As I have already mentioned I am seeking a different approach in contrast to available career apps. In this context I am sharing a little more on the main topic. Unlike in other career apps, I am planning not simply randomly generating a list of available jobs for the user to pick from, instead I want to make the user to set up an air service, which potential customers may book. So let me share my ideas on typical service definition case.
Lets assume you have purchased (or leased) your bush aircraft and established your first base and your office in some remote area. You are ready to provide air services. Now you have to define your service offer that interested customers can book.
You would have to define service type and capacity, which largely depends on the type of the aircraft that are selected to provide that particular service. For instance when you own something small like a freedom fox, you can only provide air taxi service that is limited to carrying one passenger and his backpack and observation or search & rescue tasks as well. But you can’t provide cargo service with a fox. Your potential customers would be limited to solo adventurers (hikers, hunters, anglers, survivalist’s etc…) with limited equipment, or maybe solo park rangers with their specific tasks like observation or searching, or maybe village doctors/veterinars taxi, or maybe providing search & rescue or emergency observation to local authority. However with a small plane such a fox you can literally land anywhere, not only at any airstrip but also at a lake shore, forest glade, river side etc… which along with cheap chartering of small aircraft may make this kind of service interesting to certain customers.
With a bigger aircraft that can also be used as a cargo hauler, such as kodiak, pilatus pc-6, twin-otter etc… you can cover different range of operations. Your potential customers may be groups of adventurers or scientists with their demand on carrying people and equipment. But also local companies that want to carry cargo or personal to or from remote areas. Passengers and supplies from or to remote villages. Farmers etc… However with a larger aircraft you may not be able to land anywhere in the wildness (depends on the area, it may well be possible in some areas in Australias outback for instance) and you would be mostly limited to airstrips and would need to consider the length and condition of their runways.
So as you see I am planning to allow the user to serve not only flights between airports, but also to support operations involving landings in the wildness. It would be challenging though to identify areas of interest where landing is actually possible. I am thinking of implementing a feature of performing recon flights, trying out landings at particular spots and then offer these landing areas to the potential customers.
Defining a service would also require to define service range, contained by a list of selected airstrips and potential landing spots in the wildness, that you intend to provide service for. In contrast to other career apps, the destinations would not be simply randomly selected by the app, but instead the user would have options to define where he is willing to fly to and where not. In example the user could make a white-list of selected airports/landing spots and select each destination manually by hand. Or he could define a certain area where he offers services to any destination in that area. Or he could combine these options and additionally have a black-list of destinations he would not serve (maybe because its too risky, or because the location is bugged or simply the user doesn’t like it).
Each destination or particular areas could be associated with certain seasons or weather conditions. So in example a landing spot at a forest glade in the mountains may available only during summer and may be auto-blacklisted under certain severe weather conditions. The user would have to define these boundaries per each location or whole areas.
Then the user would need to define a general pricing policy for each of his aircraft type based on flight hours and weight (number of persons, weight of baggage/cargo) and associate with a pricing policy for particular services. You may demand different prices for air taxi service between well paved airports under clear sky and more difficult challenges such as landing in the wildness under difficult weather conditions. You may charge certain additional fees, such as risk charge, landing fees, waiting times, parking and accommodation cost etc…
Once you have defined your service, a background simulation would generate potential potential customers (hidden from the user) which may or may not seek booking your service according to conditions you have defined, and potential competitors (partly hidden). For instance if you charge too much, nobody may call you, if you charge less then competitors, you may get more bookings but it would be more difficult to gain profit of course. You would build up reputation with particular customers. So in example serving a customer well, increases the chance he would book your service next time too, even despite higher price then competitors offer. Competitors would also generate reputation with potential customers. The chance of receiving a booking request would also depend on the amount of renown (partly shadowed from user, it can be roughly estimated or partly uncloaked by investing into market research). The customers would need to know about your company and being informed about your services and pricing. A customer that is not aware of your business may just book another competitor that he knows, despite you may offer better and/or cheaper service. The user would have different options to increase his renown and reputation with customers aside from main business, such as running advertisement or marketing campaigns. Of course, this is something for advanced companies.
Thoughts and additional ideas welcome.