The only advantages of the 757-200M over the 757-200 is that it can use shorter runways, and you can get one every two weeks instead of every three weeks. By every other metric it's an inferior product.

Whether or not something is a "replacement" for the 752 depends on your needs. In terms of raw profitability, the 757-300 with PW2037s is unmatched. Its primary disadvantage is runway length; when compared to the similarly profitable (but lower capacity) 737-400, 737 MAX 8, C919, and A320 series, it needs much longer runways. This can limit its usefulness somewhat, but that's why mixed fleets exist.

There is another thing to consider, and that is maintenance costs. Maintenance fees increase quadratically, not linearly, with the base cost being 0.3% of the retail price. That means expensive planes age "worse" than less expensive ones. a 20-year-old 757-300 is less profitable than a 20-year-old 717, because its maintenance costs stack up much more harshly.

Now... let's not delude ourselves into thinking that these extra maintenance fees will break the bank. A sufficiently profitable IFE will pay the entirety of an aircraft's maintenance bills well into its 30s, but for airlines with razor-thin margins it is something worth considering; higher sticker price means higher maintenance fees down the line. Much higher. 

The base maintenance cost is 5% of the average aircraft price in that family that you own. So within that family (727, A320, etc) if you have 20 planes priced at $100,000,000 and 20 priced at $120,000,000, your base MX cost would be 5% of $110,000,000 or $5,500,000.

Ongoing maintenance costs are a little more opaque, but per month they are approximately 0.3% of the purchase price of the aircraft times 0.0048 ·A² + 0.002 ·A + 1, where A is the age of the aircraft in years to one decimal place. This means that aircraft maintenance costs increase quadratically with age, so while maintenance costs between a 2 and 3 year old aircraft won't be extreme, a 25 vs 26 year old aircraft can have a big gap in ongoing costs.

The formula is simple:

Connecting pax per day between hubs = 0.002 * Total pax per day in+out of hubs

So if you have 50,000,000 passengers flying into an airport but it's not a hub, you get precisely 0 connecting passengers from that.

However, connecting passengers at one airport magically teleport to other airports. So 50,000,000 passengers per day out of a hub means you can get 100,000 connections out of ANY OTHER HUB, regardless of whether or not the two hubs are connected with a flight.

If you buy a plane for $100,000,000, you trade $100,000,000 in cash for an asset worth $100,000,000. That asset depreciates, so you must make back enough cash each year to compensate for the depreciation of the aircraft to "break even" in terms of overall valuation.

By leasing instead of buying, you only have to earn back the lease cost per month to "break even". If the cost of the lease is less than the amount by which the aircraft depreciates, you end up making more money overall. 

Looking at the first graph, do I understand correctly that if the depreciation rate of an aircraft is equal or less than 4.5%, it will be cheaper to buy it than to lease it even without a discount? For example, I buy an aircraft in a used market, or I order just one new from the factory.

That is correct. Below 4.5%(ish) the discount is negative, so you pay more than retail price by leasing. 

In the grand scheme of things, the difference between leasing and buying isn't significant. It's not difficult to make an aircraft profitable.

However, a fleet of 1000 planes making 10% margins vs 30% margins...

Gate leasing fees, in dollars, are 1% of the annual passengers through that airport. When you build terminals, the fee structure is much more complicated; you get a discount the more gates you build.

The fly-in breakfast at the local airport this year will be a real treat in my new Bonanza. Lmao.

Okay I'm done screwing around now. Time to forget the forbidden knowledge.

Oh wow, and a bunch if Il-14s of various flavours with PT-6s too. That's so funny. Scrapped!

Ha! Sure enough, in R0, there are also a bunch of VC.1 Vikings for sale with PT-6As.

I was scrolling earlier, saw the PT-6 model and thought "What? PT-6? On a plane that old? Huh." and then went about my day.

Turns out it was indeed the same person who modded the 707s. What a coincidence. I'll buy them all and scrap them.

It seems this person did more than I thought. I'm going through my planes and finding many of them have very wrong engines. Tu-114s with PT-6s for example. Not cool. Cheaters suck.

Oh, the irony.

I really can't overstate just how little your opinion means to me.

It has not been patched.

(S4C) Sandbox World - No Political Restrictions (5 min / day)

 

2 ZA

 

390 1,238 6 3,974 1,226,746 9,766,344

$200,631,492,241

 

That's really interesting. The game has safeguards to prevent ordering aircraft that aren't yet available... at least, it doesn't seem to be possible in the same way that adding different engines is possible.

How strange.

I wonder if Yuxi will read this thread before banning me when he sees all the illegal nonsense I've been up to. It's purely academic, I promise.

Also note that in a world that is in 2008 they already have the A320neo...    

Now that is odd. Which world/airline is this?

...How? What??

The trick is to abuse game mechanics, but that's a pretty cheese way of playing the game. I do it because I like the optimization challenge and deep-diving into the numbers of the game.

If you want to run a regular airline (like most people) then a 10-15% margin is perfectly reasonable.

It appears the correct IATA code is CFK. QAS does not appear to exist; indeed, it is even unclear whether it has ever existed.

In R0, the user who owns China Eastern also owns Swiss International Air Lines. 

I noticed that China Eastern consistently had more planes than other airlines, even though they had only started delivery a year or so prior.

A little bit of digging reveals a pattern of Swiss International purchasing and then immediately selling aircraft, which are purchased by China Eastern. I am unable to find a single Swiss International aircraft that was purchased by anyone else, so this is clearly deliberate and the user is keeping track of when Swiss International sells their planes so they can be purchased on the exact day they come on the used market.

Pretty scummy, if you ask me. Only one airline should be allowed per user, per world.

Money printer go brrrrrr

While I would tend to agree, this is far more than luck. Aircraft are consistently sold within only a few months of delivery, and always purchased by China Eastern. This is deliberate.

Nah. I would if I could do it in bulk, but one at a time? Not worth it.

Might be the same idiot who messed with engines in R0.

Yep.