Discussions have taken place on the Stephenson-Seimens server regarding aircraft turnaround times. It was agreed that it would be useful to start a thread where information on this topic could be gathered and exchanged.
So far, I have found the following:
this article regarding an American Airlines A321, giving a time from arriving at the gate to departing from the gate as circa 70 minutes (discounting the fact that this particular example arrived early).
This article from the Daily Telegraph in 2019 gives the following data:(1) low cost short haul carrier Ryanair (which only uses Boeing 737 type aircraft) have reduced their turnaround time to 25 minutes by removing seat-back pockets, thereby reducing the time spent to clean the aircraft;(2) British Airways typically takes 50-60 minutes to turn around a short haul flight;(3) Norwegian takes 90 minutes for long-haul flights, but this "starts an hour before the aircraft arrives at the gate", so this is unreliable as an indication of the total dwell time at the gate.
According to
this website, "turnaround time" refers to the time between landing and takeoff, whereas what we need is the gate dwell time, so some care is needed with "turnaround" figures.
According to
this article, aircraft turnaround time has increased in recent years. See also
this diagram for some graphs and visualisations.
I believe that the existing timings in the pakset are based on passenger boarding/disembarkation times only. I believe that Giuseppe has spent some time in working these out, so, ideally, these should be integrated into any revised timing. Thus, what we need to do is to add these times to an estimate of the time spent in other operations. Some operations, such as refuelling and loading/unloading passenger baggage, can take place simultaneously with passenger boarding/disembarkation, so the really important things are the things that cannot be done with passengers aboard, which seem to be (according to the first linked article) the cabin cleaning and catering restocking.
On the American Airlines A321 example, the aircraft arrived at the gate at 0835h and the last passenger disembarked at 0855h. Catering arrives at 0903h, although it is implied that cleaning has not entirely finished at this time. By 0926h, passengers start to board again. They finish boarding by 0955h.
Thus, we have:
* disembarkation: 20 minutes;
* cleaning (exclusive): 7 minutes;
* catering/cleaning: 21 minutes;
* boarding: 29 minutes.
This gives a total of 77 minutes, of which 28 minutes were spent without boarding or disembarkation, the total boarding/disembarkation time being 49 minutes. 36% of the at gate turnaround time was therefore time spent other than boarding/disembarkation.
There is an Airbus A321 in the game. This has a loading time of 2,400 seconds, or 40 minutes. Given the fluctuations in boarding times over time, this suggests that Giuseppe's estimates of basic boarding/disembarkation times are not too far off and can safely be used as the basis for extrapolation by the addition of cleaning/catering time.
Further, we can sensibly assume that aircraft that need no catering have a reduced turnaround time, that the greater the quality the provision of catering, the greater the turnaround time, and also that the cleaning and catering provision part of the turnaround time will scale with the number of passengers. Given that the existing times also scale with the number of passengers, we should be able to modify the turnaround times to something in the region of the following:
* no catering: current times +20%;
* level 1 catering: "" + 25%;
* level 2 catering: "" + 30%;
* level 3 catering: "" + 36%;
* level 4 catering: "" + 42%;
* level 5 catering: "" + 50%.
This would give a turnaround time of 54 minutes to the Airbus A321 in the game, which is probably not far off its ideal minimum realistic at gate turnaround time.
