I have noticed that when generating a flight setting the ‘Freight’ option set to “Auto” it is not giving a random value. I am wondering if this is correct as using the “Auto” selection on the ‘Passengers’ option does give me a random number of passengers for the flight. What I have noticed is, instead of giving me a random amount of freight, it always gives me the number of passengers multiplied by the weight the bags are set at. By default, bags are 55 pounds. I get this result with every airframe I try. Is this correct behavior? What I was looking for was a random value not including the weight of the bags.
I don’t see any issues in my testing, and in looking at your recent flight plans.
For example, in the 3 OFPs you generated right before posting this, you requested and received the following:
Aircraft
Passengers
Freight
OFP Passengers
OFP Baggage
OFP Cargo
Resulting Freight
CRJ9 (Default)
AUTO
AUTO
48
48 * 55 = 2,640
3,240
3,240 - 2,640 = 600
CRJ9 (Aerosoft)
AUTO
AUTO
48
48 * 55 = 2,640
3,240
3,240 - 2,640 = 600
CRJ9 (Aerosoft)
AUTO
0.0
69
69 * 55 = 3,795
3,795
3,795 - 3,795 = 0
Notice how in the most recent OFP before your post you had the Freight option set to 0.0. Make sure to double-check this option whenever you change your selected aircraft. Sometimes it can change this option back to 0.0 when it loads the new aircraft settings.
Another thing to keep in mind is as your passenger count increases, the amount of random freight that gets added will be less. This is by design and is expected behavior.
I see now, thank you for taking the time to investigate this for me. What is throwing me off is the cargo values. The capacity of the plane is close to 6,000 pounds. 600 pounds extra freight is lower than what I would expect. On the other hand, I am not knowledgeable as to what the value should be. It seems that if an airline can load some freight they would for economic reasons.
The freight amount varies wildly depending on the airline, flight, etc. On the CRJ there isn’t typically that much, since it often operates on higher-frequency regional routes to smaller airports.
There is also the issue of space in the cargo bays. There might not be any physical space left once all the passenger bags are loaded, which is one reason the randomizer typically loads less freight as the passenger count increases.
But again, this all depends on many factors, which is why the freight option can be manually set to anything you’d like if you feel the randomizer isn’t realistic for a given scenario.