Good questions. The short answers are "no", and "yes."
Now for the longer answers:
The way the flight reporting system is set up now, there isn't really any way to make equipment substitutions. I've tried to make the schedule in such a way that it "works," without aircraft magically appearing at airports in time for a flight. If you follow a flight number through its legs on the timetable, it's easy to see how one airplane would do the entire flight, stopping at each airport along the way. This is how the airline timetables from the period seem to work, and I've tried to represent that here. It looks more like a train schedule than what we'd consider a modern airline route structure.
The other reason is I want the airline to be a team effort where each pilot's participation has an impact on the success of the airline as a whole. Most VAs seem to be content to let pilots come and go as they please, fly whatever, wherever, whenever. While flexibility is important, I've thought long and hard about it and I don't think that's why people join virtual airlines. After all, you can fly whatever, wherever, whenever without being a member of a VA. VAs that do that seem to have a high instance of people getting bored and quietly leaving. After all, it's easy to leave when nobody will even notice you're gone.
I want American Legend to be a place where we count on each other to accomplish a greater goal. I think people stay with VAs when they feel like it adds value to their experience, gives them a challenge, and allows them to contribute.
So instead of creating some financial model to calculate when we can buy some more virtual airplanes that will sit idle somewhere 90% of the time, and then having to deal with unrealistic issues like reserving a plane or making sure planes are available at various locations, I'm trying hard to figure out how to have a simpler, yet actually more realistic, way of operating: We stick to the schedule. If all goes according to schedule, there will be a plane available for you to fly on a scheduled route, and we don't need some system to keep track of planes by location and tail number.
Back to what I was saying about team efforts. The way we'll measure growth is by how well we meet our goal, which is the same as a real airline's operational goal: to fly the schedule, on time, as efficiently and safely as possible. If a real airline does that well, they succeed. People notice which airlines are dependable and provide good service. Especially business travelers, who were the majority in our time period.
So American Legend Airlines will grow when we all do our best and fly the schedule. I'm working on a dispatch system that will help us keep track of who's assigned to fly which legs. I think the initial goal will be to fly the entire schedule once in each calendar month. When we do that, we'll consider ourselves successful and "grow" the airline by adding new airframes and destinations. For the next step, I think we'll probably add the DC-7 to the fleet, with nonstop trans-continental service. Once we've got that down, I'm thinking Starliners and transatlantic service. But it's up for discussion.
But I do realize the importance of freedom to choose routes in a virtual airline. So I want a system where once we're done with our assignments for the month (which will ensure that every flight in the system gets flown ONCE), we'll be free to fly any flights we want for the rest of the month.
For now, I'm just trying to get a feel for what's working and how the schedule is going. So the dispatch system isn't online yet, and any pilot is free to fly any flight in the system (and therefore any aircraft in the fleet) any time.
Guys, these are just my ideas. I'm sorry this post is so long, but I just wanted to get out as much of the stuff that's racing around in my head as I could and hope you can make some sense of it even though it's not organized perfectly.
I'm not trying to be some dorky self-appointed megalomaniacal totalitarian VA dictator. I'm really glad you're all here and we're flying together. I'm old enough to know I don't know everything. So if you have any thoughts, feedback, pushback or WHATEVER, please share. I promise you won't (and can't) hurt my feelings. My intent in starting American Legend is to add value to the experience of those wanting a realistic airline environment in which to improve their knowledge of and skills in the simulation of piston-powered airliners. So let me know what it takes to do that for you, and I'll give it a try.
Thanks,
Dave
