Keep in mind, the "default demand" is only a measure of the green pax. it doesn't include the bluey/purpley ones, which can be significantly higher, (theoretically limitless), depending on the level of hubbed, connecting airports you have (either yourself or in an alliance). And the more connecting pax you have, the more capacity you can, justifiably, put on the route, & the more you can charge them. I don't regard that as spamming - I just call that demand & supply, but I know others disagree. 

 

That's not "supply and demand." You're trying to justify abusing a completely broken 'game' mechanic to a player that doesn't really understand how shady that is.

If I suddenly added a ton of flights IRL that cost 2-3x+ the going rate of every other competitor, regardless of service, I wouldn't suddenly be minting new passengers out of thin air, much less ones willing to pay absurd rates to connect a bunch of times inside my network. Connecting passengers are more price sensitive, not less. AE is completely broken in that regard. If you want to monetize your "theoretically limitless" passengers inside the fundamentally flawed world of AE, by all means, but don't try to justify it as being a wholesome reflection of market behavior. It's not. You are inventing your own supply that other players cannot compete with in any meaningful way. There's nothing at play in that scenario beyond your ability to acquire more airframes to put on your spamline. This behavior is a byproduct of the broken hub mechanics that I hope get fixed in the future.

This particularly bothers me because on R7 you started a perfectly normal airline that only leased Boeing airplanes, then at some point decided to stop that and turn into a full blown $pamliner, the first one in that world. I was suddenly seeing routes with 3x the going price on them from you. I had, at that point, not even attempted to monetize my connecting passengers and was otherwise playing normally. I had grown into the #1 ranked airline through careful expansion, capital outlay, and constant preening of my routes. I didn't even run scam IFS (still don't) and I paid my employees enough to keep them happy. Now, if I want to keep my top spot, you've completely painted me into a corner by going full spamline. Now the game is effectively between you and me, with other airlines completely oblivious. I'm more than okay with that, but to see you in this thread trying to come off as slick for 'playing' AE in such a manner is disappointing. It's also more than a little weird that you offer to help new players and presumably care about the well-being of the community yet you partake in some of the most cancerous gameplay behavior. 

Ryan has nothing to worry about. He's got this. I hope he never falls to the darkside like you and I. 

I set mine in increments of 7 unless they're very short range circulatory flights, then dump the utilization remainder on major routes between major hubs. 

There's a difference between what is simply a large airline and a true spamline that dumps 5x daily demand on the market for astronomical prices. The former is good management, the latter is an abuse of unintended mechanics. 

Hopefully AE4 doesn't let you create passengers out of thin air the same way. 

When someone running Jetstar starts in the USA, even though Jetstar's base is in Australia. These kinds of players make me cry. They'll learn as soon as they progress into the forum.

I'm well aware, I just had the livery and logo handy at world start. Didn't give it much thought. Sorry to offend? 

I think he is just salty because that airline forced him out

I changed my prices on one route to match after he undercut me. Got a PM from him about it. Doesn't seem worth complaining about when you've got the entire US to build up but I suppose some people don't like the competitive aspect of the game. 

Planes can go beyond their stated range if you start reducing the amount of passengers. It's likely that you're trying to switch a route that's longer than the Q300's 629 mile range. 

Teach me your ways

If you want to run a large, valuation-competitive airliner, you need to be based in a very large country like the USA to start with. If you are running a niche airline, you can grow a lot slower and still not have much to worry about. You can use similar strategy early in the game to grow and then move towards higher reputation to defend your routes later.  

But the early game is the key. I actually started R7 about 4 or 5 months in, behind 100 something others. You basically need to balance your costs as carefully as possible while growing your fleet as much as possible, keeping in mind that going for too many types early will really hurt at the end of the month in terms of maintenance. You might be able to save up for that one 767 lease payment (always lease, every time, buy the leased aircraft when you have surplus cash) but that $6 million a month initial hit on maintenance is going to hurt. You would have been far better off leasing 5 more of your starting aircraft to bring down your per airframe maintenance costs. The early game is all about gobbling up real estate. Grow that daily profit number.

AE is not a realistic reflection of airline strategy, if you haven't caught on. A Yak 42 would not be a competitive short range plane in the US in the real world, but if you are the only one on the route or otherwise don't care about maximizing profit, it's just one of many airframes that are "good enough" to get the job done. I think I net out 3 million on each Yak 42, which isn't impressive next to a 747 making 6x that, but it's a cheap plane, comes every 2 weeks, and gets the job done. I only avoid planes that light money on fire for fuel, or ones that are too small to really be worth the trouble. If you're starting in the late era, most planes are more than fuel efficient enough. Consider getting some good turboprops for short hops under 500 miles. 

Avoid competition for as long as possible. There's no point in getting into a pissing match over a route when there's dozens of others at that same airport wide open. Leave the route jumping for later, when you've got the raw number of planes to do such things. I actually had an alliance leader kick me out early on because he felt entitled to my JFK routes, despite him not having any build up there at all. He ended up rage quitting (bankruptcy) out of the world after I easily passed him. For someone operating out of a small country, you'll need to defend pretty aggressively, but avoid it for as long as possible. 

Constantly check the used market. If it's a plane that you are already paying the family cost on, lease it (always 10 years for the lowest rate, you can always buy it outright later). If you notice someone is going bankrupt and having their planes tossed on the market, keep checking in constantly to pick them up. I grabbed quite a few 757s this way from somebody. Having a large cash reserve on hand helps when the market gets flooded by good planes. Don't grab anything that you can't immediately get in quantity unless you are already paying for that family type. I wouldn't ever order an A310-200 over an A300-600 (same family) but I'll sure take them on the used market. 

My terminal/hub strategy is pretty simple. If the cost of gates at a given airport is outrageous when hubbed, I'll build a terminal there first. Eventually the goal is to own your own terminal at every major airport you operate in because it's cost effective in the long run. I have 25-50 gates at most every major US airport and my total monthly cost is $30m for 700k+ daily passengers, which is nothing. Gates kill you early on and are a major money sink but you eventually grow to the point where their cost is of no concern. 

The maximum discount on bulk buys/leases seems to be at 25 planes, so there is no reason to order more than 25 at once unless you are grabbing something that is going out of production but is still competitive and useful (hello DC-10). Cash on hand is king. As a convenience thing, I'll buy out the rest of production up until the introduction of a new model of the same family that is superior. So, for example, buying up 737-300s until the 400 is introduced. Someone ordered 200+ 747SPs in my world. Don't do that. 

Pay attention to how much your money dips on the 16th and on the 1st, budget from there. The strategies for a niche, small country operator are probably different but the principles are the same. You seem to be off to a good start. If you have any questions feel free to PM me. 

Why does an airline needs to have a hub everywhere in the United States in realistic world (R7) Why? just to take the fun out, well take a look at this one http://ae31.airline-...e3r7&player=194

I'm honored.

The answer is that it's cheap and cost effective if you own your own terminals. 

Most families have a clear cut favorite. On the 737 in AE, you wouldn't really ever order the 500 over the 400, unless you really needed that extra short runway capability and 100 miles of range of the 500. Since most aircraft of the same range+size group tend to be similar in speed, your main concern becomes capacity and fuel flow. I class my planes by range groups, never using the absolute maximum because then you run into trouble should you want to replace them. 

If a superior model is on the way, you can always buy out family production until the first delivery of the new model. 

In the end, picking the single best model of the family and then ordering them in quantity to get the maximum discount is the most ideal approach, at least for AE. 

Yeah, because Atlanta used to be Major city like new york with popullation of 40 million people lived in the metropolitan area. That's how they got 101,491,106 passengers each year. Not because Delta spam tons of routes through Atlanta. 

You keep bringing up Atlanta, but Atlanta is not the problem. I'm talking about spammers dumping the equivalent of 25% of a small city's population into daily seats onto a route to basically nowhere for 4-5x the going rate, and making gobs of money off of that. If you want to keep pretending that's realistic "because Atlanta!" then keep doing your mental backflips. 

Yeah, how did you think Atlanta became the busiest airport in the world? It's delta main hub. It does seems right even in real life.

Yeah, I'm sure. That must be why I see people running 40:1 ratios in terms of stated demand to seats on the market to small aiports in the middle of nowhere. Realism. 

Making passenger demand not equal actual stated demand has a massive inflationary impact on the game. By a factor of 10, I'd say. Hence spamlines running 100+ daily flights to the middle of nowhere because they can. 

Greetings! And yes!

Yeah, so because of the total number of bonus passengers generated by all your hubs, you're able to do this. Doesn't seem right. 

I see your point, but some airlines will just lower their prices a little too early on their routes right after you do something like that. Sure, they could be online at the same time, but spamlines with thousands of routes... I don't think they'll try and do that to all of their routes and recognize when someone has just lowered the price. But you never know.

Number of routes is more or less irrelevant. You can manage by load factor. If you undercut and the other players loadfactor goes down enough, if they're monitoring the routes it will pop up easily. If you are an active player it's pretty easy to manicure your routes and keep them competitive. A bot would be nice but it's not so hard that it calls for one. 

Sociopathic tendencies aside, he's probably a very experienced player. But what he doesn't know is that, if done correctly, rather than under-charging, you  can actually charge way, way more than your competition, over-supply, & still fill every seat. I fly routes like the one above & can make a million bucks a day. Exactly how you do that is my secret...

 Are you talking about tweaking your flight frequency so that it matches the hub and alliance bonuses so you don't have to compete with everyone else down in the dirt? Because that's really simple. 

If not, can you really get a million dollars per day off of a 100 seat demand route? 

Edit: oh, of course, you're the guy that runs Atomic. 

nice idea, but i think its too complicated to programm, and its still a free game. so i dont think its realistic

Wouldn't it be easier? The game already determines hours available/hours total. So you would make an entity that is able to grow the total hours available to an aircraft. It would essentially be one airplane entry for the entire fleet of that aircraft that simply gains additional hours by having aircraft pooled. Have a way to submit aircraft to the pool and they are taken out of point-to-point circulation. 

I think if you keep the current system, but also allow pooling at a nerfed utilization rate, you create the right balance of fun vs micromanagement. Point to point/basing for maximum utilization would still be a thing, but players could also pool planes if they were willing to take an hours available hit (lose 4-6 a day when pooled) for a much easier time. If you balance the power of pooling with a utilization hit, you can account for the lack of location. This would also open up avenues for buildings/game mechanics that increase your pool efficiency, like building corporate offices and localized repair facilities. Airports could also have a pool efficiency statistic based on how busy they are, with heavily trafficked airports incurring more delays and hitting your pool harder. The same buildings/features would help increase the on time performance of point-to-point manually programmed planes as well.

Of all the potential features for AE4, this one has the potential to really open up the game for new players and to make it more relaxing for players that don't want to min-max their way to victory. When I scoop up 20 of a given airframe on the used market, it's a genuine pain to go through and individually set them up. Large fleets become unwieldy very quickly. 

Awesome, looks a lot like UPS. Using it now, thanks! 

Hey Hillary, I'd be honored if you'd do my airline

Airline Name: Black Mesa (after the Half Life game series)

Logo: Your choice, there's a lot of options. This one is nice, though. Lots of font possibilities too. 

Country of Origin/ Major Hub: United States, Phoenix

Aircraft: 777-300, 747-400, or A330-300. Your call. 

Specific Requests/ Details: Colors are black and orange, but do whatever you want! 

Other: Thanks for doing this. Do whatever you think is fun or cool. I'm partial to the color split style of the Argentina theme you did, really slick.