Automated Pilots: Limited Beta

[joefremont]

Quick Question: With "local timezones" in play in VA settings, are all the arv/dep times local to the VA home hub or do we need to do the math and figure in time zone changes from say New York to Los Angeles?

I have a few flights that skip back and forth between EST and CST so just curious.

I am glad you asked. I added a value to your airline settings for "Schedule timezones" which can have the value of 'UTC' or 'Local'. If UTC it interprets all times on schedules as UTC time, if 'Local' it uses the timezone field on the airport to interpret it.

[Cat]

Cool. Thanks.

[Cat]

Color coding and "schedule assist" feature is nice. Won't let you schedule a departure before an arrival.

I am using Google "my maps" in Drive to plot out things giving me a visual of route coverage. It allows me to layer the map for each schedule too

[Cat]

Had my first pilot quit on me today .... LOL I guess he didn't like working 5 days a week. CRJ pilot

[joefremont]

Had my first pilot quit on me today .... LOL I guess he didn't like working 5 days a week. CRJ pilot

Thats weird, took a quick look and he should have been happy, if they run out of money they will quit, but if happiness greater than 90 they should not, will investigate.

Edit: Found a bug that could explain it. Greater than instead of Less than, oops, will add AV Los Vegas back to your VA.

[Cat]

I already hired another replacement LOL But I have room for the quitter too. Once one gets more than a handful of AP's, it becomes a real juggling act to "keep all the plates spinning". Pretty interesting and entertaining. One wants to keep the planes in the air but have to figure out how to work in down time to get them their A checks too.

Should A checks be required after hard landings or in-flight failures? I think we have had that discussion before but now with AP's, that might be something to think about. Maybe some sort of message to the CEO letting them know an aircraft has had an abnormal event instead of just automatically requiring an A Check?

And BTW, this is why we test and I'm trying to run it pretty good to find any bugs that may be out there. Boating season over now (I don't play in the marshes with duck hunters) so I have more time for FSA.

[joefremont]

I discovered that you already hired a replacement when I tried to set the pilots ID back and found it was not unique, but I promised so they are back.

When do the checks is a question. Right now I have it coded so the AP's will not fly if the aircraft is below 95%, which is B-Check range, so they fly until you need a B-check then stop wherever they are, why may not be the best behavior, suggestions?

[Cat]

Perhaps you can bump that "stop sign" from 95% up to 95.5% to give owners a chance to fly the aircraft in question to an owned airport center for an A Check before it hits the much more expensive and time consuming B Check? Then there is a small penalty (cost of hotel for the AP) for not paying attention and leaving that pilot stranded without an airplane until it's been serviced.

Another option I was going to ask about was buying tickets for automated pilots. I think the cost for them right now is the standard fee to buy tickets. Maybe make that 2x or 3x to encourage automated pilots to fly instead of jumping around with buy tickets? This would mean the airline would pay more for leaving a pilot stranded from their home base (if out of hours) and would be more costly than buying said automated pilot a hotel room. Increasing the buy ticket cost would probably be easier to do than say setting up automated pilots with the ability to "deadhead" on any flight operated by a human pilot.

Or I am overthinking a complicated feature and trying to make it too complicated. (Probably "B" ha ha ha)

[joefremont]

Perhaps you can bump that "stop sign" from 95% up to 95.5% to give owners a chance to fly the aircraft in question to an owned airport center for an A Check before it hits the much more expensive and time consuming B Check? Then there is a small penalty (cost of hotel for the AP) for not paying attention and leaving that pilot stranded without an airplane until it's been serviced.

Another option I was going to ask about was buying tickets for automated pilots. I think the cost for them right now is the standard fee to buy tickets. Maybe make that 2x or 3x to encourage automated pilots to fly instead of jumping around with buy tickets? This would mean the airline would pay more for leaving a pilot stranded from their home base (if out of hours) and would be more costly than buying said automated pilot a hotel room. Increasing the buy ticket cost would probably be easier to do than say setting up automated pilots with the ability to "deadhead" on any flight operated by a human pilot.

Or I am overthinking a complicated feature and trying to make it too complicated. (Probably "B" ha ha ha)

Those are both good ideas. 95.5 or even 96% would be good limits. As for ticket I think 5x would be fine as most airlines are getting 10x revenue on the flights. I have considered a time delay for for AP transfers, but for now was keeping it simple.

[Cat]

Have a glitch with the new guy you sent back. I can't schedule him.. CRJ9 is at KLAS, schedule (Las Vegas Regional 3) is valid and the pilot is at KLAS. I keep getting the message the pilot and aircraft must be in the same location as the first leg of the schedule in order to schedule the pilot.

Schedule vaild check
Aircraft available check
Pilot type rating check
Pilot location check

Missing something .... just don't know what. It is an active day on the schedule and more than 3 hours after the first scheduled departure, but I figured he would just pick it up at the next LAS departure like they have done in the past.

Pilot in question: LAS211 Auto Von Las Vegas hours in last 24: 0 Hours in last 28: 82.73 Daily hours in schedule i am trying to assign: 6.24
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EDIT: FOUND IT~ Pilot was not assigned any fleet.... all good now.

So one needs aircraft and pilot in same location plus pilot must have type rating AND fleet assignment. I was missing the final link in the chain. Quick check in VA settings showed I did not have the required fleet checked in my Regional Captain rank as I am now operating regional autopilots from two different hubs (each with their own fleet).

[joefremont]

I forgot to assign the pilot to a fleet, that was my mistake but what I did to add the pilot back is not an official process.

I think I will try to change the scheduling process so that their does not have to be an actual aircraft in the location, just that their has to be an aircraft in the fleet/va that the pilot is allowed to fly.

[Cat]

Wasn't your fault, I have "autopilot fleets" assigned to the ranks I use for autopilots and simply forgot to add the new fleet to the rank and this guy was first one in since then. LOL

Sounds good on the schedule change. That would allow us to build and assign schedules for "off days" on a schedule that is in use and get that new schedule assigned to another pilot before their first day of flying for the week. Aka: schedule A that has 3 off days gets filled with the same routes via schedule B on those days with another pilot. Although for now I am creating new flight routes for those specific days so I don't confuse myself too much. LOL Then to fill out the 2nd pilot's hours, I'll add different destinations on the 4th day. I am finding for regional work, 4 days at 6 hours seems to work for me. Short regionals can get up to 8 legs in 6 hours of flight time, but usually I stick to 45 min to 1 hr flights, with a standard turnaround time of 45 minutes.

I am doing the regional thing cause that's what I used to do. LOL Long hauling I have a single AP with no schedule and I just point him to a destination with a book flight and off he goes.

[Cat]

OK some math here is not addiing up - Auto Von Westland showing 100.23 hrs in 24 days but he is on a schedule that estimates 3.82 hours per day x 5 days a week = 19.10 hrs week x 4 = 76.40 hrs in 28 days.

Actual flying time logged 5.4 hrs per week x 5 days = 27.0 hrs week x 4 = 108 hrs in 28 days so it looks like he got shut down at KMBS, putting him out of town as well.

So the schedule estimater is off by 30% too low on this particular schedule.

I will start checking other schedule estimates vs logged flight time and get back to you.

EDIT:
Detroit Regional 2 Schedule: 4.64 hrs daily estimate actual 6.5 hrs - 29.1% too low on the estimate
Las Vegas Regional 2 Schedule: 5.08 hrs daily estimate actual 6.6 hrs - 23% too low on the estimate
Detroit Regional 3 Schedule: 4.64 hrs daily estimate actual 6.2 hrs - 25% too low on the estimate
Las Vegas 737 A Schedule: 5.25 hrs daily estimate actual 6.6 hrs - 21.5% too low on the estimate
Detroit Regional 4 Schedule: 6.06 hrs daily estimate actual 8.0 hrs - 24.3% too low on the estimate
Las Vegas 737 B Schedule: 6.26 hrs daily estimate actual 7.8 hrs - 20% too low


ALSO NOTE: One cannot delete a schedule leg even if unassigned. One has to delete the entire schedule then rebuild it with those legs not wanted no longer included.

So at this point I am unassigning all schedules (full airline stand down) and revamping them to account for the low estimates so my pilots do not go over the 28 day hours limits as all schedules appear to be 20%+ off on the low side when it comes to the estimated daily hours of any said schedule.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE .... Autopilot Von Boulder City had 3 legs posted all from ABQ to LAS


And this is why we test and test

EDIT AGAIN: OK I found the 'delete last leg' in the schedule editor so one can delete schedule legs without having to start over. Got all my schedules realigned using actual flight times so pilots should not go over 100 hrs in 28 days.

[joefremont]

As far as the multiple flights I think I have figured that out, the job that manages the pilots runs every 5 minutes, but with the slowdowns we have been having they have been getting stuck, so several get loaded up until things finally get unstuck and they all go together. But i have just written a new job schedule that should prevent two jobs from running at the same time so we will see if that fixes it. I will try to see if I can clean those extra flights as they do mess up the hours calculation.

As far as deleting legs yes you can, at least from the edit schedule page or add leg page, there is an option link for "Delete Last Leg" on those two pages, but I did not add that to the Schedule View page, maybe I should.

Edit: The extra flights should have been cleaned.

[Cat]

Regarding the schedule flight time estimate tool: If one knows it's 25% too low, one can calculate that in advance and not run into out of service issues at the 100 hrs/28 days mark. If you take it as gospel and set up schedules to be within say 85-90 hours at 28 days, that 25% lowball error will bite you and your pilots will be parked and chaos ensues with people and planes out of sequence (not unlike the real world LOL).