Tips for New Players

Hi all,

 

I have a question for those more experienced in the route mechanics. I have read the forums and found many seasoned players advocating using direct routes vs. spoke'd routes from hubs. My question is what about the pax potential between my already established direct routes. For example I have my hub at (BOS) with direct routes going to (SEA) and (LAS). Now to me it seems like I am loosing pax who might want to go from say (SEA) too (LAS) or other cities that I may have direct routes such as (JFK) etc...  Is it wise or not wise to have smaller routes connecting some of my other majors routes? Hopefully this makes sense to you guys

If you have enough slots. Yes, you should do it. Unless there is too much competition. If there is too much competition, try to use blue pax.

Few notes as I play around:

 

Finances -> Try not to have high-value aircraft leases in the first few days of the month.  The game tends to suck out all your gate fees, maintenance fees, and others at the 1st  & 13/14th of each month.  Which means you need to stockpile money after the 20th.  But if there's not enough money, any leases / bonds due at the front end of the month will not clear and you risk default.

 

Days of months -> It seems the game operates off 24 days a month, NOT 30.

 

On Time Performance -> I've found if I leave about 20 hours free on each airframe, that tends to help keep On Time in line.  

 

Inflight Service -> I use F/C in smaller cabins, but have a different service for those where they get free food (level2/3) but can pay for level 5.  

 

IFE -> Same as above, I can differentiate between awesome free stuff for premium cabin vs pay for it in back.  I try to keep IFE settings at 3 and ads at 1 hour.

 

Gates -> some are SUPER duper expensive, and that money comes out at random it appears.  I try to maximize my slots at all airports and connect dots if the game scenario allows it.  This is especially important at very large/expensive airports like LHR, PVG, ORD, etc.  building terminals help reduce this cost, but once you make it a HUB, those costs go up again (still cheaper than if you do just gates).

My biggest suggestion is, be careful what country you start in. I am currently playing as Air Europa in Spain and and there are 6 other airlines based in the country so I have a bit of competition. I'm finding out it's hard to grow. The world I'm playing in has 60+ airline in the USA alone so I wouldn't start an airline there unless it was at the start. After year 1 don't bother. Be careful if you start anywhere in Europe as there is often A LOT of competition. Try starting in Central America, like in Panama City because most airlines in the USA overlook Central America. Mexico normally has a few airlines, though the world I'm in now only has 1 airline in Mexico so you could get lucky. Last tip, don't start on an small island like Iceland as it is very hard to be profitable.

My most successful (i.e., actually profitable) business model has been a low-cost carrier. I've adopted a number of practices from various real low-cost carriers, such as Southwest, Allegiant, and WestJet. Among them:

--Point to point, no hub and spoke
--Secondary airports
--Flights to airports which have limited or no service from mainline carriers
--Regional aiports with lower landing and handling charges than larger established airports
--Limiting IFS--if any--to inexpensive snacks
--No IFE
--Using one type of aircraft
--Maintaining low operational costs
--High employee/aircraft productivity

(Much of the above has been touched upon by various other, more experience AE members.)

Out of a desperation of sorts, due to the fact that I was having a difficult time being profitable, I simply went to Wikipedia and studied up on various low-cost carriers and noted what they do. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it worked to copy their practices. I don't currently have any mega-airlines with twenty hubs but I enjoy myself and feel like I'm operating relatively realistically.

Also, somewhere in one of these forums I found this suggested formula for acquiring aircraft; it works fairly well for me, although I sometimes stray away from it:

After cash reaches $5 million,
1. Lease used aircraft until $15-20 million
2. Lease new aircraft until $25-30 million
3. Buy used aircraft until $150-200 million
4. Buy new aircraft

I'm keeping a similar model, but what makes me lose cash is gate payments. 

I'm now at 10M below, but I am starting to turn it around. I kept a full-service config, but only for flights longer than 2,500 miles in F/C, and 5000 miles in Y.

I really need to take notes on exactly what I do at the start; sometimes I get off to a flyer (pun intended) and others I end up struggling to the extent that I'm still not turning an overall profit after having got my first routes going; this despite keeping a broadly similar strategy and starting at airports that have cheaper monthly gate costs than the last world we finished (in which I did pretty well)...

I recommend on using the Internet and looking up airports that are located in major cities but have runways short enough to where larger airlines cannot 747 spam your routes or smaller airports that are located in major cities but have a different name than the city, such as Burbank-Hollywood Airport, which is located in Los Angeles.

 

Oh yeah, leasing aircraft until around 500M is never a bad idea. Also let the game run every now and then, and let your money build up over time. It is never a bad idea to have a large "cushion" just in case.

OK, I've now tried twice to start an airline in Australia, and both times I just couldn't get it to be profitable, despite deploying the exact same strategy I've used to great success with other airlines (with hubs at airports that had higher monthly gate leasing costs than what the biggest Australian airports cost). What else could I be missing?

Okay - so this might sound like it contradicts nearly EVERYTHING on this post, but you can try it, and it worked for me (at least for now)

 

1. Get 757s if available. You can use them on nearly every type of route. Use 1 first class seat to every 7 business class seats, and 3-4 first class seats for a 757 should do. Fill up first class and business class, and when checking economy class, do 10 less seats than max capacity. This gives you good reputation.

 

2. Join the largest alliance possible. If there are two alliances that are very close, take a look at the two and choose the one with the most airlines on top 20.

 

3. Small airports. Google maps. Wikipedia.

 

4. SPAM your 757s on transcontinental routes from small airports in large cities.

 

5. Add "feeder" flights that are about 1-2 hours from your "main" airports (i.e. if you do Burbank-Hollywood > Charlotte, do flights from Burbank to El Paso and Charlotte to Durham or Savannah.)

 

6. IFE and IFS: as generous as you can be IF AND ONLY IF YOU ARE JOINING A "legacy" GAME. YOU WILL NEVER CATCH UP TO AN AIRLINE WORTH BILLIONS/TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, BUT REPUTATION WILL ALLOW YOU TO COMPETE ON A DIFFERENT PLAYING FIELD. Disregard if you are in a "new" world.

 

7. Set up 3 "hubs" (but don't make them hubs) on the East coast (small airports near large cities). Set up 3 "hubs" on the West Coast (small airports). Connect them with transcontinental flights. 

 

8. Once you start hitting 50M DOP or so, you can start being more aggressive. Don't forget that larger airlines are making 500M+ DOP, so you cannot be too aggressive.

 

9. Little tip regarding A330-300 and A340-300: A330-300 is more expensive, burns more fuel, has less range, but the same seating and speed as the A340-300. A340-300 has a longer turnaround time (75 v.s. 90 minutes).

10. When you are around 5-7 days from the end of a month, STOP YOUR SPENDING AND JUST SAVE UP UNTIL THE MONTH END. Fuel costs, maintenance, and aircraft/gate leasing all come within a very short span of time, and having a cushion is always better than going into the negatives.

1. issue one or two bond for a price of 7,000,000

2. get more A320

3. find routes that don't have many flights on them

4. with one aircraft max number of routes possible

5. try to get load factor up by lowering prices

done

 

What are alliances for?

What are alliances for?

There are two kinds of alliances, those in the forums and those in-game.

 

Those in the forums (look for Forums > Alliances > [alliance name]) are more strategic cooperations. They tend to have stricter admissions policies and require a certain standing before accepting people. They tend to operate in only a few specific worlds (such as how Dynasty World operates in RDelta), but have much closer cooperation in comparison to the strictly in-game alliances. Expect teamwork, cooperation, and tips and tricks to come your way with these alliances, but know that you need the experience to join some (especially those like Unitedwings, Dynasty World, or Azure). There will also be some policies like anti-competition and cooperation involved with joining one of these alliances.

 

Those in-game tend to do much less. If you look under "Reputation," 10% of your possible reputation comes from alliance destinations served. If you feel as if you'll be accepted in one (and acceptance rates are usually high), then join one. You should (depending on the size of the alliance) gain a few reputation points. Some alliances in-game are connected together, either via threads in the alliance forum or external methods such as Slack or Discord. For the most part, however, many treat in-game alliances as ways to gain reputation and have little in terms of actual cooperation. 

Some AE-Quality guru's wont like this

 

I really enjoy giving the best to my passengers. IFS including everything according to the route.

I really enjoy giving the best to my passengers. IFS including everything according to the route.

Yes but your utilization is WAY too high.

Thank you all for the tips. Much appreciated.

Can someone explain why am I being ripped off my profits? Thanks.

Can someone explain why am I being ripped off my profits? Thanks.

Sorry. Not enough info for that as it's not "ripping off" part showing.

Most likely though is that bottom line the income is being cancelled out by maintenance costs of the plane. If you only have very few planes of the same series the maintenance costs will almost be certainly higher than your total income.

If you add Ticket Revenue and In-Flight Sevice it should be $3,101,074 but it shows $3,100,704. Where did the difference go? Maintenance is under Expense part and that part is correct. But this is the Revnue part and it does not add up.

Sorry. Not enough info for that as it's not "ripping off" part showing.
Most likely though is that bottom line the income is being cancelled out by maintenance costs of the plane. If you only have very few planes of the same series the maintenance costs will almost be certainly higher than your total income.

If you add Ticket Revenue and In-Flight Sevice it should be $3,101,074 but it shows $3,100,704. Where did the difference go? Maintenance is under Expense part and that part is correct. But this is the Revnue part and it does not add up.