3 replies to this topic

[komang78]

I'm just a few days into the game. I like it, but I have a feeling I'm missing a few things. Could anyone offer their advice?

 

1) I send my routes out to destinations with low gate lease costs and with no competition and just enough to meet pax demand. But I only get like $12,000 in daily profit per route. Is that normal?

 

2) Because of the above, my starter aircraft monthly lease cost means I lose at least a million each month...fast path to bankruptcy. Is there something I can do to offset this cost?

 

3) IFE/IFS. I see that having it increases reputation, but also costs. Is it best for new airlines to avoid it altogether? At the moment, I only offer a cheap snack or two on short flights, 1 or 2 cheaper meals on midrange flights, and a few cheap meals and a pillow and blanket on longer flights (all charging at a few dollars more than they cost). Is this not a good model to follow?

 

4) When setting up routes, I try to avoid any competition and don't send more than what is demanded (and use the highest ticket prices allowable before pax nubers drop). Is there other factors which will raise profits?

 

5) Planes have 2 sets of numbers for range. The second is the maximum allowable distance it can fly. What is the first? The minimum? Or the average? Or what? And how do I know what is the most profitable range for a particular plane?

 

6) How do I know what the good planes are to use for different ranges, airport sizes? It seems like reputation goes up if you have smaller planes flying in a lot, compared to a bigger plane flying in infrequently.

 

7) On-time rating...how is this determined? If the rating dips, do I add more gates? or is it not related to that at all? I see on the Return Gates tab I can check when I have more gates than I need. But where can I check if I have too few?

 

8) aircraft maintenance costs seem really high at the start of the game. And if you expand to make more money, you basically have to get the same plane family as your starter plane to avoid doubling maintenance costs for choosing one from a different plane family. Is there a good way to approach adding new plane types? How soon?

 

Lots of questions, but I would like to know how to improve my game. (as it is, I'm being squeezed out by a top airline in my region who seems to add routes I create that don't have competition...so my profit margins are seriously dwindling anyhow...but it would be nice to know these things for my next airline attempt.). Thanks!

 

[Yuxi]

Welcome to AE, komang78!

1) I send my routes out to destinations with low gate lease costs and with no competition and just enough to meet pax demand. But I only get like $12,000 in daily profit per route. Is that normal?

What's the daily demand, and how many seats are you flying on that route? A 737/A320-sized aircraft should be able to pull in $150-200k a day easily, assuming you're using all the hours available.
 

2) Because of the above, my starter aircraft monthly lease cost means I lose at least a million each month...fast path to bankruptcy. Is there something I can do to offset this cost?

The short answer is simply to increase revenue. If you're using all the hours available on the aircraft (which I see you are), it should not be making a loss...
 

3) IFE/IFS. I see that having it increases reputation, but also costs. Is it best for new airlines to avoid it altogether? At the moment, I only offer a cheap snack or two on short flights, 1 or 2 cheaper meals on midrange flights, and a few cheap meals and a pillow and blanket on longer flights (all charging at a few dollars more than they cost). Is this not a good model to follow?

Personally I don't use IFE/IFS at the beginning. It doesn't affect your passenger load much.
 

4) When setting up routes, I try to avoid any competition and don't send more than what is demanded (and use the highest ticket prices allowable before pax nubers drop). Is there other factors which will raise profits?

That's a good strategy in general. To increase revenue, you'll need to add more and more routes.
 

5) Planes have 2 sets of numbers for range. The second is the maximum allowable distance it can fly. What is the first? The minimum? Or the average? Or what? And how do I know what is the most profitable range for a particular plane?

The smaller number is the range with full payload. The larger number is the absolute max range (at which point you won't be able to take any passengers). If you have fewer than the maximum allowed number of seats installed, your usable range will be somewhere between those numbers.
 

6) How do I know what the good planes are to use for different ranges, airport sizes? It seems like reputation goes up if you have smaller planes flying in a lot, compared to a bigger plane flying in infrequently.

In general, you should aim for higher frequency. You will need to match aircraft capacity with demand and range with the distance of the routes you want to fly. For example, if you want to fly a 2000-mile route with 500 demand, you can fly a 737 a few times daily.
 

7) On-time rating...how is this determined? If the rating dips, do I add more gates? or is it not related to that at all? I see on the Return Gates tab I can check when I have more gates than I need. But where can I check if I have too few?

On-time performance is related to the number of hours used on the aircraft you assign to the route. So if you have 20 hours of flying scheduled for that aircraft, your on-time performance will not be very good. Gate counts are irrelevant, so don't go leasing extra gates (they'll be reclaimed by the airport if unused for 2 consecutive months anyway). In any case, on-time performance doesn't have much of an effect on anything so don't worry about it at the beginning of your airline.
 

8) aircraft maintenance costs seem really high at the start of the game. And if you expand to make more money, you basically have to get the same plane family as your starter plane to avoid doubling maintenance costs for choosing one from a different plane family. Is there a good way to approach adding new plane types? How soon?

That's a good observation. I suggest sticking to 1-2 families at the beginning until you build up a decent sized fleet and can lease aircraft faster than those 2 families can deliver, at which point you're probably financially stable enough to overcome that extra maintenance cost associated with adding another family. Your R3 airline is doing the exact opposite, with 1 aircraft from each of 3 families. That's very inefficient in terms of maintenance costs.

[the DOC]

I agree with agree Yuxi has said apart from:

 

3) IFE/IFS. I see that having it increases reputation, but also costs. Is it best for new airlines to avoid it altogether? At the moment, I only offer a cheap snack or two on short flights, 1 or 2 cheaper meals on midrange flights, and a few cheap meals and a pillow and blanket on longer flights (all charging at a few dollars more than they cost). Is this not a good model to follow?

I always say to newer members to use Scam IFS. Basically, you choose every option at the worst quality (1) and charge the maximum price. This provides a lot more revenue.  Also, paying staff $7 saves huge money. That should make back your million loss per month. Hope this helps

Welcome to AE

[mxax-ai]

I would add that the used market usually provides cheap starting aircraft, so it's easy to expand your initial fleet from there.