all traffic at once, or split it in half using overlays. I personally like a busy airport. So, should I go with using just one AFCAD instead of an overlay?

[Guest Joshieca]

You can achieve a busy airport with or without overlays. The question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to spend the extra time in setting up an overlay? You see, for each overlay airport, you have to not only install and split the airport using AFCAD, but then you need to split or add more flights to that airport's now second airport (the overlay) using traffic tools. This can get really tiring to do especially if you have more than two overlays for that same airport.Personally, I do not use them. But what I do to make the airport LOOK more active is to turn off one of the runways. You see if you have more than one runway you can turn off that runway for just takeoffs or landings. This way you have one runway for departures and one runway for landings, giving the appearance of an overlay, without the hassles of adding a new airport, etc. Just use AFCAD to turn off the LONGEST runway for landing only. The next time you use that airport, the sim's AI will use the longest runway for departures and use the second longest runway for landings.- Josh[div align=center][link:www.jetdoc.com/STO/]Visit The Bookstore & Gift Shoppe][/b

[tgibson 11]

While both methods work fine, it depends on the level of traffic you have created. If you don't have planes having to go around due to another aircraft already on the runway, and loooong lines of traffic waiting to take off, then the takeoff/arrival system is easiest and will work well. If you have overcrowding at the airport, an overlay will help that. I have enough traffic to have one overlay per parallel runway. This spreads out the arrivals and departures to two runways, and reduces go arounds. With AITM it's easy to move some of the traffc from the original airport to the overlay (I do it by airline). At airports with intersecting (not parallel) runways the overlay technique typically does not work as nicely.For large airports with 4 parallel runways, I combine both techniques - 2 overlays, each with a takeoff and landing runway.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

This is kind of a theoretical question, but someone with a lot of very-busy-airport experience may have some insight. Which will handle more traffic - a pair of parallel runways, each with its own overlay, or the same pair of runways on a single overlay allocated one for takeoffs and one for landings? My suspicion is that the takeoff/landing pair would work slightly better, but I'm not really sure. Any thoughts?

[KevinAu 441]

The single layer with a dedicated runway for takeoff and a dedicated runway for landing beats two layers with a runway each being used for both takeoffs and landings. This is because as long as there is traffic called on final, the atc will not clear an aircraft for takeoff. If you have a busy airport, with many arrivals and departures simultaneously, you will have zero departures during that period since both runways will be locked up for landings only. With one runway dedicated to takeoffs, you will be launching at a continuous rate of one plane every two minutes, while the other runway accepts arrivals.

[tgibson 11]

I agree with Kevin, it will hold the most traffic. However, I like the look of two landing/takeoff runways better than one of each - personal preference.--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___