TMairliner, i am playing in sandbox S4B as Leerjet air and have over 50 hubs already.

 

It's slow going at first, especially in the earliest stages of the game.

 

As you fly more routes/more flights on a route, the number of connecting passengers slowly accumulates and builds over time.

 

Hence to take full advantage of hubs, revisit those routes periodically and keep pushing the boundaries.

Thanks Book Siberia!  

I think I had in my mind that you're limited in hubs to just a couple.  I'll re-think what I'm doing.

I was testing this in the sandbox, and I'm not seeing any throughput of blue passengers in my hub after 6 weeks.  However, someone has gone and put an airline between some of my spokes.

I did note that demand between my hub and it's routes has dropped by over 100/day.

Connecting (read: blue) pax only pay 50% fare on routes they're on.

Agreed.  So, what it looks like to me is that, by opening a hub, you're just lowering your profits.  I say this because, it seems  the "blue" passengers are just taken from my already existing full price passengers.

Hi!

I've been playing a little over a week.  And, I'm trying to understand the purpose, if any, of hubs.  Now, I understand their real-world use, and I understand that in the game, they offer some bumps to passenger throughput, but I'm not seeing where it's all that much to speak of.

For example:

STL to ORD shows 833 passengers

STL to SDF (louisville) shows 198 passengers

ORD to SDF shows 335 passengers

If I had STL set up as a hub with routes to ORD and SDF, I'd expect to see some of those 335 passengers that want to go from ORD to SDF to take the flight to STL.  Those 198 passengers from SDF to STL would start to nudge up, to, say, 220 passengers.

I don't think I'm seeing that.  I do see the "blue" passengers, but it seems they are more of a penalty on the 198 passengers I'm moving already than they are an increase in volume.

Am I wrong here?  (That's totally possible....I may have done the math incorrectly.)  Have I, perhaps, not given it enough time to make a difference?

Thanks very much!

I use small planes for short routes that have a demand of 0 - 5. they can make you good money to if you have the time to place them on routes. it can be very time consuming to place them on routes if you have a large fleet of them. I will spend 4 - 5 hours a day placing them. I say they make good money because you can charge 6 - 8 times the set ticket price which if done right then these small planes like the Bonanza can make 200,000 a month

When you say placing them on routes, what do you mean?  Like SUS to BLV to MDW to BLV to SUS?

Again, thanks.

Was going to start another question, but maybe this is a good place to put it for now.

The world I'm in allows for a second airline by the same player.  Would it make any sense at all to build a small regional airline into the main terminal of my main airline, and form an alliance?  I haven't quite gotten the hang of how alliances benefit the airline.  Also not sure if hubs would be beneficial in that kind of operation.

Thanks very much!

Small aircraft are only useful for very small destinations or highly limited runway space. I personally use them for what they are used for IRL, i.e. tiny airports in the Caribbean from short ranges like SXM-EUX with a PC-6.

 

I only recommend using them for such small routes if you have a lot of time to run through the routes and work each one individually. Like you mentioned, they barely scrape a profit, this is totally normal. The best way to make money with them in my experience is to not have IFE on board and to use scam IFS (I hate using scam IFS). They also need to have very, very high utilization to earn a decent profit (keep in mind this is all relative). Each individual type of small aircraft has its economic sweet-spot (routes not to long where fuel is too expensive and not too short where ticket prices are too low) where the route produces the maximum operational profit.

 

In short, you need small airports (large airports have MASSIVE landing fees when compared to individual flight profits), sweet-spot ranges, and patience.

 

Welcome to AE!

Thank you very much for the answer!

I had been toying with the idea of having a small plane fleet, where they each fly to many destinations, but only a couple of trips for each route.

Is there a benefit to flying a plane less than its maximum hours?  I've noticed some of the really large airlines have utilizations in the 15-18 range.  My planes are all at 22+ hours utilization.

Hello,

Still getting into the game (less than a week of play time), but I'm trying to better understand, what are the purpose of the smaller planes?  I'm talking about the ones that hold less than 50 passengers.

I realize they probably use a lot less fuel.  However, when I've used them, I barely scrape out any profit whatsoever (like, less than $10k per plane).  And, since they require a lot of trips to service the same number of passengers as their bigger counterparts, they use up a lot more slots, which decreases their efficiency quite a bit.

Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated!

Hello,

I picked a small airport near where I live as my HQ.  I'm curious, if I provide good service over time, will it increase in size/passengers, etc?  For example, it's largest destination city is Chicago, with 45 passengers/day.  If I go ahead and build that, and continue to grow my airline, will I see that improve dramatically, or is that pretty much a fixed variable?

Thanks!