Bulk Flight Generation

[jonbeckett]

Some time ago I created my own program to bulk generate flight information (for VABase) - and have been thinking about doing the same for phpVMS - to work out for a given aircraft on a given direct route, how long it would take - which can then be used to auto-populate scheduled flights in one go (e.g. with 5 airlines, 10 fleet groups,100 aircraft, and 50 airports around the world, generate the thousands of sensible looking flights taking off and landing within sensible hours, with fairly accurate time calculations based on aircraft performance.

 

I just wondered if anybody else has done this - to save re-inventing the wheel.

Edited February 18 by jonbeckett

[jonbeckett]

Of course the temptation would then be to call the Simbrief API for each route, and fill in sensible routing information too - but that might be a "stretch goal"

[jonbeckett]

Interesting... I've got the basic programming working - but have come up against an interesting issue.

 

A flight can have several subfleets associated with it - but subfleets are really designed to specify different aircraft types - therefore, the arrival time calculation will be out, because subfleets typically contain aircraft of a given performance specification.

 

It's not a disaster - it just means a flight will typicall only ever specify one subfleet - I just thought it was worth mentioning.

[DisposableHero]

Yeah, if you assign more than one subfleet to a flight, then your block time calculations should be able to cover all of those subfleets for that particular flight. We are getting into the same problem in real world too  If a schedule is based on for our narrow body fleet, but in cases we use our wide body fleet, block times (thus airport slots etc) become a problem. Same applies to phpvms v7 too.

 

It will be ok though for generic wide body fleets as they most fly with speeds close to each other. I am using some custom functions to generate block times (flight_time in phpvms v7) for my flights if they are no based on real world schedules.

 

Back in time, someone was working on providing some auto created csv files to import flights which are based on real world airline schedules, but that project is trashed and he never finished it. So even if someone is working on something like that, it is not publicly known.

 

Good luck

 

PS;

 

Block Time = taxi out + flight time + taxi in + some little margin/rounding

Flight Time = pure flight time (EET, estimated elapsed time)

 

I am using phpvms v7's flight_time as "block time" and consider my taxi times in it, opposite is possible of course but it may need some tricks in simbrief form to send proper block times to sb via api.

[jonbeckett]

I have the programming working based on a few generalisations - doing hub to hub routes (40+ hubs - evenly spread across each continent) - and then hub to spoke routes (600+ "international" airports). The only problem so far is the number of flights it generates is colossal if all aircraft are allowed to operate on all routes they're appropriate for. I'm going to have to introduce some artificial "sharing out" of routes to aircraft to bring the numbers down.

 

I don't envy people working out the scheduling and routes in the real world - the "travelling salesman problem" is a famous programming nightmare

 

postscript - I've added an artificial "subfleet groups" construct to the flight generator - where it groups subfleets onto flights that are within a percentage of range and cruise speed of each other. I'll obviously have to test it, but the theory works

Edited February 19 by jonbeckett

[jonbeckett]

Next problem - quite a few airports are unknown to the lookup tool - so I'm going to have to cleanse the data on the way in - provide perfect data using reverse geo-lookups 😕  

[jonbeckett]

Just found an interesting wrinkle in the system. You can add subfleets from airlines other than the airline a flight is for, in the subfleets for a flight.

[DisposableHero]

I am using a similar logic (capable optimum range vs flight distance) and I think it is the "best acceptable" way to do auto assignments

 

And yes, if you want, you can add different airline subfleets to flights, and I do not think that this is a bug or "wrinkle" as you defined  Imagine code sharing, subcharter flights, wet lease operations etc. As this is pretty much normal in real world, Airline A can operate Airline B's flights, no harm if this is based on an agreement between the two.

 

If you want some automation protection, just check/match the airline_id's of subfleets and flights

[jonbeckett]

While reading your comment "Star Alliance" came straight to mind.

 

Anyway... I have a stack of type ratings, subfleets and aircraft to populate - then I can open the doors to the first testers, and start writing a LOT of documentation