ZFW from a member

[joefremont]

Another member send me some PM's about ZFW, i suggested it be posted on the forum, but they have not yet so I am doing so here:

Hi Joe ...

I have always noticed that when we book a normal and / or now charter flight, the planes leave to MZFW.

If you load packages, then the normal initial load decreases to locate the packages. If you don't load packages, then the planes still go to MZFW.

While it is true that on normal flights / routes the allocation of passengers will depend on the value of the ticket, it is also true that on charters for airlines with a good reputation they also go to MZFW.

I don't know if that is already done or planned to be done, but if you allow me to give you a personal opinion in a constructive way, I think that the allocation of passengers and normal cargo + parcel should have a more dynamic approach.

In particular, I do flights of all kinds, long, short, passenger, cargo, general aviation, scheduled, charter, etc., and my flights are always at MZFW.

I don't know if this topic has already been dealt with previously in the fsa forum, but I was looking for information about it and I can't get it, so if so, I would appreciate if you could indicate the name of the topic or link to read, maybe it could be done a discussion and brainstorming about all this.

In advance, thank you for taking the time to read these lines.

This is really best as a forum topic rather than a private message.

Are you asking how to reduce the payload or just why does it always load up to MZFW?

At every airport is a pool of passengers and generic cargo waiting to go somewhere, every flight pulls from that and its recalculated daily. As long as there enough to fill the plane, the system does so (as long as your prices are not too high or your reputation too low)

Hello Joe

Sorry for the delay in answering you.

Yes, it really strikes me that the flights always go full. I understand everything you say about the price of tickets and reputation, but I think something is missing there, as they are short or long flights, high or low value, the same thing happens, because with the pax and their respective load they already put you at zfw and If you add packages then pay the initial payload to complement the weight with the packages and in the same way you would be zfw.

I think it would really be good to open a debate for brainstorming in the forum to see what result is obtained.

Once again, thank you for your attention .... Happy afternoon and good health to you and your family.

[joefremont]

I should restate the philosophy I used when trying to figure out how much payload to load. I have always tried to figure out how many passengers want to fly from place X to place Y at price Z on any given day. The size of your aircraft is not a factor, if 300 passengers want to fly that route at that price then your A320 will be full but your A380 will be half empty, and while the first A320 may be full the second may not. Also if you increase your price well fewer passengers will be willing so fewer will want to fly your flight. So if you start flying routes that are not that busy, there will probably be full all the time as there is a lot of pent up demand.

I would love to create a system for passengers where each passenger is a distinct thing in the database who wants to fly from point A to point B and is willing to pay X for it. Its sort of what we do with packages but packages are much easier, they don't make their own decisions, and we can create big packages to fill up the plane so we don't have to create so many of them and you can route them anyway you want, so if the package is going from KJFK to EGLL and you want to fly through RJTT (tokyo) it's not going to complain, but passengers decide for themselves which flights they want to go.

[Cat]

thinking outside of the box for a moment, would it be possible to add a "random dynamic load" to the aircraft seating chart tool?

Kind of like "spinning a wheel of fortune" to see what you get? (70-100%)

That would allow those who don't like to make money to have their fun while those who do still can fly full MZFW aircraft 100% of the time.

Conversely, there is nothing to stop anyone from having their own "dispatch deck of cards" with various loads on them ... then just change the limits in the seating tool before you book the flight. That would however require the pilot in question to have access permissions some airline managers would not want to give them.

We have worked hard for 8 years to get our reputation and full airplanes, I don't want some random generator taking that from our hard working pilots.

[joefremont]

I feel this is one of those situations where there is no solution that will make everyone happy. Up to now for every complaint of why is my aircraft always at ZFW, we get 50 for why is my aircraft NOT always at ZFW.

On thinking about it, we could introduce a 'nobody likes the middle seat' rule where the last 20-33% of passengers are less likely to buy a ticket, but if you look at many airlines where there is no assigned seating (southwest), but even when buying at ticket for southwest they have some number cheap seats, another block at a higher price and so on, but then there are also standby passengers waiting to get that last minute seat at cheap. It could get very complicated.

I always thought of Airline ticket pricing rules as a dark art, I know this is a bit of a tangent but this is what goes through my brain as I try to come up with solutions.

[Captain K-Man]

I still get lots of questions about why our planes are always MZFW. The general consensus is that is unrealistic. I am one that loves money myself! I think the problem is pilots like punching in the data in the FMCs and if its always the same numbers it gets dull for them. I always thought having the option for a VA to turn off generic cargo and only use the Package system would solve some of the complaints.

[Cat]

You can turn off the generic cargo by modifying your flight routes and aircraft loading configuration.

Copied from the "Route Cargo Limit" thread:

1) If the 'limit cargo' for the either the seat configuration or the routes is set to a value greater than zero then both packages and generic cargo will be limited by that amount.
2) If the 'limit cargo' value is set to zero it will prevent generic cargo but will not limit packages (that will be up to the pilot to decide). But if both seat configuration and route have a 'limit cargo' value set and one is zero and the other is not, the non zero value will limit the packages.
3) The 'limit cargo' value will only apply to generic cargo and packages, passenger baggage will no longer counted against that limit.

[AdySmith]

I think the problem is pilots like punching in the data in the FMCs and if its always the same numbers it gets dull for them.

There is a very simple answer to that one, fly older aircraft that don't have an FMC, make your pilots actually THINK about how to fly rather than - rotate, gear up, LNAV VNAV sit back and do nothing. That's not flying! (IMO)