Schedules

[joefremont]

One thing I have been working on recently is a new feature called ‘Schedules’. Schedules are a series of connected routes that once constructed can be assigned to a pilot. The pilot then has to those routes in order. When I get around to automated pilots it will be important as a way to control them without having to manually book flights for them for every flight, but for normal human pilots it just a convenience that allows VA management to tell a pilot which routes they should fly. Human pilots can always cancel the schedule if they don’t wish to fly it.

You can access the ‘Schedule List’ from the options in Flight Plan from the VA menu. You can then select ‘Create Schedule’ to start creating one. You will then be asked to select

• Fleet

• Aircraft

• Starting Airport

And will then be given a list of flights from the selected airport that can be flown by aircraft of that fleet, and a place to enter the name you are going to give this schedule. Select route one and push ‘Create Schedule’ to create it. The system will then show you a list of flights from the next airport and you can keep adding them until you are done. When your finished press back return to the Schedule View page. After you have created the second leg in the Schedule there is an option to ‘Delete Last Leg’ which will do just that. You may not delete a leg in the middle of the schedule, as then it would be broken. You also may not delete the first leg, if you want to do that, just delete the entire schedule and start again.

From view page you can select ‘Edit Schedule’ to modify it. You can change the name, you can also set ‘Allow aircraft change’ which will allow the pilot to select a different aircraft for each leg, otherwise they must use the same aircraft as the previous leg, unless of course that aircraft is not available, in which case they can select any aircraft that can fly the schedule.

If the schedule begins and ends at the same airport you can also select ‘Automatic repeat route’ which means the pilot will continue to fly the Schedule in a loop.

The last thing you can set is a ‘Delay’ for each leg. This is an amount of time the pilot should rest after before starting the next leg. May be useful for automated pilots but just a suggestion for normal pilots.

Once a schedule is created you can assign a pilot to it. From a pilots profile page you can select ‘Schedule Pilot’ from the Management options if the pilot is at an airport where a schedule starts. If there are Schedules the pilot can fly you can select one from the list. Once a pilot is scheduled you cancel the assignment from that same page. While a manager can assign a pilot to a schedule, a pilot can always assign themselves to a schedule also.

When a pilot who is assigned to a schedule goes to book a flight they will be shown the details of the schedule and allowed to select which aircraft they want to fly. They can also cancel the assignment from that same page.

For permissions my initial idea is that anyone who has permissions to create flight plans can also create schedules, and anyone who can assign type ratings can assign a pilot to a schedule, I have though about creating a new ‘schedule’ permission but I am not sure if thats necessary.

One thing I have not figured out yet is how to handle editing of routes that are in a schedule. When you construct the schedule the system makes sure that the departure and arrival of each leg line up and that the original selected AC/fleet can fly each leg. But if someone deletes a route, or changes the departure/arrival/aircraft type/fleets allowed that could break the schedule. We could say if the route is in a schedule you can’t edit it, or can edit only certain properties, but that might get complicated, having to delete the schedule and recreate if you want to edit the routes, especially if its a code share route and the schedule is created by the other airline. Or we could just say if a route in a schedule is edited or deleted then the schedule is broken and can’t be used until its fixed, which may require deleting and recreating.

What does everyone think?

[joefremont]

One update. I had been thinking about how to resume a schedule after something goes wrong, and I had been thinking of a complicate 'resume schedule' system but on refection I think I came up with a simpler system which is you can assign a schedule to a pilot at any airport along the route, not just the first, so you can resume it at any point.

You can play with the schedule creation tools on https://beta.fsairlines.net, the only limitation is that if you assign a schedule to a pilot it won't advance when you record a flight as its not yet tied into the client interface on www yet.

[joefremont]

Since I have not gotten any comments on this I will merge it into the main site and see how it is used.

[Cat]

Playing with it now in beta .....thought it would be way too complicated to mess with at all but its not really.

One suggestion (not sure its possible) - have the ability change flight time in the schedule itself.

Most of us ignore the departure time when creating routes, but in the schedule it looks funky to see them all with the same exact departure times. It would be nice to show how much turnaround/layover time one plans on for each leg without having to go back and change it in the flight route itself. (which I can't seem to do in the beta anyway). So what I did was create a new route which is a duplicate of an existing route in the airline to get the times to line up in the schedule..... see the difference between using the existing routes and the new ones:

Also the turnaround time "delay" is in 2 hour increments so those who want quick regional one hour turns can't use the delay feature.

My suggestion for now is for operators to simply create new "schedule routes" that are dedicated to a specific schedule while leaving the previously created route in the system as well for those wanting a one off flight as per usual.

Perhaps a little mod to the "create flight route" page would be to have "scheduled" be a dedicated schedule route and then put in a "standard" route category. So when a "scheduled" route gets assigned to any schedule, that would lock it out from changes until its removed from all schedules.

Another thought is how to protect the connecting legs from being booked while the pilot in question is on say leg 1. He/she gets to the destination and cannot book leg 2 because someone else took it. So Scheduled Flights within a schedule need to be somehow protected from poaching once a leg is booked. Again, if we had a dedicated "scheduled flight" category vs standard flight category, it would be easier (maybe) to protect those flights within a schedule.

[Cat]

More random thoughts:

Book Flight or Accept Schedule which then books the first leg of whatever schedule is accepted. Then when that happens, the remaining flight legs within that schedule are blocked out until the pilot in question flies them or "quits schedule".

But I'm still thinking new schedules need their own dedicated routes away from the main flight route system just to make it easier to understand and/or possibly code all the what ifs. LOL

Additional random thoughts - Dispatchers need to research their schedule routes and times to make things work smoothly. An interesting "game feature" might be to have some sort of "on time / delayed / cancelled" window showing how the pilot in question is doing keeping up with the posted schedule. Actual depart/arrival times may be difficult to manage with most everyone doing this in free time, so maybe just "estimated block time" and "turnaround time" to calculate how the pilot in question is doing compared to the schedule dispatch design. If the pilot is ahead of schedule or less than 15 minutes late, it would show ON TIME. If the pilot is now running later than 15 minutes behind schedule it would show DELAYED and if the pilot quits the schedule, the window would show remianing flights CANCELLED.

If one wanted to go whole hog "all in" game feature, then use depart/arrive times (all in GMT) with turnaround times and keep an airline "on time percentage" record on the home page for all scheduled flights. People will find out what the real world already knows: It's easy to draft schedules that look great on paper, but throw in things like weather, crew availability and possible mechanical issues ... then you have a whole different ballgame. Once you get behind the 8 ball, it is VERY hard to get back on time for the day.

[joefremont]

HI Sam, thanks for looking at it. Some comments on your suggestions.

Editing the base routes is something to look into. Your right that up till now those times on the routes ment very little and once they start getting put into schedules ppl are going to start noticing how things don't match up. Once they notice they will want to fix them. Editing a route in a schedule can be perilous and changing the aircraft types or fleet can brake the schedule, but changing the times or days will not. I think I will take your suggestion and add edit links for the routes and allow only limited edits of the route when its in a schedule.

I though about the 'delay' feature quite a bit on if and how it should be included. Since flights are scheduled to leave a specific hour of the day, it could have been a yes/no flag saying don't fly the next one, do the one after that and that would probably be clearer. Obviously with human pilots its just a suggestion, when I get around to the autos they will fly on schedule and then they delay will be important to make sure they don't go over there allowed hours.

As for not allowing more than one pilot being assigned to a route at a time, I have debated that. I go back to Pan Americans old Route 1 going around the world from KSFO or KLAX to KJFK with about 10-12 stops. They had a route 2 which did the same but going the other way. These flights would leave daily but take several days to make it around. In those cases I could see having multiple pilots assigned to a schedule at a time, each doing a different phase of the route. But only one pilot could fly a specific route at a time, the others would have to wait or cancel.

[Cat]

Multiple or parallel schedules with different arrival/departure times would solve the multiple pilot issue too, but lots of route making/paperwork.

But once we start getting this detailed, paperwork is an unfortunate byproduct of playing to fine details. Tis what it is. Don't want to do the work, then just don't play with schedules. LOL

I guess as a former regional pilot, I am only thinking in "one day legs", not multiple day events that are more like tours than anything. Real airlines these days don't like paying layover costs and try to get people home at night to avoid said costs, but again I speak only from regional experience that is now LONG LONG in the past LOL wow where did all the years go?

I know Juan Browne of the Bloncolirio youtube channel who is a 777 pilot has full day+ layovers after long over ocean flights to other continents.
The Southwest youtuber Big Ern has had some "two day trips" with Southwest too.

[Cat]

Well if you really want an interesting read:

https://aerology.substack.com/p/how-do- ... -schedules

Beware! Once the can of worms has sprung, getting them all back in the can will be a challenge!

[joefremont]

I can see the schedules being an easy thing to setup but the details can be a lot of work to get right.

On the delay issue I was only thinking of one day, but if someone can get "full day+ layovers" think I think I will change the delay from 0-24 hours in 2 hour increments to 0-48 hours in 6 hour increments.

I can totally see two pilot being assigned to the same schedule, the first may do a leg and have to take a couple days off for real life and the second flying through there route, as long as the first pilot does not book the flight and hold it for days there should be no problem. Worst case is someone gets blocked at one leg for a bit, they can always fly past and resume the route later.

I did add a "Schedule timezones" field to the VA settings where the values are UTC (default) or local. Local is going to be fun to figure out with daylight savings going on and off differently in different parts of the world, but if someone wants the complexity, more power to them. There is a time zone field in the airport database, which was not exposed until now.

[Cat]

Cool beans. This will take a lot of the "where do I fly next" issues away from bored pilots when VA's set up schedules to follow.

[CaptainPrecious]

If one wanted to go whole hog "all in" game feature, then use depart/arrive times (all in GMT) with turnaround times and keep an airline "on time percentage" record on the home page for all scheduled flights. People will find out what the real world already knows: It's easy to draft schedules that look great on paper, but throw in things like weather, crew availability and possible mechanical issues ... then you have a whole different ballgame. Once you get behind the 8 ball, it is VERY hard to get back on time for the day.

Cool thought! I'd like that, too.

Thing is, atm I can't set up a schedule for after adding the first leg the page goes blank. Am I doing sth wrong?

[joefremont]

Thing is, atm I can't set up a schedule for after adding the first leg the page goes blank. Am I doing sth wrong?

I found one bug that I fixed, see if you still have the problem. If you do send me a PM with your va/profile ID's and all the information your entering until you get the problem.

[CaptainPrecious]

Yep, seems to be working now!

[Cat]

One thing to note about setting schedules and adjusting dep/arv times: the "enroute time" listed in FSA when adding a leg appears to be "standard hours direct GPS". So if you are flying the high altitude airways you will have to add additional flight time to your schedule as you won't be going direct GPS. I can see most operators won't even mess with the dep/arv times anyway but this is just an FYI.

Example: Las Vegas to Boise is listed as 1.2 hours enroute time, but you can only do that if you barrel through restricted military airspace (Area 51). Going around on the HAA it takes about 1.8 hours in a CRJ-700 at FL320. So if you use standard hours in this case on the first leg of the day's schedule (I set up LAS-BOI-SLC-RNO-LAS), you will be fighting late arrival times all day unless you throw in a longer turnaround time at one of the stops or pad your flight times in your schedule based on the actual route being flown.

And this leads to the next questions: will bot pilots always fly direct GPS or can you specify their route in the flight plan? What happens when they start running late?

[joefremont]

And this leads to the next questions: will bot pilots always fly direct GPS or can you specify their route in the flight plan? What happens when they start running late?

Good question. I had assumed the bots would essentially be flying direct and take the default time. We don't have a map of restricted zones in our database nor do we have all the other routing waypoints.

I had not worked out how a bot would handle running late, my first idea was that once a flight arrives the pilot needs 30 minutes to reset for the next flight and if the pilot is ready after the scheduled departure time but is still within 3-4 hours that would be a late departure but would still go, beyond the defined threshold that days flight would be cancelled and the pilot would fly at the scheduled time the next day, or the next day the flight is supposed to fly if not ever day.