Passenger Terminals

Overview

What you will learn in the following sections will help you set up a Passenger Terminal at either an FBO that has been built for the very first time, or at an FBO that has never had a PT built onto it. Although the latter happens very infrequently, it is possible because Passenger Terminals are not a requirement to operate an FBO.

The FBO Passenger Terminal system is designed to somewhat mimic a real life, small air taxi operator. The building sits at an airport, and the passengers can come into your business and ask for a ride to somewhere. Likewise, passengers who are not at your airport, but want to go there, can call you for a ride home and you will need to go get them and bring them back. To mimic this, the FSE system will spawn the passengers either outbound from the airport, or inbound to the airport.

A small air taxi operation is normally composed of a terminal building, one or two small aircraft, and one to a few pilots. You can simulate this business style in FSE by forming a flight group and using your group to acquire the FBO lease from the airport and purchase or lease an aircraft or two. If you want to simulate having partners, or have other pilots as employees, invite a few other players to join your group.

If your passenger terminal is large enough to accommodate more passengers than your aircraft can hold, you can limit the maximum number of passengers that will appear in any given group. Otherwise, simply leaving the maximum at the default setting of zero (0) will randomly generate groups of companion travellers in various numbers.

Typically, you would set your PT Passengers to be “private”, which will allow only you or your group members to see them in your group’s passenger list.

Once you have everything set up like the above, you’re ready to start mimicking a small, “mom and pop” style of air taxi service. Even with all of the expenses of FBO daily lease rates (“supply consumption”) and ongoing operational expenses for your aircraft, a small air taxi business should easily be able to turn a profit each month with just a few flights. Don’t forget to pay yourself and your employees also!

Passenger Terminal (PT)

A PT is a facility within an FBO that generates flight assignments which the operator can control such things as:

• specific destination/origination airports (either FROM your FBO or TO your FBO), or a random set of criteria, such as "Go anywhere within 500 miles as long the airport is big enough (or small enough)"

• passenger counts

• commodity names

• PT gate rentals

How to create (build) a PT

First, only one (1) PT is required, regardless of the number of lots your FBO has. It can be built any time after you build your FBO. The sooner you build it however, the sooner you will start to generate passenger assignments.

After you have built your FBO (See FBO Section), you will need to purchase an additional 2000 kgs of Building Materials (BM) for your FBO. If the airport where your FBO is located has on-site System BM, you can simply purchase them for your FBO right there. If none are available at that airport, you will have to purchase the BM from a nearby airport that has them available and fly them to the airport where your FBO is located. Whichever method you use to obtain the BM, you must purchase them for whoever operates the FBO. Yourself, if you are a private FBO operator, or for your Group if the Group operates the FBO. If you plan ahead when building your FBO, purchase the additional 2000 kgs of BM at the same time you purchase the BM to build your FBO.

When the 2000 kg of BM are at your airport, the “FBO Menu” will then give you an option to “build your PT”. That’s all there is to it. Once your PT is built, you will be able to view information about the PT through the “FBO>Facilities” menu.

Gates

What is a “gate”?

Think of the arrival/departure gates each airline has at an airport. Picture all the passengers lining up for a United Airlines flight from KJFK, NY to KSFO, CA. FSE gates are very similar. Each of the gates that your PT has will do basically the same thing…generate a specific number of passengers going to/from a user (you) selected location.

How does it work?

A PT will generate assignments based on a number of different criteria that you will select. However, there are some basic requirements that are the same for everyone. Each FBO can have a maximum number of "Gates" depending on the size of the FBO (see below for further details). Each gate can support a maximum of 3 pax. If you have 1 gate, you can get a single 3-pax assignment, or you might get three individual 1-pax assignments. If you have 9 gates, you might get a single 27-pax assignment, or you might get 9 different 3-pax assignments, or anywhere in between.

How many gates?

Essentially, you get 1 gate per FBO size, per airport size. The number of gates is based on the same formula that determines how much supply consumption your FBO will use per day. If your FBO uses 40kg of supplies/day, then you will have 4 gates. 90kg/day means that you have 9 gates. A single, small FBO at an "Airstrip" will only have 1 gate, while a "large" FBO at a "Large Airport" will have 9 gates. To see a list of Airport and FBO sizes, see the “Combining Size and Operating Costs” section in the FBO Section of the User’s Manual.

The FBO Facilities menu option will also show you the number of gates each of your FBOs has.

Managing PT Gates

The first step will be to setup some basic PT information. All of the information you will enter will be found on the PT “Edit Facility” page. To access this page select the FBO>Facilities>your FBO name option. Here is an example of the page.

Renting Gates

FSEconomy allows you, as the FBO operator, to rent your Passenger Terminal gates to other players. This could provide you with some modest monthly income from the rental charges, as well as potential ground crew fee income from any jobs your tenants create and fly.

Rentals to other players are based on monthly leases. Rentals can begin at any time during the month - the tenant will be charged a prorated fee for the remainder of the current month. Billing occurs automatically on the first of each month for the following month.

Tenants cannot be evicted by the FBO operator during the lease term, however the FBO operator can elect not to allow lease renewals at the end of the month. Tenants are allowed to terminate their rental agreements at any time, however no refunds will be provided for the unused portion of the month.

Whenever the gate rental price at an FBO is changed, the FSE system will send out an email alert to any individuals renting gates, or group owners and staff members leasing gates. Lessees may then determine if they wish to remain in the lease at the approach of the next month.

Option 1 – Rent One or More Gates to Other Players.

To bring in some extra income, you can rent gates to other players. When you rent gates, the other players will have their own control over assignment generation. Rentals are based on monthly leases with a term period starting/ending on the first of the month. Rentals can begin at any time during the month - the tenant will be charged a pro-rated fee for the remainder of the current month.

Determine the number of gates you want to keep for your own use, if any, and set the reserve gates number to that amount.

It is good practice to enable "Allow Renewals" - this will allow the tenant to continue renting as you cross through the first of the month.

Once a user rents one or more gates from you, you will see additional information below the “Renewals” checkbox on the “Edit Facilities” page. The “Allow Renew*” checkbox allows you to cancel gate rentals from a specific renter if you choose to do so. Normally, it should always be checked.

If you do not set the renewal boxes to “allow”, the gates will not be re-rented at the beginning of each month.

Option 2 - Renting gates to yourself.

There are many reasons when you might want to do this, such as setting up multiple assignment templates. For example: Your FBO passenger terminal has 6 gates. You might want to set up 2 of those gates to be your "long haul" service - that is, going specifically to one or more of your other FBOs that are six or seven hundred miles apart. You could then rent 2 of your other gates from yourself, and setup a second template that is used for your "local tourists" - that is, only going to airports that are "Airstrips" and are within 100 miles. That leaves you with 2 more gates - you can rent them to others, you can set up a third (and maybe even a 4th) template, or you can just leave them alone to generate the "default" passengers. You will have each "set" of gates listed on your "FBO Facilities" page, accessed through the FBO menu.

When setting up your rental information, normally you would set your rental fee to $0. No need to pay money to the FBO Operator if it’s yourself. However, if you have gates that you are renting from yourself and you are also renting gates to other players at the same PT, you will be charged the same rental fee you set for the other renters. In this case, you can’t set the rental to $0 because you wouldn’t get any fees from the other players. What applies to one renter applies to all renters, including you, at that FBO Passenger Terminal.

You must also set the rental renewal boxes up on the Facilities page so that your rental will be renewed each month as well.

Using Gates

Assignment Template Section

Carrier Name: This is for informational purposes only. It will appear under the “Carrier” name on the Airport page where your PT is located. You can use your User name, your Group name or you can create any name that has some special identification meaning to you. For instance, if you have FBOs located in more than one major area, you can identify each area in this box. Anything you would like to use is fine.

Commodity: FSE considers each assignment entity as a theoretical “passenger” weighing 77 kgs. While many other parts of the manual use this “passenger” reference, you can actually change the commodity name to something other than a passenger. You can call them anything you choose. The name can represent a living entity such as Passenger, Tourist, Dog, Doctor etc., or inanimate objects such as a Crate of Wine, Box of Parts etc. This is how the commodity name will be displayed in the assignment sections on the Airport and My Flight pages. You can also have multiple commodity names for each PT. Simply add a comma “,” after each name.

For the purpose of this manual section we will refer to any type of Commodity as a “Pax Load”.

Note: Failure to exercise good judgement when choosing a name for passengers could result in disciplinary action from the Board of Directors. Names including, but not limited to racist, political, adult-themed and derogatory descriptions are not permitted.

As PTs can generate any assignment with one or more loads, there is a way for you to accommodate this in the Commodity name that is displayed. By adding (s) in the proper location of the Commodity name, the page will display it as more than one when necessary. Example: Passenger(s) will generate “Passenger” if only one, and “Passengers” if more than one. Crate(s) of Wine will generate “Crate of Wine” for one load, and “Crates of Wine” if more than one. At this time, (s) is the only option.

Note: Each unit of passengers a PT generates weighs exactly 77kg. This is not an adjustable figure, so please refrain from naming jobs which imply the passengers weigh more or less, such as "Box of Parts - 500kg". Doing so will only confuse potential pilots.

Don’t accept parties of more than xx passengers: The gates generate random pax load counts for each assignment based on the number you enter in the “Don’t accept more than xxx passengers” box. You can set the gate to generate “up to and including” a specific number, but not a minimum number. Enter one of the following number scenarios.

Enter zero (0) for the gates to generate an assignment with “up to and including” the maximum number of passengers the gates will sustain. See earlier explanation of the maximum each FBO and Gate combination will generate. You will get an assignment with a random passenger count up to the maximum.

Or, enter a maximum number you want the gates to generate. You will get a random assignment load anywhere between 1 and that number.

Note: Carefully consider how you want to generate these assignments. If your PT is located in an area frequented by small aircraft, it may be wise to keep the passenger count low. (A Cessna 172 can easily accommodate 2 passengers but will ignore the 6 passenger jobs). Conversely, if you're setting up long distance runs, a large group of passengers going to the same destination may create better profits for long-range charter pilots. You can even create both types at the same Terminal by sub-dividing the gates (rent one to yourself).

Unclaimed jobs expire in xx days: In this box you can enter a specific number of days that the assignments will remain available for selection. If your FBO is very busy, a lower number such as 1 day might be sufficient, but if you don’t get much traffic you could set this to a higher number, perhaps 3-4 days, or more.

Public vs Private Assignments: You have the option to specify which type to generate in the “Assignments are Public” checkbox. If you want to make your assignments available to everyone to fly, check this box. If you are an owner of a Group and only want your Group members to have access to these assignments, leave the box “unchecked”. They are then “private” assignments.

Controlling Assignment Destinations

Option A - ICAO List

Select specific airport ICAO codes. Enter one or more destination airport ICAO codes separated by commas. You can select airports where you might operate additional FBOs. You can also “point” your assignments to another airport where perhaps another player operates an FBO. He or she might be willing to do the same for their assignments so that more flights are available. Or, you can point it to any other airport you choose. Regardless of where you point your gates, the assignments will be randomly generated both “from” and “to” the airport where the FBO is operated, or a combination of either. When you first add on a new PT to an FBO, don’t get excited if you don’t see any assignments at the origin FBO right away. Check the destination airport as well. Both options can take several hours before an assignment is generated into the Game World.

Option B - Random Airports

You can have the system select random airports within a specific min/max distance and a specific min/max airport size. Maximum distance is 1000 nm.

Note: It usually takes a few hours, sometimes more, before your first assignment(s) are generated. Be patient…if you’ve set up your passenger terminal correctly, they will appear.

Assignment Generation

How often will these assignments appear? Again, there is some randomness thrown in. Once a job gets delivered or expires, it's "slot" becomes available to be filled by another one, although not necessarily immediately. Roughly, each FBO gets about 6-8 chances per day for an assignment to generate. During each "chance", you may or may not get a replacement assignment, but your chances increase each time that it doesn't happen, so you should get at least 1 job per day if you are constantly delivering them.

If your terminal is divided into multiple Facilities for renting gates to yourself or others, one of the individual facilities with space available will be selected (at random) to receive the assignment. So, renting four gates separately at one FBO does not get the FBO more chances per day.

To get the most passengers in the shortest amount of time, leave the “max pax” count setting to zero. A four-gate FBO (which can sustain 12 passengers at any one time) will usually fill up in less than one day. However, setting a maximum passenger setting of 1 means that it will take all 12 occurrences of “being selected” for the Terminal to reach maximum capacity: two full days or more.

Where can I find my assignments after they are generated? This depends on whether your assignments are public or private. Public assignments will be found on the originating Airport* pages. Private assignments will be found on the Groups>Assignments>your Group name page. If the FBO is under your User Name, private assignments will be stored in your My Flight page.

* Originating Airport. Remember that the FBO can generate an assignment at the same airport as the FBO leaving on an outbound trip; or, at any other qualifying airport, coming on an inbound trip to the airport where your FBO is located.

How do I tell my PT assignments from System generated assignments? Your (and anyone else’s) PT assignments will appear in “green”, while all System assignments will be “black”. If you have provided unique names to your assignments, they will be named as such on the airport page.

How long will my assignments be available to fly? Your FBO PT configuration page has a setting for “expiration time”. These assignments will expire from the system after that many days if they are not flown.

Once you a PT assignment is selected and placed into a pilot’s My Flight queue, the assignment will get a 24 hr extension to the original expiry time.

Money

How much will these assignments pay? A business model incorporated in the FSE software is used to determine assignment pay. It will vary by the number of pax loads the assignment has and the distance it has to be flown. The assignment pay formula uses a sliding scale for the number of pax loads. ie: A single 3 pax load does not pay as much as 3 single pax loads.

What about ground crew fees? The FBO with the generating-PT gets 100% of the ground crew fees at the airport where the FBO is located. Even if you have renters, their assignments still go to the FBO you are operating, so you still get the fees. Even if you have competition at the airport, it's your pax terminal, and you're doing the work, so you get all the fees. System-generated jobs at your airport will continue to split the fee between all operators at the airport. If the job goes between 2 of your FBOs, you get 100% of the fees at both ends.