Umberto, no need to be defensive. People have suggestions, and if you don't agree with them, that's fine. We love the product and like to make it better. In real life, an airliner that has both ground operation and catering at an airport, will never use another operator unless it's an emergency situation. If you can program that in GSX would be great, if not, that's fine. It was a suggestion.
It's not obviously "defensive", it's you that keep not understanding what I wrote and keep saying we "changed" something. Yes, of course we have, we added new operators that, due to how the scoring system works, are now triggering a menu, when before there was no menu, because there was only one choice so, clearly, it would be useless showing a menu with only one choice, and this is how GSX always worked in years so no, the scoring works as expected in this case.
You said that "before", when you selected an operator, you "always" got the same operator for catering. Now, I don't know if Fenix2GSX was trying to do that intentionally (I don't think so) but as I've said, multiple times, it was JUST because due to the scoring (OR the airport profile) there was only a choice, which incidentally resulted in the catering operator being the same as the handler. But again, it has
NEVER been a feature ever considered or enforced by GSX. I'll repeat it again, for the last time: handling and catering operators are completely isolated from each other, and this hasn't changed in years.
Now, finally, you are adding something new, that you would LIKE (as a suggestion) to have the handler "linked" to the airline you are flying, and that would also have some impact on the catering operator. This is something (again) GSX NEVER HAD, and it's something that we obviously consider doing, like some rule file that would act like a database of "contracts", that is which companies a certain airline has a business relationship with.
But this might not be as simple or intuitive as it seems because, it would add a 3rd layer of complexity to the assignment rules, and considering how difficult seems to be to explain how the current 2-layers system works (scoring, overridden by user customization), I can only guess how much people would be confused because, what if your airline has a preference for a certain operator, and the airport profile has specified others ?
User perception would be divided between these two camps: those saying "GSX is bugged because it doesn't recognize my airline preference" and those saying "GSX is bugged because it ignores the operators, I have in the parking spot"
So yes, obviously, the 3-tiers system is possible, and we **ARE** considering it, but it will add a lot of complexity to something that is difficult to understand with just two layers (if it wasn't, we wouldn't have this conversation).
But, just to prove not only we always obviously listen to every suggestion, but that we already know what might be added, it should work like this:
1) The current scoring system should keep working as it is, to select something when no better information is available.
2) The airport profile will override and ignore the basic scoring system so, whatever is specified there, it will be the only operators available.
3) A NEW 3rd layer of rules might introduce an "airline preference", meaning a set of rules that would link airlines to their preferred operators: IF your airline is detected (not a given, considering how many 3rd party airplanes comes with missing data in the aircraft.cfg), this NEW intermediate rule file, might do an automatic choice, provided the operators ARE available to begin with, under rules #1 or #2.
