10 replies to this topic

[gadget]

My question is, why do so many people care about not filling the full 140 hours on a plane, making it unprofitable when there are 168 hours in a week, giving plenty time for maintenance.

[Maestro69]

It has to do with your Airline Reputation within the game world. You might notice that if you use all the hours each aircraft has, your airline reputation will be less than say another airline, flying each aircraft around 12-13 hours.

 

But you will find that airline that have aircraft flying 12-13 hours, are trying to replicate real world airlines and how they ran the operations in real life.

[RJM]

It also depends on the planes and routes per day. Long haul aircraft you can max out the time if less flights per day. 

[chaliceofdeath]

I have one of the "evil" spamlines running in R1, but recently I decided to switch it up slightly and improve my reputation. All of my planes are moving to 90% seat capacity for legroom and I'm slowly adjusting to 100 hours per week utilization instead of 140 hours full use. With almost 1000 routes, and the long wait for 737s...it's taking some time. Also, I'm switching from an all lease line to full ownership. Finally, with my hq in Thailand, I can only build 35 hubs...so I can't spam as much as the US or Europe Airlines.

I'm still going to chase blue pax, but the game is more fun for me with these self imposed limits. Is the 90% capacity/100 hour per week a good plan or do you guys have better results with different numbers?

[Hans.]

That sounds good.

 

90% capacity is about equivalent to most real-world low-cost airlines. While most full-service airlines get 10 or less hours utilization daily, I've seen that some real airlines get 12-15 hours daily utilization, so 100 hours per week is pretty good. I would say, try to be at around 12-14 hours per day across your entire fleet (you can see it on your airline details page along with your fleet info), as long as your airline can sustain that.

 

I usually go less than 100 hours (once my airline is well-established) in order to get better on-time performance and more realistic aircraft usage. It also gives me lots of reserve in case another airline tries to come in and take over my routes. I can just start flying more frequencies for a while or open new routes to offset the cost of lowering my prices.

[chaliceofdeath]

I honestly picked 100 hours because it seemed like a nice round number. Also, since I'm after blue pax, I don't really worry about the realistic Airlines after a certain point.

[zortan]

I honestly picked 100 hours because it seemed like a nice round number. Also, since I'm after blue pax, I don't really worry about the realistic Airlines after a certain point.

lol. 

[zelalemon]

lol. 

thank you for your meaningful contribution to this thread that no one has posted in in a month

[zortan]

thank you for your meaningful contribution to this thread that no one has posted in in a month

you're welcome

[Stevphfeniey]

To make the game challenging. AE is easy, especially since it imposes almost zero restrictions on how an airline can grow.

 

For the curious, here are some links which give you an example as to just how little airlines utilize their aircraft compared to AE. For scale the utilization for real airlines is the equivalent to leaving anywhere from 70 to 90 hours free on all of your aircraft. 

 

http://web.mit.edu/a...wbody Fleet.htm

 

http://web.mit.edu/a...wbody Fleet.htm

 

http://web.mit.edu/a...ebody Fleet.htm

[TheBlock]

Because we are not all spamlines, I like leaving 40-20 hours (In which I can use if I need to start a new route and a new aircraft has not been delivered) and also don't use the maximum capacity (It annoying me seeing 100's off 747 in all economy)