Compare Your Zone-Based vs. Schedule-Based Positioning

In this article you will find examples on how to be competitive by using your Zone-based positioning and your actual schedule positioning.

Comparing Zone-based vs. Schedule-based positioning

When using the “zone-based positioning” line item in your pricing profile, Avinode may automatically compare your zone-based positioning time with the actual aircraft’s position that you have in your schedule.

The setting that controls this behavior is called “Compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activity” and can be customized under Company → Settings → Pricing, within the specific zone-based position pricing option.

This extra setting ensures that your aircraft can still:

1. pick up a trip if you happen to have an aircraft parked in the vicinity of the requested trip,

2. be price-competitive on round-trip requests that have a short gap in time between the PAX legs.

Scenario 1: Your aircraft has a better scheduled position

If the “Compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activity” setting is enabled in your zone-based pricing option, Avinode will then check if your aircraft has any mandatory scheduled activities within e.g. 48 hours before and after the requested trip (e.g. a PAX flight), and apply the cheapest alternative between your zone-based positioning (that is configured in your map) and the actual scheduled positioning of the aircraft.

Example:

According to your Zone Map (see below), Avinode should normally add +10 hours of positioning time for any trip from/to the United States.

However, based on your schedule, you happen to have an aircraft located in KTEB, Teterboro as of October 1st (but a blank schedule afterwards).

If a buyer searches for a “KTEB Teterboro → KMIA Miami” trip starting on October 2nd, Avinode will apply the most price-competitive offer between your schedule and your zone map. ZERO positioning will be added at departure, based on your schedule, and +10 hours will be added at arrival, based on your zone map.

Scenario 2: Buyer requests a Round-trip with little time between the PAX legs

According to the map above, if the “Compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activity” setting is enabled in your zone-based pricing option and you get a Round-trip request, Avinode will then check if there is less than X hours (e.g. 48 hours) between the requested PAX legs.

If there is less than X hours, then Avinode will NOT add any chargeable positioning during this interval (assuming you would rather consider staying put at the “intermediary” location).

Example:

The “Compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activity” setting is configured with 48 hours (which is the Avinode default setting).

If you get a “EGGW London - LEMD Madrid - EGGW London” round-trip request, with the first leg on October 15th and a return the day after, then Avinode will only apply the following positioning time (based on the below zone map example):

• +3 hours at departure / before the first PAX leg (for EGGW),

• +3 hours at arrival / after the second PAX leg (for EGGW)

• … With NO zone-based positioning for LEMD.

   

In summary:

Compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activity: when using a Zone-Based pricing option in your pricing profile, for all requests that you get, Avinode will apply by default the amount of positioning time that you have defined for these airports/states/countries/regions.

However, if you allow Avinode to “compare map positioning to adjacent schedule activities”, then Avinode will compare and apply the cheapest between applying the zone-based positioning and the schedule positioning if the scheduled activity is in X (for you to determine) hours.

If you have a mandatory activity in your schedule (passenger flight or maintenance) and if this activity is within the X hours the system will take the cheapest positioning in the Search result.

Round-trip example: If you get a Round-trip request and there are <48 hours between the requested PAX legs, you probably don’t want zone-based pricing to kick in after the end of the first pax leg and before the start of the second pax leg.