Expert Server Slots

Features
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There’s no denying that the Expert Server delivers the highest level of Infinite Flight multiplayer. But it also suffers from one persistent issue… overwhelming traffic volumes at featured hubs. While this chaos is enjoyable for some, it detracts from realism for others, and often limits which airports can be featured. This feature request could be the potential solution, one that could ease congestion at busy airports and strike a better balance between realism, flow, and overall enjoyment for pilots and ATC.

Arrival & Departure Slots

In the real world, slots are specific authorised timeframes allocated to aircraft to depart/arrive between, and they are essential to maintaining orderly traffic & reducing delays. It would be incredibly tricky to match that of how slots work in IRL, but I believe this could be the closest solution with an Infinite Flight twist.

:admission_tickets: Slot Booking System
At its core, the idea of a slot system could be a booking system where expert server pilots are required by default to “pre-book” slots for featured airports where the traffic is expected to be higher than usual. The idea is to enforce a mandatory system that helps mitigate incredibly long arrival & departure times, which can be frustrating if tight on time. To book a slot, you would have to put down a “XP deposit” to reserve a space at a peak or off-peak time, and if you successfully attend that slot, you get that XP back. This idea is similar to that of the real world where airlines have to pay a lot of money, sometimes millions of dollars for slots. Having a slot would also grant you departure and arrival priority to ensure slots are adhered to.. more on that later.

The general flow for both Departures & Arrivals could be:

  1. Select airport
  2. Open departure or arrival slot menu
  3. Select a desired slot time based on availability
  4. Reserve the slot, or cancel the reservation
Slots UI examples

Click on image to expand.

UI example collage
UI example collage1920×5199 1.11 MB

So that’s the general idea of slot functionality in-app, but there’s still some missing context regarding how it works for certain scenarios, and perhaps some roadblocks too. Below are some drop downs for each scenario I could think of:

🛬 Arrivals

The general idea is to of course pre-allocate a time for you to arrive at an airport within a specific timeframe to expedite things. However, there could be complications like:

  • Pilots flying to slot-required airports who do not have a slot booked
  • Forgetting about your flight in AP+ and missing your slot
  • Arrival lines / ATC vectors still backing up, eventually
  • This would only be super effective with ATC online, what about when there’s no ATC?

Here’s a potential solution to each of these concerns:

  • If a pilot is trying to fly to a slot-required airport without a slot booked, it would flag up to IFATC. At this point the pilot would be instructed to divert or ATC could put them into a hold until there’s a gap to squeeze them into the arrival. However, pilots arriving without a slot would receive an XP penalty.
  • For arrival lines & ATC vectors, sure, the same problem could exist with arrival lines. However, slots would not only make traffic more predictable for ATC, it would also rate-limit those traffic numbers making things a little more manageable.
  • If you’ve booked a slot and ATC goes offline for your arrival, you’d still be credited all of that XP back as you’ve attended your slot. For pilots without a slot, once again the opposite as mentioned above; XP will be deducted as a landing fee of some sort.
🛫 Departures

For departures, it would be a very similar concept to arrivals. IFATC would be able to see your slot and accommodate your departure based on that.

  • If you have a slot, ATC will grant pushback clearance and off you go! After departure, your XP deposit goes right back to your XP balance.
  • If you don’t have a slot, ATC would see this and only grant pushback when able and things aren’t as congested, so instead of waiting around, it would be easier to just book a slot and guarantee a departure window. In addition to this, spawning and departing without a slot would deduct XP as a departure fee. Alternatively, slot-required airports could simply block you from spawning unless you have a slot, but this might be overkill, especially if you just want to spawn in and observe traffic, planespot etc…

Departure slots could be more precise compared to arrival slots due to timings being more predictable. For arrivals you have to calculate the flight time etc… but departures are way easier to determine a timeframe. With this in mind, dep slots could be 30 minute windows or something.

🤖 Autopilot+

For pilots using AP+ there’s two possible scenarios that might and might not work in your favour:

  • If you resume your flight in time for your slot, all is good. Your XP deposit will return.
  • If you resume your flight too late and miss your slot, the same process will apply as a pilot who hasn’t booked a slot. XP deposit will be lost and used as a landing fee.
🕐 Slots grant priority

Slots would ultimately be a fantastic way to effectively grant yourself priority as both pilots and ATC would work together within this new system to meet slot allocation times and depart/arrive within those specific time windows. No more waiting in superrrrrrr long lines, more of a “ah, I estimate to be on the ground or in the air within the next 20 mins, according to my predefined slot”.

Peak and off-peak slot times

Just a quick idea to include peak and off peak times. Off peak costs less XP, and peak times cost a lot more :smile:

Pros & Cons

✅ Pros
  • Predictable traffic for ATC & Pilots
  • Limited slots on a first come first serve basis, rate limiting traffic
  • Opens the possibility to feature smaller & unique airports with single runways
  • Even more realism
  • Predictable departure & arrival windows. No more guessing & rushing.
  • Spending & possibly losing XP would encourage use of slots and frequent flying to maintain or grow your XP balance. Gaining XP means you can afford to fly to featured hubs legitimately, losing XP means you’ve have to do some spontaneous flights to earn that more XP to afford more slots.
  • Gives XP more of a meaning. Right now it’s tied to grades. Once you’ve exceeded that grade threshold for XP, the XP is pretty much useless after that. More of a bragging right than anything…
❌ Cons
  • Overengineering & overkill? Possibly.
  • Big learning curve? Absolutely
  • Potential for many corner cases? Most likely…
  • This sort of restructure would likely take a lot of time
  • Not being able to fly to/from a featured airport at the time you want to due to no available slots (solution: could release slots in intervals, rather than being able to book them super far ahead of time)
  • Would require pilots to accurately file flight plans to determine if they’ll arrive within their slot. Might be tricky for some…
  • XP is currently tied to the grades system. Something would probably have to change or you could bump yourself down to Grade 3 for example. That said, if you attended slots, this would not be an issue…

Anyway, that’s all of my brainstorming. I might have missed things, and this could also be overkill. Nevertheless, I believe this is a cool idea that could benefit the expert server and help with making it a more professional place, because sometimes it can be a bit of a circus!

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Parked Aircraft
Community Members Spotted On Live: Part 6
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An interesting and well thought out idea!

I imagine there be a trigger for the slot booking “activating”, because the hub isn’t always predictable or what’s listed on the ATC schedule. (Say more than 50 inbounds?)

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Right, yeah. Could be that something triggers the system to turn on. Already inbound aircraft could be prompted to book a slot, or be exempt.

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Why do I get the feeling that this “feature” is already somewhat in the works?

I actually very much like this idea, I always disliked how an airport could have an accurate amount of traffic, but because it’s just a bunch of planes all trying to take off at the same time, ATC gets overwhelmed.

To me this seems like a sort of career mode thing which I absolutely love! And it provides a much missing value to XP

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Very interesting idea, Great for realism improvements! Definitely voting! :raising_hands:

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I could definitely see this being a bit of an issue for more casual flyers, but it also sounds really nice from the controller side so I’m voting for it :rofl:

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This has certainly got my vote. This would be great to help continue to increase realism on the Expert Server and to make the workload for fellow IFATC controllers more manageable.

A well thought out idea indeed!

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How would you “police” pilots abusing the system and hogging slots? I can imagine a pilot taking off with a slot into a hub without the intention of landing, but keeping the slot until it expires so others can’t take it. The only true issue I see with this idea is the penalty isn’t actually meaningful. Like you mention in the cons, XP really has no meaning above a fairly small level towards grades. I worry that the low (or non-existent to those who have been flying for years) penalty to not booking OR booking and not using a slot won’t be enough to effectively reign in traffic flows. Lots of corner cases, indeed. However, if this were to be the start of a full clearance system, absolutely a big step in the right direction.

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I just love this idea! I like how it could organise the traffic on events while making the experience feel way more realistic, smooth and pleasant. But I find a few negatives in this suggestion; one would be the fact that, despite its major contribution in smoothness it would, most likely, either overcomplicate things or just make flying into a busy hub less desirable eventually, possibly, making the airport not busy. It would also give a bit of stress to pilots like me, who use AP+ and leave the flight waiting at 30 minutes from arrival until they find free time to do the approximately 50 minute procedure of arriving from the last saved possession of the aircraft, due to the speed changes and wind effects on the airspeed. That way a precisely calculated and executed arrival would be difficult to make. Lastly, sometimes something might happen and one might have to just end the flight before arriving at their destination as intended due to real life reasons, but knowing changes to this feature could be made to benefit almost all the pilots of the game, I vote for this! Great suggestion nonetheless.

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I believe this idea could solve multiple issues and help reduce congestion. I am on board for this idea and would love to see it through.

I had a similar idea to this a while back and thought I mentioned it somewhere. Glad to see something like this is being talked about and hopefully we could see an initial iteration in the semi-near future!

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Nifty idea, but I was gonna say the same thing as Flying_Chris. For departures ok, but headwinds, tailswinds, AP+ time inaccuracy would make a halfway precise ETE estimation impossible.

Winds I could calculate. But then a 5000nm flight with no winds and 500kts should take 10 hours, whether I use AP+ or not. Lately I read a bunch of comments from people flying without AP+ and still having a severe offset flight time.

Expecting precision from the users requires precision of the game as well.

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I’ve did something like this a while ago as an event where you only had to 15 minutes slot times to work with unless you planned to depart right after arrival.

What I learned from it was it is possible to make pilots coordinate more precisely with their arrivals and departures. There are plenty of resources for pilots to use too. Many of these resources are free to use like Aviation Weather Center (mostly good for flying in the United States).

I do think the penalty is very needed for something like this as well. I feel like the expert server needs to be a major step up from the training server. Like you need to demonstrate genuine professionalism and skill to be on that server. Shouldn’t be decided by experience alone. I would go as far as having a written test that requires you to pass at a minimum of 80% for having access to the expert server.

That also brings up a 2nd point: XP should be treated as a currency instead. This would get way more complicated but it would only apply to the expert server. Based on the flights you do and how well you perform them, the XP gained from them would give you an in-game currency. For example, let’s say you’re doing LAX to SFO. The maximum you can make off that route would be $1000 in-game currency. Other routes like LAX to LHR would give you significantly more but require better planning.

The reservation for slots, let’s say a fixed price of $1000 in-game currency, would be a good start. Being on time for your reservation not only gives you that reservation in-game currency back, you also got extra for that route. Taking LAX to SFO once again, you would get an additional 20% bonus on that route for a total profit of $1200. If you fail to meet your reservation, not only do you lose your currency from the slot, you also get deducted on the routes profit. Let’s say for every 10 minutes you’re not on time, you lose 15% from your profit. LAX to SFO 10 minutes late would be only $850 profit -$1000 from the slot.

Pretty much you either profit by being on time or pay for being late.

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An interesting idea for sure. But I think it would just be too hard to implement in-game and be flawed with issues. Overall we have a lot of bad pilots on the ES and I think they would just not be able to adapt to this change.

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There also should be a thing where you’re not able to start a new flight into that specific airport for the day as, if there aren’t enough gates or parking spaces, we’ll have to wait and possibly lose our departure slot. This might cause us to lose our Xp ( form what I have understood, please correct if I’m wrong). Only planes that have actually landed should be on the ground, this would be a great step to realism as well.

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I don’t think the idea is bad: I’ve already written about similar topics several times.

But I hadn’t thought about slots.
Now let’s take it a step further. If this is the case and implemented, then it would have to be made clear and unambiguous.

Let’s say, for example, that today’s event in Ottawa (CYOW) means no A380s are allowed to land and taxi to the gate, because CYOW doesn’t have a dedicated gate for an A380, no double passenger boarding bridges, and no large ground handling areas.

But this also means not only CYOW, but all airports where an A380 isn’t possible. In those cases, this slot process shouldn’t be enabled. How would that work? I create a slot from here to CYOW, and as soon as you click on CYOW, a message appears: “Your flight cannot be operated to CYOW due to A380/B747, etc.”

Or some other reason.

If he takes off anyway and begins his descent shortly before CYOW and contacts Approach, Approach should warn him that he is not permitted to land there and should seek an alternate airport where an A380/B747 can land.

Yes, an A380/B747 can land at CYOW: the runway is long enough, but only for an emergency, which is rare at IF.

Only then can it be more fun and more realistic.

Because I can’t stand watching all the people without an IFC account land there in A380s anymore: I saw eight of them there all at once today.

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voting for ts

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Many of us are just “I’m free now/in the next few hours, I’ll fly for a while”. In fact, few people make plans in advance. It’s a good idea, but it’s difficult. For now, I’m against it.

I don’t think we need lock the airport for the planes who don’t have reservation.. I think the queue at the airport is an interesting part. We just need to reserve some boarding gates for the arriving plane. However, we can ask the controller to give priority push back for the aircraft with an booking. If there is no book, can we improvise? Wait a little hold on gate。

In a low voice: It’s hard to imagine why the staff would bring this up, because they have priority even at busy airports.

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In fact, our controllers lack knowledge of some airports. For example, I am very familiar with ZUUU. That’s my home. I don’t know how many times I took off and landed from there (although as a passenger), how many times I took photography… How long have I studied the map, and I know exactly how it works.

If I go to other airports, such as Ottawa, I can only check the operation from FR24, check the real ATIS at most, and then open the airport. I can’t judge whether this airport can “protect” the A380. I only know that this airport can let the A380 land.

If it is a controller who is familiar with the airport, he will know and let the 380 divert, unless they report emergency fuel.

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@Dan

I like the idea → you got a vote from me! But this would need a good amount of prep for IFATC to get it’s head around the effective use of.

Simple CBT in a similar manner to how D&T/ D&P was introduced would probably do it!

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I’m speaking for everyone, not just staff :grinning_face: Sometimes even staff priority can take a little while. This is just a broad idea for everyone

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