Scheduled Flights for Real Time Zones

When I first started "Scheduled Flights" in April 2012, the Bismarck ran two flights per day. The first was set at 16:00 MA and the second at 23:00 MA. The 16:00 MA(2:00 am my time in Australia) proved a little early for the majority of Entropeans and way too early for me with a second flight at a later time. As a result this time slot was moved up to 19:00 MA. This time slot tended to overlap a little too much into other services for my liking, so it was eventually moved back to 18:00 MA (4:00 am in Australia East Coast for me).

The 18:00 MA time slot seems ideal at this time. However the 23:00 MA time slot, which I thought would service the major section of US Participants seemed of little use and generated few passengers. Ideally I would like to provide a Service that supported not just the current heavy traffic time of 18:00 MA to 21:00 MA but also this time through to 24:00 MA or slightly later. In addition to this time period there is another obvious one at around 10:00 MA(8:00 pm my time) which would service Australia and other countries south of the equator. I think the region in general has been referred to in the past as Australasia or Oceania, I am not exactly sure. Hopefully someone can define this region correctly for me.

At this time however there does not seem to be a great call for service during these time periods. I have also noticed a distant but growing call from Participants that Warp Service Providers at least make some attempt to service these times and people.

It is to this end I have started this thread to seek help and suggestions from those who need that service. Any suggestions of days times etc. would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to post them here, send them to me in PM or contact me on the EFA Mumble Service that can be connected to through our website at www.efa.ms.

Personally I think that such extra flights would require the incorporation of possibly one or two more ships into the EFA. Such a work load placed on one ship could prove to be overwhelming. So any other Mothership or Privateer owners who would like to join EFA and help build the service into the future are more than welcome to open channels of discussion with me.

At this stage, I believe that two or three flights per week, at these times may be able to support the needs of these regions/countries. Or at least alleviate that need. Suggestions of days and times would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.
Sakuba

I would like to see a time slot that better fits the us time zone. there are alot of us players who play the game as well

Just for record, this flight at 18.00 MA time (20.00 hours in the evening) suits me perfectly... I am from Europe, so it suits to all European players who play in the evening...

Any rescheduling of current flights to later time would be fine (one or two hours)... but rescheduling to earlier time would stop me and all other players from Europe who use your ship from Monday to Friday because of our RL duties (work, family)...

Baba

At the moment I can't get a warp flight at a time when I am normally awake unless I pay vip rates.

I'd really like to see a flight that is in the aussie evenings. The only complication is it needs to cater to both sides of the continent.

Another possibility would be a weekly flight during daytime of saturday or sunday.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

Due to my time zone i am quite pleased with the current flight times, one thing that i do feel is missing is the ability to visit a planet to hunt/mine and return X hours later on the same day via a scheduled flight, if there is enough demand (maybe at weekends?) and your second scheduled flight to service other time zones is not too late in the european night (or too early in the morning) you might see increased traffic from europeans too.

FallenAngel said:

Due to my time zone i am quite pleased with the current flight times, one thing that i do feel is missing is the ability to visit a planet to hunt/mine and return X hours later on the same day via a scheduled flight, if there is enough demand (maybe at weekends?) and your second scheduled flight to service other time zones is not too late in the european night (or too early in the morning) you might see i

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It seems you may have misunderstood my intentions. I do not intend to reduce the Scheduled Flights we are currently doing, but rather increase them to incorporate the two time zones I have mentioned. Our aim is to bring more affordable transport to all Entropians and not just those online during the heavy traffic times.

Sakuba said:

It seems you may have misunderstood my intentions. I do not intend to reduce the Scheduled Flights we are currently doing, but rather increase them to incorporate the two time zones I have mentioned. Our aim is to bring more affordable transport to all Entropians and not just those online during the heavy traffic times.

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oh no, i just meant that to say that extra flights at different times than the regular ones might also be useful for europeans if the timing is right, especially at weekends.

KikkiJikk said:

At the moment I can't get a warp flight at a time when I am normally awake unless I pay vip rates.

I'd really like to see a flight that is in the aussie evenings. The only complication is it needs to cater to both sides of the continent.

Another possibility would be a weekly flight during daytime of saturday or sunday.

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This has potential. I think it would have to be around 9:00 PM Qld time (EST) which I think may be around 7:00 PM WA Time. It would be helpful to know toughly how many people a flight at this time would suit. This would be 11:00 MA time. A few more people suggesting a time for a flight around this time to help gauge the most suited time would be a great help.

Saturday and Sunday Australias is also a good concept. Possibly even Saturday and Monday.

Thanks for the feedback please keep it coming.

I would love to see a flight that would service North America. I would sudgest leaving Calipso at 03:00 MA time. this would be 23:00 East coast time and 20:00 west coast time. Taking into consideration a 2.5 hour run to cover the 5 planets, it would be acessable to the entire North America population that works and can only be online in the evening.

I'd be amazed if there were no U.S- or Canada-based mothership owners. Surely the best way to serve that part of the world is to have owners, gunners, repair crews, etc from that part of the world.

Dusk said:

I'd be amazed if there were no U.S- or Canada-based mothership owners. Surely the best way to serve that part of the world is to have owners, gunners, repair crews, etc from that part of the world.

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Suprisingly a lot, not all, of my crew are Northern US and Canadian Players. I am an Australian and get on at 3.00 am my time to be able to do the flights we do now. I would like to see a lot more response to this thread to encourage the feasibility of such flights.

I keep trying to dream up ways to encourage and increase the possibilities of these proposed flights. I serously need feedback from a lot more people to improve its chances.

I am looking into a way of incorporating our current booking system with such possible flights as well. Only I am not sure of how to do this, it is something I will hvae to discuss with Kri Azgard when he has more time.

Our current Daily Subscription Rate is 5 PED and this covers all flights and services up to the next 17:00 MA Pre-Flight Check. To possibly help these additional flights become successful, it may prove to be needed to increase the Fare on them to 10 PED for daily Passengers and perhaps 5 PED for existing Subscribers, whilst retaining our monthly subscriptions at 50 PED.

This priceing would only apply to thses later flights and not to the more popular earlier flight. Doing this however would make me feel that those using this service are being punished for circumstances out of their control.

As much as I desire to provide a service to thiese time slots, I have to do my best to ensure it is cost effective to myself and anyone else who chooses to work with EFA to provide it, whilst keeping it affordable to the majority of those who use it.

The response to this, although not huge, it has been greatly appreciated. I would like to have seen a much larer response from those who need use these times discussed. I don't want to see this discussion end so I will try to breath a little life into it from time to time and hope more people show interest.

I have noticed that the Dreadnought does one scheduled flight starting at 11:00 each week. This should help those in the Australiasian Region somewhat.

Also, it seems another MS, according to another post, may be about to start up a service that might pay some attention to both of the discussed time zones.

Here is to hoping.

Once again, thank you to everyone who ha spoken up in this thread so far.