Let'stake the 50k per day example and do so calculating..

50 * 24 = 1.200.000

This is your profit per game month. Now say you need to wait three months for the plane to be delivered. That makes the missed profit 3.6 million. If you could have gotten one at 700k over value (making it 20 milion), you missed out on 2.9 milion of profit. Ofcourse, if you can get your planes for a serious discount, this changes the picture, but for a discount of that much, you need to place like 20 or 30 aircraft orders..

And that is part of the point for the larger players. Although the first planes of an order may not take9 months, if you order more than two, they are limited to 2 a day. To take your theoretical 20 aircraft, it will take at least 10 days before you get your next aircraft. So if you can afford it, you buy both on the open market and from the Q.

That said, if I was a smaller player (I was once), and had enough to buy one on the open market, I would buy 2 by either choosing another aircraft almost as good with no order delay, or order my aircraft and take the slight delay.

Last round with unlimited deliveries, there were only a few aircraft in play. This round, there are a lot of Saabs and ATR 72's, and EMB's that didn't get used. I substituted ATR 72's for my Q400's early this game, as long as my routes were about 500 miles or less, there was no noticeable difference. Certainly not enough to make up for the delivery delay.

No, i mean as perhaps flying to small airports (around 50k) from a hub might not be as lucrative to warrant service, thats all.

I would think that those are the exact airports to hub, but only for less than 1000 miles. Although it makes no RL economic sense to hub small cities in CA from your ATL base.

Nope, some airports just WONT be profitable to fly to from other countries. Regardless of hub size. This will all be explained in the V3 Manual.

What about hub to hub?

TTC V3 can be downloaded http://www.woodrow.p...lculator_V3.xls

It's not that I disagree that there should be more cities/better data, it's just not at the TOP of the list right now

It's cool. As long as its ON the list

We're wading through a lot of data, mostly the aircraft right now. I think that with improved AC data, the pax loads out of the current cities wouldn't be bad at all, necessarily, so I've been focused of AC data.

Always looking for improvement, although I think that the number of cities ends up being a much more limiting factor than the passenger load. This is a factor of the number of players. More people that you have places to put them.

I'm swapping the database (As i said i would in the previous announcement)...

This may result in a downtime and a loss of data from this point forward...

I'm hoping the game will be back to "normal" inside 12hrs...



Just a heads up as i'm not sure at what point the database will "disappear" so to speak...


:airplane

Are you going to let us know when it is safe to go back into the water?

Just wondering, if the database goes back, would one recieve their cash back or would it be lost? Thanks for your help/advice in this situation, because I don't know if ti reverts back if that means that the money would be returned. Thanks a lot

P.S.: Do you think it will be "normal" by the month change?

Reverting means that the game would be restored to some point in the past and all game play after that point would be gone, as though it never happened. So your money would not be 'lost' it never happened because that point in the game never happened. for example, if it was restored to Oct 1, then all the game play after that is gone. No money earned and no money spent. All Route changes, gone. All purchases, sales and bankrupties, gone. You have to play October over again.

SWA is a rather crappy airline, no noticable change in fares out of Denver when they moved in, and most of the time Frontier and United have better prices than they do with a better product. (not to mention with United I can connect from Colorado Springs where I live into Denver and get pretty much anyware). SWA here is crammed up into crappy Concourse C and is still 4th nearly 5th place in Denver.

Denver already had a LLC in Frontier. Its the Walmart of the airline industry. Bash it if you must but it makes money.

When will everyone learn that SWA is the standard. If you make more than your counterpart at SWA you won't for long. Hurts but is reality. Deal with it.

are you saying critisism of WN is not justified?

Who are you talking to?

I call SWA 'Greyhound Airlines', with the way you are treated, you probably should have taken the bus. One experience on them was enough, for me to learn. Plus I have yet to find a route they run, where the competiton doesn't match or beat their prices. After cranking up 32k air miles last year, and 25k the year before, assigned seats, special lines, and free upgrades by far mean more to me than stupid slogans and irritating commericals.

You illustrate my point. If the SWA cost structure is supported by a certain ticket price, than the legacy carriers must reduce their cost structures to match that ticket price. So that is why the legacy carriers are reducing pay, it is one of the few areas they can reduce on the cost side.

I did over 225K last year. I have no problem with SWA on flights less than 2 hours. I don't get food, the upgrade is pretty worthless, and I log in on line 24 hours in advance and get a group A. So for 2hrs or less, I can't see the legacy airlines offering any value add. And I worry about getting stuck on a RJ. Compared to a RJ, the SWA 737 is FC.

I flew mostly coast to coast last year. In that case, I agree with all your reasons.

The solution of killing off a legacy is a way to increase ticket prices by reducing competition rather than reducing costs to meet revenues. As long as the LCC's are around, any increase in tickets will not result in an increase in service but will go to servicing legacy costs which have no direct benefit to the flying public. reducing capacity may have been a solution in 1980 but it isn't the solution now.

They can bash SWA all they want, but for reasons that matter. I prefer a little upscale myself, love those free upgrades to 1st.

But the public has demonstrated that price is more important than anything else. And business travelers will no longer subsidize the rest of the plane.

So unless the legacy airlines find someway of adding value to earn the extra ticket prices, they must find a way to get thier costs in line with the LCC. Right now airline seats are a commodity with very little pricing power. If any airline employee confuses what passengers are willing to pay with what they think they should earn, they are in for a rude awakening.

That said, I do feel for them. I went through the dot com boom and bust and I know how it feels to have your income cut by 30-40%. It truly sux

Well, look at the king of the LCC's, Southwest, you get what you pay for, no or little food, very few blankets or pillows per flight, cramped seating, and a cattle call boarding style. I am one to think LCCs are part of the problem, not the solution.

Not a big fan of SW or rather a big fan of traveling in style so all you say is true (never had a problem getting blankest/pillows but I digress). The fact is that all the legacies now have that level of service back in peasant and then still lose money.

They are just good at what they do: move people from point A to B. Better than anyone else. You can't convince me that those things you mention cost $100 per flight. But every time SWA goes into a new city the fares come down $100.

We need a dead legacy soon, it will either be Delta or Northwest. Also banning a strike is illegal in some states... And if they did, there is no way to stop a strike they can just not show up to work. (I believe that is what Denver's transit did).

The LF's are going to be greater than 85% this summer. Everyone says that there is too much capacity, maybe true post 9/11 but not anymore. The legacies have already dropped seats.

I don't like flying the crowded skies now (let's not mention TSA). Dropping the legacy airline would do NOTHING for the surviving airlines, since they don't really compete against each other. They compete against the LCC. Which will fill all that capacity in rapid order.

The problem is costs not capacity. The business model is LCC.

But frankly, prices have to come up. Even the LCC's are having trouble making a profit with the increase of fuel costs.

Impossible to have opinion without knowing when v3 to be released.

If in next 30 days, continue round.

If 3+ months - start new round.

If unknown but likely 3+ months, it makes no difference when.

If v3 ready, then let's do it.

What is everybody's opinion (and no flaming, please) on the need of the game to impose some real market force that makes profitability hard, and makes expansion past some certain size more difficult? In the game, the faster an airline grows, the faster it can expand. In real life, the opposite holds true in most cases. Opinions? Thoughts?

Yes and No.

There should be some scaling related to airline size. This is a problem with open ended economic games, size matters too much. There are always natural limits in RL which reduce growth rate. For game purposes, this should be set up not as punishment for success but rather the better you get, the harder each level of improvement should be. You often see that in RPGs.

A couple logical limitations would be aircraft deliveries and gates (terminals). With a limitation on aircraft deliveries, growth is constrained. I have no idea what the optimal delivery rate would be, but I would suggest that it vary by size, so that it is harder to get large planes. (as it is in RL). Gates have been a limit in this round and I think it should be tweaked a little, for example, the suggestion on aircraft size in an airport. I am not sure that runway length will do it alone, because many airports have runways built for military or commercial emergency reasons, which don't refelct the ability of the airport infrastructure to handle large aircraft. Also, if terminals were limited to airports where the airline already has say 5 gates, that would prevent the big airlines from just spending $150M and building a presence.

But it is also very very important to allow all the layers to have a good time playing. It shouldn't be a dodgeball game where if you don't suceed in the first game year come back later. 200 airlines in RL don't fly in the US or Europe. But if you want 700 - 900 players, then you have to accomidate some unrealistic conditions. Worry less about the top 20, who in RL would have cleared the board, worry about making or keeping it fun for numbers 200-400.

So in conclusion, I think that there are some things which can be imposed to make the game more challenging but doing anything should be done cautiously so that it soesn't ruin it for the vast majority.

So where do you plan on flying it? MCO-?

Is it time for Boeing to start looking at a replacement for early model 737s?

If so, what would you like to see?

As noted here, the early models were replaced by the 737NG series.

The replacement for the 737NG series depends on several factors, the drivng one being new engines which are not due until the 2011/13 timeframe. Without new engines, even using 787 technology, the estimate is only a 10% performance improvement.

He is doing orlando also

Some good advice from all.

The ATR42 is great as a J31 replacement where you have short routes, high LF and little competition. The operation cost per seat is higher than the 328, so the economics slide towards the 328 as the game goes along. Also, the 328 has greater range, so you can fly to more cities. but don't expand too quickly, gate costs can eat up a lot of profits.

Replace the j31 with ATR or 328 ASAP. don't bother going larger yet, you can do that soon enough once you have the cash flowing.

Whether to buy on the used market or new depends on delivery. The sooner you have an airframe on line the sooner you can make money off it. Unless I can get a good deal from the used market (less than list) I prefer to buy new. I can increase my DOP while I pay off the debt. But that depends on when I can get the plane. If there is a multimonth wait, it is worth buying used or going to an alternative choice rather than foregoing profits. The Q400 is a great plane but not that much better than an ATR72 or EMB or Saab to be worth missing on 3-4 game months of profits.

Also remember that you aren't stuck with an airframe for the rest of the game. You can trade in and upgrade as you expand. So that ATR42 becomes an ATR72, the 328 becomes an EMB170.

Don't bother with Mainline jets until you get about $1M DOP. Again, the defered profits are not worth it.

I like the idea since there was no heads up on the reset as in the past

in real life they wont give back the money even if you did not use it for christs sakes.. you paid to use it .. not to not use it then get the money back, the owner of the terminal in this example would not make any money..


in the real world its use and if not.. your fault for not useing it and its a loss. just like in this game.. seriously it would make NO sense to have a refund for something you claimed you would use.. that you didnt

maybe yes somethigns do, but not when it comes to terminals where you'd agree to use them and then end up getting rid of them because you couldnt find a way to use it..

the game would be to damn redicously easy then because then you wouldnt really loose money... thats another point so just get over it and use the gates

[Edited on 11/1/2005 by Nathaniel]

in RL, gates are considered assets and are sold and traded like any other asset. Maybe AE should set up a used gate market like the used aircraft market.

If you rent gates from an airport and then decided NOT to use them i think you should get a full refund.

Limit the refund to when you have assigned no aircraft and within one game month of applying for the gate...

What about a used gate market like the used aircraft market. Gates are assets of the airlines in RL and are sold.

Maybe 1/2 price or maybe it cost 1 gate if there are multiple gates returned.

Don't think it should be a freebe. Otherwise you could game the system to block out other airlines.

And you can't rent another gate at that city for a month or two. So you don't have some one rent, return, rent, and so on with the effect that the gates never come on the market long enough for someone else to get them.