17 replies to this topic

[Stefan1515]

i got a airline its kinda big, dop around 10mil. im still kinda new and if someone could just help/ give me some pointers that would be great

[GBO]

Hey I am also in that world with my own airline, a few tips; stick to maybe 1 or 2 aircraft family types until you are making a comfortable profit as this reduces the cost of maintenance etc. I try and fly routes with minimal competition, also I don't know if you have made any IFS yet, however if you make a good ifs then this can also increase the profits of your routes. Also get rid of any spare gates unless you tend to use them in the short term, please just ask if you have any question 

[Andri Arifin]

Yes, try to use only 1 aircraft family until you have better profit. Also you can maximize gate, don't make too many route with low gate utilization.

[Stefan1515]

im using 3 rn, which i dont think is to bad matenince wise, im using atrs for regional/ short routes. McDouglases for medium to other places in south america(im based in peru) and airbus for flights to mexico, canada, france etc.

[GBO]

the a300 and a340 are classed as different aircraft families, just curious here but have you leased all your aircraft and if you have how long have you leased each aircraft for?

[Stefan1515]

5-10 years

[Stormbringer748]

    I don't want to hijack the OP, but I've got a couple of questions myself. I've only been around for 2 weeks, sort of got my head around things, have a strategy in place for the next reset, just need to clear up a few things.

 

1. What's the unspoken rule regarding competition? I understand if you want to be a complete c#%t you can attempt to wipe out the competition by going for 100% LF, but if your not a complete c#%t, what's considered acceptable?

    If 1 competitor is occupying the route, is 50% considered to be fair and equitable and if there were 2 then would 33% be ok etc.?

 

2. At what point should I be looking at purchasing aircraft?

 

3. I understand hubs provide blue pax, but if 95% of your routes are 100% green then is there any real benefit, are they worth the extra cost?

 

4. Is there any one formula that works best to achieve highest ticket prices?

 

5. Do pax numbers increase as the game progresses or remain static?

 

6. I'll probably get zero responses to this one, but what's your #1 trade secret?

 

   TIA

 

   Storm

[davedave]

1. I don't know of any rules as such, but don't drop the price from the default. If you do, everyone matches you and you get the same ratios but with less profit than if everyone matches the default price. 

 

2. You get 50% of lease payments as credit towards buying the aircraft, so until the cost to purchase hits zero you're effectively paying half the lease fee. If you want to keep planes for the entire game, lease everything on first acquisition until the buy-cost hits zero. (I assume the lease costs are in proportion to the depreciation, but I've never checked. If not it's theoretically possible that a plane with ultra-low depreciation could cost less per month than half the lease payment.)

 

The differences are fairly small, though. Off the top of my head it's ~1-2% a year

 

3. Once you can afford to build terminals, they might as well be hubs. Before that, not worth doing IMO. Even if you don't want to build a huge airline, hub passengers are a convenient way to fill up the remainder if you have a half-full flight or something. If you're making lots of money from IFS then they may well be worth putting on special flights for.  Also, see point 6.

 

4. If you mean a way to calculate them, then no. If you mean a way to maximise them, see point 6.

 

5. I think they're fairly static - seasonal fluctuations IIRC, but it's all minor. 

 

6. If you have enough daily pax - 1m+, but the more the better - then you can raise ticket prices above default on hub routes and fill the seats with connecting pax. Even with them only paying 50%, you're still making much more than all-green. By the time you get to 10m+ pax a day you're making ridiculous amounts, at least 5x the normal profit.

 

Two corollaries to that, if you want to top the leaderboard:

 

- Grow as fast as possible from the start. Don't worry about every type of plane making great profits as long as you're increasing total pax - get them all, fill them all.

- Within reason, nothing you do at the start will make much difference to your final position. A few billion is irrelevant once you have tens of billions DOP. 

[Stormbringer748]

Awesome responses mate, cleared up a lot for me, really appreciate it. TBH, I'd be happy if I can put an AC on every route that originates from my starting hub. I've read it a few times, players suggesting spreadsheets are common place, so I've spent most of my time just experimenting with that, what info I really need, simple stuff like AC types for particular routes, saves searching for it constantly and kinda gives you an overall picture of how your Airline will expand and develop over time, that is until I'm more familiar with everything they may decide not to bother. It's all one big experiment atm. I've only completed the work out of a single hub and despite not having any real desire to be top dog, it'd be fun if I could crack the top 50 first full session. As you suggest though, the start is all about acquiring AC and filling those seats and I'm sure I'll make many mistakes in my first outing, but if I'm having fun, I'll keep having a crack, that is, until I'm not. 

[Stormbringer748]

DP

[Stefan1515]

helped me to thx!

[Stefan1515]

ive made a ok medium sized airline,  expeirmenting w/ some stuffs when this other world resets i think im gonna focus on try 2 their. is their any rules to selecting the best starting location? my most succsesfull airline i started in peru, no competition on my routes(besides some to usa, mexico and brazil), but i feel like im running out of places to send planes to. is it better to start in a slightly larger country like mexico?

[Village Idiot]

ive made a ok medium sized airline,  expeirmenting w/ some stuffs when this other world resets i think im gonna focus on try 2 their. is their any rules to selecting the best starting location? my most succsesfull airline i started in peru, no competition on my routes(besides some to usa, mexico and brazil), but i feel like im running out of places to send planes to. is it better to start in a slightly larger country like mexico?

I can recommend a market with more than one medium sized airport so you can better utilize gate resources in foreign markets. Countries like Mexico, Spain, Italy, Turker, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Japan are usually good options. For example with my airline Minerva based in Spain I can easily fill up all 50 slots at an expensive airport like LHR or CDG from multiple airports. For example from Russia you can fly to ARN from DMO and LED (among others) early rather than add lots of routes from one airport to many destinations.

 

Also keep the number of aircraft families to maximum two for a couple of years. Bonds are great but you need to make sure to not overdue it to keep your credit rating up so you can maximize the number of leases as cash flow improves. I stay away from propeller aircraft early in the game. Really short haul capacity can better be allocated to medium range jets with leftover hours. 

[Stefan1515]

ya on the new reset i started in moscow, its only like 1/2 a year in and im making a dop of 5mil which isnt bad for so early i think

[Village Idiot]

ya on the new reset i started in moscow, its only like 1/2 a year in and im making a dop of 5mil which isnt bad for so early i think

5 million DOP after a half a year sounds ok. Your 747 order is probably something you'll regret though due to maintenance costs. If you go into the Airline Finance -> Aircraft Maintenance tab you will see that for each aircraft type there is a base monthly cost. Note that this is the same regardless of if you have 1 aircraft of a type or 100. In my world the base monthly cost for the 747 family is $14 million per month! The cost per 747 ranges from 800k - 1 million depending on age and engine. Basically you will be paying $16 million a month for those two 747's. It will be very difficult to generate enough cash flow to cover that cost. The Airbus 330/340 family is a bit cheaper and does the same job. I would stick to those for a couple of years for your long-haul. In the early game I strongly recommend to stick to one narrowbody jet type until you get to about 10 or so. The ATR you have is fine too in the early game as long as you fly them to places with cheap gate costs and it looks like you have that with most of your routes. 

 

When you get your next MD83 I recommend adding DMO-OSL and SVO-OSL if there is no competition on those routes. Also consider Kazan, Rostov and Volgograd to OSL if you have remaining slots at OSL. Keeping gate costs down early game is important. Then do the same to HEL before adding new European cities. Those kind of operations can be the cash cows you need to expand and later defend.

[davedave]

. Basically you will be paying $16 million a month for those two 747's. It will be very difficult to generate enough cash flow to cover that cost. The Airbus 330/340 family is a bit cheaper and does the same job.

 

In my experience two 747s should easily cover their maintenance even without any IFS etc. You can do it with one, though. Same for smaller planes. Base cost is proportional to initial purchase price, so it doesn't make a lot of difference what plane it is in most cases. If anything you get more revenue per seat on smaller planes, so they're much easier to get to cover the maintenance.

 

At the beginning of the game it's worth thinking about delivery dates. If you get the first of a new type on the 23rd of a month, you pay the maintenance cost that month but get no revenue from it. If you get it on the 1st, you get a whole month's revenue.

 

Also, if you're delaying deliveries, there's nothing to stop you stacking the first two or three of a type - that way you wait longer, but get a few together to help with the base maintenance.

 

For what it's worth, I don't think going for expensive gates early on is worthwhile. It's cheaper to rent gates at several smaller airports with the same total demand as one gate at a big airport, and having a wider spread of routes has other benefits. Airline rep goes up with the number of destinations, up to a certain point. And it's more 'robust' to be diversified, if one route goes wrong you lose a little bit of your income instead of a major chunk.

[Stefan1515]

ive ordered a few more 737. im currently gonna have 5 families of aircrafts. im not limited by money much, im just waiting for things to reset. also did fly to all those routs you said. there are two other russian airlines, but we all started in different airports so there hasnt been much competition so far. thx everyone for the help

[Stefan1515]

http://ae31.airline-...ae3s1&player=27my airline rn, i customized it and i think its quite funny