Unused gates at LAX

[MustangPauli]

Happy New Year to everyone!

 

There are two gates at LAX which do not seem to be active in the sim. One is along the right side (when facing the 24s from the tower) of Terminal 3 and the second is along the right side (when facing the 25s from the tower) of Terminal 7. I ran a session starting at 05:00 and finished shortly before 08:00 and neither gate was used despite getting tons of "no free terminal" errors. See the attached screenshots and log.

I feel like the no free terminal dilemma is a lot more noticeable at LAX than the other airports. I'm sure I'm stating the obvious but it would be nice if the sim could read the schedules and use incoming aircraft for outgoing flights instead of pre-populating aircraft for the outgoing flights. I think that would be one of my top requests for a future version of the sim.

 

output_log.txt

[crbascott]

2 hours ago, MustangPauli said:

There are two gates at LAX which do not seem to be active in the sim. One is along the right side (when facing the 24s from the tower) of Terminal 3 and the second is along the right side (when facing the 25s from the tower) of Terminal 7. I ran a session starting at 05:00 and finished shortly before 08:00 and neither gate was used despite getting tons of "no free terminal" errors. See the attached screenshots and log.

I feel like the no free terminal dilemma is a lot more noticeable at LAX than the other airports. I'm sure I'm stating the obvious but it would be nice if the sim could read the schedules and use incoming aircraft for outgoing flights instead of pre-populating aircraft for the outgoing flights. I think that would be one of my top requests for a future version of the sim.

I believe there are gate settings that limit the size of aircraft that can park there. If there are pushback issues at a gate, FeelThere has mentioned they will use these settings. These gates could be set to where they are only usable by props. 

"it would be nice if the sim could read the schedules and use incoming aircraft for outgoing flights"

The sim already does this. If you look at your log you'll see the following entries (fyi - there are many more than this) where this takes place.

Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: CPZ5975 - 06:08:00    outgoing: CPZ5918 - 07:15:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL298 - 05:49:00    outgoing: AAL118 - 07:13:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL14 - 05:51:00    outgoing: AAL2453 - 07:11:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL182 - 13:14:00    outgoing: AAL215 - 21:41:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: VIR7 - 14:07:00    outgoing: VIR24 - 21:06:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: LAN600 - 12:29:00    outgoing: LAN601 - 16:13:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: JAL60 - 11:30:00    outgoing: JAL69 - 13:58:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AMX19 - 11:28:00    outgoing: AMX647 - 13:50:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: ACA791 - 10:44:00    outgoing: ACA792 - 12:31:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: UAL1281 - 05:02:00    outgoing: UAL1802 - 07:03:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: UAL1706 - 04:54:00    outgoing: UAL407 - 06:14:00

However, it does look like there could be an issue with FeelThere's logic. I though the sim was optimized for 6 hours of flights. So, for example, using the plane from AAL182 for a flight occurring 8 hours later (AAL215) doesn't seem to follow the stated optimization  There are several other example of this, although I'm not sure how this impacts the "no free terminal" conundrum.  

 

[MustangPauli]

8 hours ago, crbascott said:

I believe there are gate settings that limit the size of aircraft that can park there. If there are pushback issues at a gate, FeelThere has mentioned they will use these settings. These gates could be set to where they are only usable by props. 

"it would be nice if the sim could read the schedules and use incoming aircraft for outgoing flights"

The sim already does this. If you look at your log you'll see the following entries (fyi - there are many more than this) where this takes place.

Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: CPZ5975 - 06:08:00    outgoing: CPZ5918 - 07:15:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL298 - 05:49:00    outgoing: AAL118 - 07:13:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL14 - 05:51:00    outgoing: AAL2453 - 07:11:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AAL182 - 13:14:00    outgoing: AAL215 - 21:41:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: VIR7 - 14:07:00    outgoing: VIR24 - 21:06:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: LAN600 - 12:29:00    outgoing: LAN601 - 16:13:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: JAL60 - 11:30:00    outgoing: JAL69 - 13:58:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: AMX19 - 11:28:00    outgoing: AMX647 - 13:50:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: ACA791 - 10:44:00    outgoing: ACA792 - 12:31:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: UAL1281 - 05:02:00    outgoing: UAL1802 - 07:03:00
Restarter airplanes /   parent incoming: UAL1706 - 04:54:00    outgoing: UAL407 - 06:14:00

However, it does look like there could be an issue with FeelThere's logic. I though the sim was optimized for 6 hours of flights. So, for example, using the plane from AAL182 for a flight occurring 8 hours later (AAL215) doesn't seem to follow the stated optimization  There are several other example of this, although I'm not sure how this impacts the "no free terminal" conundrum.  

 

Scott,

Thanks for the info, that makes sense. And as for the outbound flight logic, I should clarify that I meant the initial loading of a session; when a session is started just about every gate is already occupied which of course throws off the rest of the gate usage for the duration of the session.

[crbascott]

3 hours ago, MustangPauli said:

Scott,

Thanks for the info, that makes sense. And as for the outbound flight logic, I should clarify that I meant the initial loading of a session; when a session is started just about every gate is already occupied which of course throws off the rest of the gate usage for the duration of the session.

That's why I like to play using "snippets" of a schedule versus using a full schedule - no matter if it is the RT schedule or a custom schedule. Assuming you are only interested in playing for an hour or two, It reduces the no free terminal issue by not having to load 6 hours of flights. The airport can sometimes look a little empty, but the flight volume definitely increases. 

I'm attaching a snippet example of the JFK schedule that includes only 3 hours - 17:00, 18:00, and 19:00. The table below shows the results when starting the sim at 18:00. Before SP3 the difference was greater, but even with the latest version gate availability issues still rears its ugly head.  

 

kjfk_schedule_18.txt

[Pedantic G]

Scott,

I presume when you say "snippet" you mean create a new schedule file covering  2 or 3 hours that you want to play and loading this into the Airport file you are playing?  If so, think this is a great idea as I tend to play for 2 to 3 hours at a time so this would be great and presumably as you state there are a lot more empty gates at the start and therefore stop the "no free terminal" issues apart from the know KLAS Terminal E issue?

This would stop the issue of only mainly departures vs arrivals that all the current airports get if loading the full schedule?

G

[crbascott]

Yep, I've been doing this since Tower!2011 came out. Starting with the full real traffic or custom schedule, I'll extract a few hours out and create a new file. Works like a charm.