55 replies to this topic

[bAnderson]

Looking through today, I wondered who had different regional jets and how many. I was disappointed.

Embraer has produced thousands of aircraft. Currently, throughout game worlds many times you have up to 500 produced. What is the reason? The aircraft work.

Bombardier has also produced several thousand aircraft. There are barely any in game worlds, unless you have a forum alliance member who uses them. But they should be used by almost every airline. Unless every single carrier in game is domestic/international only.

What are your thoughts?

[grand_exile]

I think its because of the cost associated with leasing the gates. For example, if you use regional jets you are required to use more slots, therefore more gates. In addition some of the jets require a long runway for its size. Its also quite expensive. That's my opinion though. I personally like to use CRJ and BAE Avrojet.

[Airboss777]

It all depends on how & why you play the game. If you want to create an airline with your favourite planes & high frequencies, you can certainly do that. But if you're only playing to be number one or make as much money as possible, larger planes can be more profitable.

 

For example, if you have a major international airport & you're flying big jets on 4,000 - 5,000 mile routes, those aircraft will still have a small number of hours left that you can use. Not enough for another 4,000 mile trip, but enough to service 100 pax a day at a small regional airport 150 miles away. You could put a regional turboprop on that route if you want, but you have to pay crew wages & aircraft maintenance, leasing, etc for those aircraft. The smaller aircraft also need more slots at the bigger airports, which can be expensive. It's more profitable, although completely unrealistic, to just use the spare hours on anything from an A320 to a B747 if the runway there is big enough!

[dieseltu]

The games not realistic. Anything can make money , even a 747 island hopping. so why use them.   A little money for a lot  more work.   That ain't how to make money. Were lazy...

[Andy-J]

I always buy E175ish aircraft and then just replace em with 737s or A320s (except for this one I have rn in Tanzania. That one kind of needs the smaller jet to make ANY service profitable.) But yeah, why fly EJets from ATL to MEM when you can throw a 737 on the route at half the frequency and make the same or more money? No sense.

[TNT88]

Just like in real life, it's not the most fuel efficient aircraft on the market compared to A320 or B737. Also, slots restrictions.

[Stevphfeniey]

http://imgur.com/gRMXtis

Lol

[alexSD]

RJ are not very efficient. An  Example:

Tokyo Haneda - Nagasaki. The gate in Haneda costs 700 000 the Month.

With the small capacity of a RJ you can't make proftit's, they're landing fees, IFE, IFS, fuel etc.

You can't make good profits whith RJ's.

It's much more effficient to fly Haneda - Nagasaki with a " half " 737 800 as with an CRJ 700.

[berubium]

I don't play to win so I use regional jets quite a bit.  Especially to get the higher amount of frequencies I want in the Canadian domestic market (to somewhat model reality).  I like to run YVR-YYC with 10 to 12 daily frequencies (even though in real life it's higher).  If I use A319s, I am orders of magnitude over route demand.  If I use a CRJ-705 or EMB-170, I can achieve this, but at the cost of some profits because of the fees associated with it.

 

I wouldn't mind using regional jets more often to fly between major cities in Canada & the US (in some cases I do) to be more in line with reality, but I find it hard to make a buck that way, so I typically use larger aircraft in the A320 & B737 families.

[xarxa]

I love running routes at near the given demand in a high frequency service (say, seven times a day so I only need one gate) and then will try to use as many Q400NGs as possible to fill that route, and use bigger planes (A320s and 787s) to meet the rest of the demand.  The Q400NG is craaaaaaaaaazy efficient fuel-wise.

 

My very first airline though, I was flying 767s and A380s just once a week everywhere I could.  It's really about play style and what the simmed passengers are willing to put up with.

[berubium]

I agree with xarxa about the efficiency & awesomeness of the Q400NG.  Once that thing comes out, it pretty much makes regional jets obsolete because of its comparable range.  Still, I don't mind using RJs for realism despite them being substantially less profitable.

 

That being said, in real life, if I was flying a 1400 mile route, I would much rather fly it in a regional jet over a turboprop just for the time savings alone.  In fact, the route I fly most often (YXJ-YVR in British Columbia, Canada) switched from CRJ-200 service to Q400NG service about 3 years ago.  The flight takes an extra half an hour & it's only about a 500 mile route.  Of course it saves the airline big money & the aircraft is practically new, so I'm not really complaining.

 

Like the above poster said, it's all about play style.  If you like regional jets, use 'em (although beware at airports with super high gate fees).  If you want to win the game, you might want to pass (and also give up a lot of your free time while you're at it).

[iquit]

I'm not actively playing anymore, so I'll tell you why (unlike some newbies who are so keen to brag about their useless strategy such as early overcharge, I kept quiet about the real trick).

The reason is having too many aircraft slows down your page load, so you only want big aircraft. Fast page load is what sets you apart from those puny spamlines. They can play 24x7 with 1 minute page load, but you can beat them by only playing 2 hours a day with 5 seconds page load.

 

BTW, gate charges are not the one hurting small plane profitability. The culprit is "Other Costs", which I haven't heard anyone giving a satisfactory explanation of what they actually are.

[TNT88]

^LOL, no s***.

[berubium]

BTW, gate charges are not the one hurting small plane profitability. The culprit is "Other Costs", which I haven't heard anyone giving a satisfactory explanation of what they actually are.

I agree with you that 'Other Costs' are the biggest factor.  That being said, RJs can still be tough if you're only operating them out of major centres with massive gate costs like LHR, CDG, HND, HKG, PEK, JFK, etc. especially when competition is involved & you have to lower prices to keep your profits up.  While the routes may show a profit, it it's not substantial, it can be vaporized at the end of the month when your gate fees are charged.  If you're running a 49x weekly regional jet service route to PEK (i.e. using the entire gate) & your daily profit is $30k, that equates to $720k profit per month (based on the 24 day month).  Gate fees at PEK alone are $666k, which only leaves you $54k monthly profit, which likely wouldn't cover the gate fees for the other airport & the monthly aircraft maintenance fees.

 

Of course the above example is by no means the typical RJ route.  One can certainly make profits with regional jets as I do with many of my airlines.  The above example is just to illustrate that RJs can be tougher (but far from impossible) to operate profitably into or out of airports with huge gate leasing fees.

[bAnderson]

BTW, gate charges are not the one hurting small plane profitability. The culprit is "Other Costs", which I haven't heard anyone giving a satisfactory explanation of what they actually are.

Other Costs... we should ask what they are. YUXI!!!

[Tesla]

Other costs are anything not covered in the cost list, so cleaning and de-icing fees, parking fees, atc handling fees and a lot of other things. It's a hard thing to explain.

[TNT88]

Basically, the more frequencies you have, the more those other costs gonna get bigger. Most regional jets already have high fuel consumption already, they also carry less passengers. So, yeah, not the best idea to save money on.

[bAnderson]

My real concern is that big companies (United, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Iberia) have lots of regional jets and aircraft, but many of the in game companies don't, even when necessary.

[raraoul]

Actually, i've made calculations for the same route (Lamezia-Milaan Linate). I compared the Q300, 56 seats with the 737-300, 149 seats.

Flying the Q300 18 times a week -> 144 weekly seats

737-300 7 times a week -> 149 weekly seats

I calculated the daily profit of both aircraft with numbers as gate costs, operating costs, maintenance costs, depreciation costs, and the revenues

At the end the Q300 is more profitable (25000 each day for the Q300, 15000 each day for the 733)

However, the Q300 needs 78 hours for this route and the 733 only 24 so at the end the 733 will be more profitable as the 733  is able to fly to more destinations. But, for the route itself the regional jet Q300 is more profitable..

[buckeyecapsfan19]

Of course, I'm only in S4, so feel free to ignore/discredit me at your leisure, but for some routes, an RJ is an absolute necessity. Take CLE-DAL. Due to the simulation of the Wright Amendment, I'm limited to CRJ-200LR or E-145XR on that route. Last time I checked, I'm flying that with a 10xdaily frequency with 2 or 3 ERJ-145XRs. There are some city pairs, however, that are better suited for a twice or three times daily CR7 than for a once daily 319 or 738....