I'd Rather have a Slow Day

[Quickmarch 488]

So what's an AH outfit owner to do?

 

Yesterday, was it just yesterday? Lauren (remember the "One Woman Wrecking Crew") wheelbarrowed the 172 in at 2100 hours, doing another 8% damage to the Skyhawk. That one cost me $2800. Then today, she pulls the same stunt at 1500 hr. only this time she does a beauty and racks up 11% damage to my poor little bird, costing me $3850. That's $6650 in less than 24 hours (or $369.44/hr). 

 

So what do I do? I give her my precious Skylane and send her off to the scene of the crime with an even larger load.

 

I also hired another one this afternoon. Amelie. She comes with a 93% rating and is a CPL ME/IR with a 25000 lb MTOW. I've sent her out with the Skyhawk. Hopefully, she'll do better than Lauren did in her first few days.

 

I also got a promotion this morning - 2nd Officer, no less. Lemme see....double nothing is ?nothing! Heck of a pay raise.

 

I'm hard at work with personal stuff and I'm looking down the road at a one month sabattical, so I'm hanging the QuikAire rep on these two ladies and waiting for a used Beaver to hit the market. 

[allardjd 1,853]

Sounds like you're doing fine, March. Good stuff.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

Woe is me!

 

The new hire did a measly 1% damage this evening - but, on her first flight. This is getting ridiculous, my little pie-chart shows "Aircraft Repairs" as my third highest expenditure (after base and aircraft lease).

[Bobby 0]

I run my outfit on John's idea of pilot performance: The best policy is to hire the best you can afford and watch them careully. One prang is a fluke. Two may be bad luck. Three in close succession is a red flag indicating that particular pilot should perhaps pursue opportunities with someone else, hopefully your competitors.

 

I just had a 100% rated Senior Pilot rack up $22,000.00 damage on a Skyhawk and he did staff repairs and I guess the AI's don't use insurance. That after two 10% incidents I had to repair. Gave the lad his walking papers

 

 

[Gunner 69]

Lol, good decision. What it works for me - i hire pilots with the lowest rank possible, reputation around 75-80%. They get the 172, and no other plane until they reach 90 - 95 %. It seems to work nicely.I really don't need a captain for a SkyLane . Right now i have three pilots, 2 of them are all ready 1st officers. Hired them with CPL ME/IR. Still flying in the bushes , two of them with 182, the last hired is with the very first Skyhawk (though he's rep is 100% now).When i will buy a bigger plane, all of them will step up one on the ladder .

 

Eddie,

[Bobby 0]

_Eddie,

 

_{That's a good idea...starting them at a lower rank and reputation and keeping them in a crop duster till they earn their way up. I need to haul a lot of potatoes in a Skyhawk to pay the wages of a 5 star Captain. I think I'll start hiring your way.}  

[Quickmarch 488]

Both AI pilots were hired at ranks in excess of 90%. I can't recall, now, but I think Lauren was hired at 94% and is now at 100%. Amelie was hired yesterday at 93% and pranged (OK, just a little one) my Skyhawk on her first flight. I'm pretty sure that the internal programming randomizes the AI pilot's risk based on a rank-weighted scale. This is why you can get 100% pilots doing damage to an aircraft. 

 

I don't think that firing them on a 3-strikes-and-you're-out basis is good policy. You may just get a lower rated AI pilot and start back into the bottom end of the curve.

 

Bobby's point is well taken, though. I just don't think you can apply RW values to this process.

 

Too bad there isn't a method of having these AI pilots contribute to repairs out of their own pocket. Couple months eating cold beans out of a can might sharpen their landing skills. Unfortunately, this aspect is too "real". In the RW employees shrug off damage to machinery. They can't possibly pay for it, but the good ones learn from their mistakes. The bad ones spend a lot of time pounding the pavement, looking for work.

[GHAO 0]

Had someone at 98%, took 73% damage in a jumbo. I wasn't happy, but since they'd earned me over a billion dollars in job fees, I let them be (and since I completely totalled another jumbo!). They flew flawlessly for the remainder of my company! It can be all luck.

One bit of advice - don't worry about repairing it if the AC is still at 99% - that's adequate wear-and-tear from a normal flight sequence! It's only as the AC goes near 80% it looks sloppy

[Quickmarch 488]

I'll have to gather a bit of info and think this one through.

 

The new value of a C172 is $200K, give or take.

It's resale value at 100% condition with >99hours to go before a 100hr check is $100K (I checked).

 

Repairs to this aircraft have been:

 

2% - $700. If 700=0.02, then 700 is 2% of 35K

8% - $2800. if 2800=0.08, then 2800 is 8% of 35K

11% - $3850. If 3850=11%, then 3850 is 11% of - you guessed it - 35K

 

So, somehow, the cost of repairs is tied to a value of $35,000 on a $200,000 airplane. All repairs have been done at home base, so I don't (knock on wood) have any figures as to what these costs might be elsewhere.

 

I haven't any figures for the Skylane. No one has bent that bird, yet. However, I did have the NDB go south and that cost $3500 on an airplane with 12Hr TTSN. So - so much for warranty.

 

YMMV

[brett 2,310]

Sounds almost like the same cycle I have in car repairs.  The only advice I can think of is to buy more Skylane's

Even my best AI's do some damage over time, could even be the natural aging of the aircraft. I think they all did some early damage and then settled in after a bit.

[allardjd 1,853]

It's all pretty random.  Slopey has said that the ratings of AI are a weighted average of four factors.  Each of the four factors carries a different weighting value.  One of the factors can loosely be thought of as "work ethic" or "on-time performance".  Another is, loosely, "flying ability".  The other two are even more mysterious.

 

AI's ratings improve over time, with experience based on jobs completed - a highly rated pilot is less likely to be late or to damage the airplane and/or cargo and in general, the higher the rating, the less serious the damage is likely to be.  However, given the randomness that's built in, even a 100%-rated AI will occasionally have a bad day and/or a bad landing.  In the aggregate, he should do that less frequently and with less severity than one rated lower, however. The longer the time frame being considered, the more likely this is to be true.

 

Threaded through it all, as in many other facets of AH, there is a deliberate element of randomness to screw you up (and over) from time to time.

 

John

[GHAO 0]

I'm pretty sure the third factor is proximity to doughnut shop - you closer you are, the more the pilots crashes. It happens with me at least.

[Quickmarch 488]

Amelie stroked another 2% off the Skyhawk, yesterday. I think I better do two things:

 

1. rename Amelie to "Bounce"

2. Insure both aircraft (against the big one).

 

Here's a question that does not seem to be covered in the manual - I have two loads to a single airport. One of the loads is too much for the Skylane by a few pounds. The other load is short of the capacity of the Skyhawk by enough that I'd be able to squeeze that load plus the excess from the first into the Skyhawk.

 

Can I load the Skylane and dispatch, then load the Skyhawk with two loads (one being the balance of the load that went on the Skylane), for the same destination. From my reading, it appears this can be done. What I'm afraid might happen is that AH will prevent me from loading the few pounds left on the dock from the first load and send the Skylane all the way back for them. I might be able to get away with this if I manually load the aircraft. However, it looks to me that I would have to be onsite to manually unload it as well.

[allardjd 1,853]

You can do it as long as you manually load before assigning the AI to fly it. 

 

Go in using Fly to Airport (self) and load the first aircraft, then back out.  Ditto the second aircraft.  Then assign each pilot to fly to the destination airport using Fly to Airport (AI).  When they arrive, manually unload yourself. 

 

It might be OK to let the single load go by the normal means but the downside is that if you actually "Assign" the job to the AI, after he delivers part of it, he'll think there is more back at the origin and will head back to get it.

 

With these kinds of things, it's best to not assign the jobs to the pilots, but to use the Fleet screen to send them off to fly the already loaded aircraft.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

Thanks for that, John

 

I'll give it a go.

 

PS: Lauren just took 8% off the Skyane. I think both of these women would benefit from a bit of re-training. I'm going to start keeping track of $damage vs $earned and see if this is AI pilot thing is a good idea. I'm getting wealthier but I'm starting to notice my hair is falling out (or is that the stuff I pulled out?)

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

With those destructive tendencies of hers, Lauren would perhaps be better suited to land based machinery - preferably something with a wrecking ball hanging off it.  Don't let her test it anywhere near your office though, unless you plan to relocate your base 

[brett 2,310]

Haha, so true Danilo.   Welcome to the site too! Your sense of humor will fit right in with this bunch.

[Bobby 0]

March,

 

You are sounding like me....talking about our women pilots. Only last night I was mumbling to myself about one of my girls popping some rivets on a bad landing and my wife looks up and starts asking me about this girl. Hopoefully she is believing me about them just being a figment of my imagination  

 

Bobby

[Gunner 69]

 Flight simming has he's hazards!

[Quickmarch 488]

You have to be careful. I named the female voice in my Garmin Car Nav unit "Mavis", because she sounds like a friend's wife that use to nag a lot. Now my wife gets her nickers in a knot every time I plug the gadget in. Best to keep mum.

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

   

[allardjd 1,853]

I call mine "Betty", for "Bitching Betty", the automated female voice used in cockpit warnings sometimes.

 

She has a way of saying "Recalculating..." in a voice dripping with disdain for the fact that I saw fit to do something other than what she recommended.

 

John