FBO Lottery

Overview

When a player-operated FBO closes down due to lack of re-supply activity by the owner, the FSE System allows a 45-day grace period for the owner to get the FBO re-opened. After 45 days of continuous closure, the FSE Airport Authority forecloses the lease and takes possession of the FBO Building as well as any attached facilities (maintenance facility and/or passenger terminal).  These FBOs are then later offered to the public. Most* of these repossessed FBOs will be offered through a lottery system. If no FSE player is awarded the FBO via lottery, then the FBO building (and attached facilities) are demolished and the airport lot(s) becomes empty and available for re-building by any FSE player or group. 

* Occasionally, the FSE Staff will elect to dispose of a closed FBO in other ways. Most likely by auction, by contest, or simply sending it straight to the demolishing phase. 

Note: Any Fuel or excess Building Materials owned by the FBO Operator remain the property of the Operator and will not be repossessed during the lease foreclosure. 

Lottery Rules

FBO Lotteries will be held weekly. Each Friday night, at midnight Server Time (UTC +1 in Winter or +2 in Summer), a list of foreclosed FBOs will be displayed on the FBO Lottery page. This lottery will remain open for one week, and the following Saturday at Server Midnight, a winner will be selected for each FBO. At that time, the FBO will be transferred to the winner's account along with an instant delivery of a five-day batch of supplies. Any FBOs with no tickets purchased will eventually be torn down at a randomly selected time within the next week and the lot(s) vacated. As soon as all winning FBOs are awarded, a new batch of closed FBOs will be listed for the next weekly lottery.

Allowed Participants

Any FSE player who has been a member for 30 days and has a minimum of 10 flights may purchase an FBO Lottery ticket. However, no player may purchase a ticket on behalf of another player. Any player found to have been given money, or asked in any way, to purchase a ticket on behalf of another player will result in the suspension of both players.  *see the bottom of this page for clarifying comments. 

Ticket Price

FBO Lottery tickets are priced according to the size of both the FBO and the Airport. The price table listed below is the equivalent of $50,000 per "FBO Gate", even though there is no guarantee that the FBO will have an attached Passenger Terminal. 

Note: Ticket prices are non-refundable, including non-winning tickets. Buy at your own risk.

Players vs. Groups

Only FSE Player accounts will be allowed to purchase an FBO Lottery ticket. Group accounts cannot purchase tickets.  A group is not allowed to "give its members the ticket money" so that one or more members can buy tickets - each group member may purchase his or her own ticket with no reimbursement expectation.  *see the bottom of this page for clarifying comments. 

Additional Winner Responsibility 

The winner must operate the FBO for a period of 90 days. The FBO will not be allowed to be sold or transferred to other players during this time. The winner may transfer the FBO to a personally-owned group, but the group will not be allowed to be transferred to another FSE player while the FBO is still within this 90 day period. 

FBO Lottery Page

The following sections of the FBO Lottery page are presented in further detail here:

Drawing date

Each lottery cycle will last one week. The date and time of the next drawing, for each listed FBO, is displayed on this line. 

Individual FBOs Available

Action

If you have not yet purchased a ticket for this FBO, the hyperlink will indicate "Purchase".  If you have already purchased a ticked, that will be indicated instead. 

Any Purchased?

This indicates whether or not anyone has yet purchased a ticket for this FBO. If "no", then no tickets have been purchased. If the lottery closes with no tickets purchased, then the FBO will be demolished and the lots vacated. If "yes", then at least one ticket has been purchased by someone. The number of tickets that have been purchased will not be indicated. 

ICAO

This is the Airport Identifier where the FBO is located.

Lots

This is the number of airport lots that this FBO occupies at the indicated airport. 

Ticket Amount

The non-refundable ticket price is listed here. You must have the indicated funds available in your CASH balance, and your account will be debited this amount immediately. 

Clarification of the rule of "individual ticket purchases only".  The INTENT of the FBO lottery is for individual players to compete for abandoned FBOs.  "Rich players" or "rich groups" are not allowed to increase their odds by giving cash (or promises to reimburse) to several other members in order for those members to buy tickets on behalf of the "rich player or rich group".  

To be abundantly clear of what is (and is not) against this rule...

Scenario 1 --- There are 10 pilots who are all members of a group. They see an FBO in the lottery and want to add it to their network. They all agree to each spend $200,000 of their own money and buy 10 tickets (one each).  The winner may transfer or sell the FBO to the group at the end of the 90-day operating period. This is perfectly ok.

Scenario 2 --- There are 10 pilots who are all members of a group. They see an FBO in the lottery and want to add it to their network. The group owner or staff member(s) asks all 10 of the group pilots to buy a ticket that he/she will reimburse, win or lose, if they agree to transfer the FBO after to the group after 90 days. This is NOT ok.

Scenario 3 --- Someone sees an FBO in the lottery that they have wanted for a long time.  They know it will be a popular lottery with lots of entries.  In order to increase their odds, they ask one or more other players to purchase a ticket on their behalf, with the promise to reimburse those players for the cost of their ticket or any other amount. This is NOT ok.


This rule is covered under the FSE Terms of Service "integrity rules", which states: "While many of the rules contained within the Terms of Service are enforced through automated procedural methods (i.e. the "game code"), there are several other aspects of the rules that rely on member integrity. This is because FSE is a very open-ended system designed to allow simulation pilots the ability to fly the way they want to fly and use the FSE framework for various business methods.  Violations of these rules, especially the "integrity rules" will be handled on a case-by-case basis."

Lotto History

There are a few frequently asked questions about the FBO Lottery.  Why are ticket prices "so high"? Why are tickets nonrefundable? Why is the lottery so "out of reach" for newer players?  Why can I not know how many tickets have been purchased? 

A history of how the lottery came to be can help answer these questions. Ever since FSE introduced the FBO Airport Lot system (roughly 2007), there has always been competition to be the first person to build a new FBO building when a former FBO building was repossessed and demolished.  Although there was no public information available about when the FBO had closed down or when the 45 day limit would be reached, many players began developing web-scraping tools specifically for the purpose of discovering this information.

The "Original Lottery": By buying all of the requisite materials to open an FBO, and pre-staging all of this material at an airport where an FBO lot was soon to be made available, players positioned themselves to be the first person "on scene" to acquire operating rights for the newly opened lot. Although not exactly a "lottery", by definition, this process was frequently done by many players at the same airport.  Only one lot was going to be made available, but several players were standing by, hoping to be the first to build.  This was sort of like a "lottery", with the winner determined by a race rather than a random drawing.

The costs to "play the game" were relatively  high and only partially recoverable for those who did not "win".  You first had to purchase enough building materials and supplies necessary to open an FBO.  Then you had to fly those materials to the site.  Of course, this process also prevented you from flying revenue assignments, so you also lost out on that potential money - known as an "opportunity cost".   The losers of the lottery could recover some of those costs by returning the materials to an airport that would buy them back for a loss.  But that process of returning the materials was also costly - you had both the direct costs of flying them and the opportunity costs with the lost time.

At first, the "race to build" was simply who would be the first to see that the lot had been cleared and then click their mouse on the website to "build" the FBO.  Unfortunately, some players were able to build bots to do this automatically, within seconds of the server clearing the lot.  FSE Developers attempted to counter these bots in various ways, but bot developers continued to update their bots to circumvent any changes. In time, the FSE Developers became tired of fighting this fight, and the new FBO Lottery was born - instead of flying in your supplies, you bought a ticket; and instead of clicking the "build button" on the website, the server would pick someone at random.

Today's ticket prices were actually derived from the above direct costs and opportunity costs. After doing a lot of back-of-the-napkin math, it was determined that, after all was said and done, someone would spend roughly $50k on attempting to compete for a single lot at an Airstrip, roughly twice that amount for a single lot at a Small Airport, etc.  Also, the "losers" would not be able to recoup very much of these costs. Some nice round numbers were used as the new lottery's non-refundable ticket price for no other reason than to be "roughly equivalent" to what the costs had historically been to "play this game". 

The main intent of the "new lottery" was nothing but a "bot buster".  There was no intention of changing who could "play" - if you had enough wealth to play the old way, then you had enough wealth to play the new way. In fact, the costs were nearly the same. If your FSE career was still too new to be able to "waste time and money" attempting to chase closed lots the old way, then you are still too new to play the new way.  

So, back to those original FAQs: