A Truly realistic flight desirability model

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
1

Hi

I have played for some months and found a few major problems with the way Airline sim seems to handle flight desirability (AKA Rating or ORS).

1.) There is no such thing as a max rating

It's utterly silly that an airline can charge 20-30% above standard ticket price and still attain "maximum" rating or desirability of a flight. Why would any customer in his sane mind chose this flight over an identical flight with standard ticket price, or even lower then standard price?

Max desirability (99) should be impossible to attain without running a major loss. It should be equal to a flight fulfilling all dreams of the customer class ( for economy = best eco chairs, best economy onboard service, shortest flighttime and so on ) combined with the lowest possible ticket price. 99% desirability should be a dream that an airline can chase but never reach.

Even if the rating is calculated without taking price into account at all, to get 99 rating you should have to have 99 in all the service categories (which is close to impossible or at least very very expensive).

Changing how the max rating is calculated should lead to real competition and real diversity of services, instead of everyone aiming to just reach 99 with as high ticket prices as possible (using mostly the same ways to do this btw since some ways are vastly cheaper then others)

2.) Ticket price should be more important then all all other things combined

Take a quick look at how your airlines economy works. Your standard passenger airline gets close to 100% of their income from the ticket pricing, and this is then in turn portioned out to provide value for the customers.

Perhaps 5% goes to onboard services, well then onboard services influence on desirability should have a weight of no more then 5% of the how important the ticket price is.

Perhaps 20% goes to salaries, well then personnel mood influence on desirability should have a weight of no more then 20% of the how important the ticket price is.

This also leads to the conclusion that maintenance (which in turn should affect service reliability) should be a fairly important factor in desirability of flights, especially for fleets of older airplanes (and currently It's very minor).

For a fair and balanced game all the money spent on adding value for your customers comes from ticket prices, so dropping ticket prices by just 5% should have an equal impact on desirability as doubling the money spent on on-board services (using the example numbers above)!!   (or using 5% of your budget anywhere else to add value).

But in the end rating as it works now should not be what determines which flight a passenger chooses which leads to the next point...

3.) Real Desirability = price performance

As a logical conclusion of point two real desirability is all about how cheap the tickets are. That is not currently the case in AS. I believe that this is why low price airlines in AS tend to struggle and be quite rare even though they thrive in the real world ( crammed low service Ryan Air and charter flights making heaps of money that high quality airlines can only dream of ).

If ticket price is more important then all other things combined for a passenger choosing the flight, then we will get a more realistic balance, and then "price performance" would be king in the ORS to decide what flight is picked.

4.) Demand distribution needs to favor superior desirability

A superior connection with much greater desirability should not be possible to "drown" with hundreds of lower desirability connections stealing so many passengers it is unfeasible to run. The probability of what flight is chosen needs to capped to a minimum value for the most desirable connection to ensure it is filled up first. Perhaps 5-10% of total passengers on a route minimum will always choose the most desirable connection until it's fully booked before they trickle downwards finding their ways to other less desirable flights with more airplane interchanges involved. This is especially important to accurately model the huge advantage in desirability a direct flight has over connecting flights.

A good example would be the following thread:

http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/5354-demand-between-china-and-singapore/

Now I am still fairly new to the game, and I might have miss-understood how some things work. If so feel free to correct me if that is the case.

I am also aware that such big changes that I propose would also require a major re-balance of many other parts of the game as well, for example passenger demand when everyone is not running 99 desirability flights anymore.

2

1. This would end in lower loads for practically everyone, not that appealing given the recent AGEX changes

2. Pay for salaries and other expenses is paid at either the weekend closing or taken out of the revenue of the plane once it has departed (e.g. Fuel)

3. The game, quite rightly, isn't really intended for LCC'S, I'm sure there's another thread on "general" which covers this

4. Generally, most passengers fly with large airlines for the connections, the game is revolved around connections- Flight rating is a factor but your load largely depends on competition. A well-established airline can get fully loaded DH4's out to a 1-bar airport daily. 

3

In general I agree, price should be a more important factor. Also, the thread you are reffering to is interesting because a direct flight should always be preferred over connections. Counting that connecting flights are usually more expensive shows how low this factor is.

 

Ive tried so many times to start a LCC and always bang my head against the wall but I just cannot give up.

Price is really not rated high enough, otherwise I could go ahead and offer routes like "Easy Jet", lease a cheap 733 and charge ultra low prices. I tried that more than once and even though I had prices 50% off the competition this is just not the way this game is ment to be played or I have not found the right formula for this yet.

Right now I'm running Low-to-Medium-Cost, which is working only because I offer best possible connections in terms of time.

4

Alex, if you want an airline game where price is 80% determining factor, I suggest you airline-empires.

5

Alex, if you want an airline game where price is 80% determining factor, I suggest you airline-empires.

Ticket price should not be 80% the determining factor, it should be 50-60% of the determining factor since that is how much impact ticket price has on your weekly budget!

Lets say you run a profit margin of stable 20%. for example 12 mil earnings and 10 mil expenses.

If you divide the ticket price earnings (12 mil) with the total sum of money that is earned and spent by your company (22 mil) you get a factor of around 55%.

Ticket price being 50-60% demanding factor = a fairly balanced game economy wise for all companies ranging from 0% profit margin to 50% profit margin.

6

AS is not reality. Passengers in AS like quality and will pay more for it ... as it should be in reality too. Those LCC Airlines destroy the aviation business. Pay 20 Euro for a flight from Frankfurt to London is stupid ... a taxi from Frankfurt Main Station to Airport costs more. 

However, big airlines would be the winner. they can buy aircrafts and offer flights cheaper than new players. they have to lease new planes and have higher costs. it would be impossible to compete with the big ones. You cant play Ryanair here ... buy some old planes and offer cheap flights between small airports.

play the game as it is, dont try to change it how you want it 

7

Hi,

allow me to react on your first two statements...

1.) There is no such thing as a max rating

We're not discussing paintings and poetry. We're discussing an online game. A computer model.

If from now on 83 is the highest possible score, flights with a rating of 83 will get most bookings  :-)

2.) Ticket price should be more important then all all other things combined

At this moment, value for money is what counts. Almost no value for almost no money will give you a high rating, and so will high value for a lot of money.

You are correct when you state that in real life, passengers prefer low price above anything else. The result being that very few airlines make a profit. And one of the few who do make profit, declared three emergencies last year because the plane was running low on fuel. One saves money where one can. The day that every airline uses this trick to save a few extra bucks, the other airlines won't have enough fuel on board to wait until the RyanAir plane has landed  ;-)

Saying that comfort and service will still play a part, but will be less important that the price, translates in a software formula that says "investing 10 dollar in service will give you an extra profit of 5 dollar. In other words, the less service you offer, the more profit you make. So every AS player who wants to make a profit, will be forced to offer cheap on-board service. Installing ecoplus seats will be like shooting in your own foot.

There is another effect: in order to attract passengers, you will lower your prices. If I want to keep my passengers, I also have to lower my prices, and sell them 1 dollar cheaper than yours. In the end it will result in both our airlines going bankrupt.

In the real world, there is something like advertising and perception. In the real world, you can work with hidden extra's. In the real world, you can fool customers by calling Charleroi "Brussels South". And so on. If you implement this sort of things in the game, you will still end up with software that adds the price of the ticket plus the price of the luggage plus the price of a drink. You won't fool our virtual passengers  ;-)

Jan

8

In general I agree, price should be a more important factor. Also, the thread you are reffering to is interesting because a direct flight should always be preferred over connections. Counting that connecting flights are usually more expensive shows how low this factor is.

That's not always true in reality. Personally I paid 2x the ticket price to fly non-direct flights because of better service and customer loyalty. Some people would also pick non-direct just to break up a long-haul flight especially when they are flying in economy class.

9

We're not discussing paintings and poetry. We're discussing an online game. A computer model.

Exactly, and that model is not a very realistic one, since in reality a service can never be perfect but always improve. In fact that is one of the major principles behind all quality work, that you can never deliver a perfect product but always improve on it.

 

There is another effect: in order to attract passengers, you will lower your prices. If I want to keep my passengers, I also have to lower my prices, and sell them 1 dollar cheaper than yours. In the end it will result in both our airlines going bankrupt.

Or our airlines are not 100% identical, so we focus on different areas and try to judge how important certain markets and connections are long term to determine if it’s worth it to make a local short term loss to secure them.

This is called competition, it would be nice to have it working closer to reality in AS.

10

...In fact that is one of the major principles behind all quality work, that you can never deliver a perfect product but always improve on it.

 

Hi,

the ORS rating is not a percentage, it is a number. Perfection would be 7 green bars. So far, nobody ever got more than 5 green bars  ;-)

Combustion engines are not efficient. If one 1000kg car uses 6 liter fuel per 100 km, he gets a higher rating than the other 1000 kg car that burns 7 liter per 100 km. If you give the first car 5 green bars, you will have to give 6 green bars to the factory that produces a car next year that only uses 5 liter per 100 km.

The scale is not relevant. Only your position on that scale is relevant.

...our airlines are not 100% identical, so we focus on different areas and try to judge how important certain markets and connections are long term to determine if it's worth it to make a local short term loss to secure them.

You started a topic about ORS ratings, not about geographical choices, routes and connections.

You want to change the rating system in the game because low cost carriers are not profitable. Allow me to suggest a few things that may help low cost airlines become more profitable in the game...

- make it possible to discuss landing and handling fees with airports.

- create local and regional authorities in the game, so we can force them to pay expensive adverts on our airline website.

- change the salary system from <average of airline salaries> to <different labour cost per country> and allow airlines to fly in one country and pay salaries in another country.

- change the system so we can tell our pilots how much fuel they should put in their planes.

- change passenger demand so we can attract passengers from airports that are close to the cities to airports in the middle of nowhere.

But seriously, please explain me how an airline could make a profit with better on-board service or better seats if "ticket price is more important than all other things combined". If price is more important, ecoseats would loose money and everybody would have to use standard seats. No ?

Jan

11

sobelair has already touched some of the issues, but generally speaking, low-cost and other specialized business model don't really work for a plethora of reasons. One of the most important ones in my opinion is that we only have one type of eco pax, one type of business pax etc.

In reality, there are many different types of passengers that often don't even fit into the very narrow 3-class system. Many companies would send their employees to meetings in eco because they are price-sensitive, but they would also pay the markup for business if that's all there is available, because they can't pick the dates. At the same time, there are economy passengers that will gladly pay more to be able to fly from real Frankfurt and not out of nowhere in Hahn, while another type of eco pax would drive anywhere to save a few bucks. For certain business passengers it might be crucial to have a lounge at the transfer airport because they want to be refreshed when they arrive at their destination. For the same reason they will happily pay quite a higher price to get to fly in seats that allow them to get quality sleep.

And then there's all the soft factors we don't have in the game (yet): Loyalty programs, image and advertising, transport connections and quality of aiports, regional preferences (Germany preferring Lufthansa, French preferring Air France etc.)...you name it.

To make it short: Just saying "price is the most important factor" simply isn't true except for maybe one or two very specific groups of customers. That said, modeling "real" ratings is incredibly difficult because it's essentially a very complex AI problem. We have several rather large-scale ideas floating around to approach these issues...these fall firmly into the R&D department though and are anywhere but close to actual implementation.

12

The scale is not relevant. Only your position on that scale is relevant.

No, the scale is very relevant if it runs out and stops mattering due to artificial limits!!!  (such as not possible to go above 99 due to the way it’s set up).

 

 

But seriously, please explain me how an airline could make a profit with better on-board service or better seats if "ticket price is more important than all other things combined". If price is more important, ecoseats would loose money and everybody would have to use standard seats. No ?

Either you didn’t read my suggestion or you didn’t understand it at all.

My suggestion would lead to quality airlines still having a clear advantage due to not having to attract as many passengers to fill a flight, but except for that the game would be equal and fair regardless of service quality.

The idea I am trying to propose is that an extreme Low cost airline and an extreme high quality airline (as well as all in between) with the same profit margin on a (full) flight will both have an identical desirability / price performance and attract equally many passengers (before taking any connections into account).

I’ll try to make it more simple by showing an example (remember this is an example of extremes, most will be somewhere in between):

Airline A is really cheap airline with 70% ticket prices, Airline B is a high quality airline with 140% ticket prices.

On the same flight Airline A has crammed in many standard seats and can fit 140 seats while Airline B with luxurious seats can only fit in 70 seats.

Thus both Airlines make the same money on this flight.

When it comes to costs airline B has twice as expensive costs per seat to deliver a really high quality service, but this doesn’t matter since they have half as many seats.

Both airlines have the same expenses related to this flight.

Same Income - Same Expenses = Identical profits.

What I am suggesting is leveling the playing field to have equal and fair competition regardless of the quality of service your airline has.

To achieve this ticket prices has to be at least equally important as all other services combined since your income always is at least half of your budget (for a company running profit).

13

I'm definitely with alex_brunius on the point, that the ORS is not enough sensitive. Once you have a 99-rating (and that's easy to achieve) you don't have any possibility to differentiate your product from your competitors and therefore the competitive market doesn't work anymore

It's a fact that in reality price sensivity has increased with the rise of low-cost carriers and even though low-cost carriers are difficult to copy in the game, price should have a higher influence on passenger ratings. It doesn't make sense, that I do have a 99-rating but my fares are up to 50% higher than my competitors!

14

No, the scale is very relevant if it runs out and stops mattering due to artificial limits!!!  (such as not possible to go above 99 due to the way it's set up).

Hi,

we cannot improve the quality of the seats, nor can we improve the quality of the on-board service. These are also artificial limits. If the scale were to be changed, and the highest score would be 83, then we would try to get as close to 83 as possible.

It would be possible to increase your rating above 83 by further lowering your prices. Maybe that's what you have in mind. But that would make the game more difficult, because everybody would lower his prices in order to get a higher rating. You would also have to abolish the rule that states you cannot fly with a calculated loss.

I don't think it would improve the quality of the game.

Airline A is really cheap airline with 70% ticket prices, Airline B is a high quality airline with 140% ticket prices.

On the same flight Airline A has crammed in many standard seats and can fit 140 seats while Airline B with luxurious seats can only fit in 70 seats.

Thus both Airlines make the same money on this flight.

Hm... isn't this how the game works right now ?

Jan

15

 

It would be possible to increase your rating above 83 by further lowering your prices. Maybe that’s what you have in mind. But that would make the game more difficult, because everybody would lower his prices in order to get a higher rating. You would also have to abolish the rule that states you cannot fly with a calculated loss.

 

No. it would still not be the case that only the top rated flight gets passengers, but all flights. So even with a lower rating and some connections you might be fine. But then finally the ones with the best cost structure and highest efficeny would prevail and not just “everyone”!

The game could really need a bit more difficulty, but that’s another story.

16

Myself I would love to run an LCC but under current AS model its not really feasible unless you are willing to be stuck with really really low margins. One of the suggestions I made was to create LCC demand which would be on top of regular AS demand. In order to get LCC demand your fare would have to be e.g. 30% less than the default rate. of course LCC demand would be a fraction of regular demand. Only LCC airline would be able to get LCC demand and LCC demand would be in Y only. That way you could do all basic seats no onboard service but 30% or more price reduction would be a must to capture LCC demand. Also if you are classified as LCC (e.g. you would have to select that option) you would get an ORS negative points, so you do not get on top of ORS with the 30% discount (such a high discount really bumps up your ORS rating, so to compensate you would need to get ORS negative points for having LCC designation). This would assure than only overflow demand from regular pax will get to your airline, same as in real life. if you cannot find a seat on Lufthansa or Air France and you just HAVE to get to your destination, you will fly Ryanair I am sure.

Basically, this would create a separate demand category such as LCC demand, but it would still be linked to ORS so you would get overflow demand of regular pax if available. And, maybe getting connecting pax should be limited for LCCs because they do not offer connections in real life either. SO Having LCC designation will make you ineligible for transfer listing in ORS, only for O/D listing.

17

Myself I would love to run an LCC but under current AS model its not really feasible unless you are willing to be stuck with really really low margins. One of the suggestions I made was to create LCC demand which would be on top of regular AS demand. In order to get LCC demand your fare would have to be e.g. 30% less than the default rate. of course LCC demand would be a fraction of regular demand. Only LCC airline would be able to get LCC demand and LCC demand would be in Y only. That way you could do all basic seats no onboard service but 30% or more price reduction would be a must to capture LCC demand. Also if you are classified as LCC (e.g. you would have to select that option) you would get an ORS negative points, so you do not get on top of ORS with the 30% discount (such a high discount really bumps up your ORS rating, so to compensate you would need to get ORS negative points for having LCC designation). This would assure than only overflow demand from regular pax will get to your airline, same as in real life. if you cannot find a seat on Lufthansa or Air France and you just HAVE to get to your destination, you will fly Ryanair I am sure.

Basically, this would create a separate demand category such as LCC demand, but it would still be linked to ORS so you would get overflow demand of regular pax if available. And, maybe getting connecting pax should be limited for LCCs because they do not offer connections in real life either. SO Having LCC designation will make you ineligible for transfer listing in ORS, only for O/D listing.

It would be possible but not as a beginner. The thing that kills every intent of cost cutting and being efficient is the choices you have at the beginning when you start your airline.

You either:

1) Lease young planes running lower maintenance costs but higher lease.

2) Lease/Buy real old planes but end up with high maintenance but you will end up like No. 1. You really end up at the same costs, only difference being you can run more planes at lower overall image. I tried.

I am able to offer Low-Cost Economy with 30-35% off the standard price and I get a 98-99 rating in the ORS. If this turns out successfull I can buy planes at a later stage and be more efficient. I have yet to try to offer minimum service which would allow me to cut the prices some more.

You see it is possible to be Low-Cost....you just cannot do it without owning planes or offering business class until you can afford to buy planes. You dont see Ryanair or EasyJet with leased planes.

18

we cannot improve the quality of the seats, nor can we improve the quality of the on-board service. These are also artificial limits. If the scale were to be changed, and the highest score would be 83, then we would try to get as close to 83 as possible.

That’s my point. If all your services are at maximum you would get a final rating of something like 200, but it is artificially limited down to 99. So someone with vastly cheaper service then you is treated equally by the games way to calculate desirability.

The quality if seats or on-board service does not have such a limit since you can use their full scale to impact your final rating (until you hit the artificial roof depending on other services).

 

But that would make the game more difficult, because everybody would lower his prices in order to get a higher rating

Isn’t actually having price competition a very fundamental and important part of “a realistic economic model” which AS claims to provide???

I also think any such difficulties would be countered by the fact that you can make any quality of service work instead of having to experiment for months to find out what things are worth spending money on and what isn’t worth spending money on (like lower ticket prices).

Hm... isn't this how the game works right now ?

You missed this part of it: “will both have an identical desirability / price performance and attract equally many passengers (before taking any connections into account).”

Right now a carrier spending twice as much on service will have vastly more desirability and passengers compared to one with half ticket prices and lousy service.

19

That's my point. If all your services are at maximum you would get a final rating of something like 200, but it is artificially limited down to 99. So someone with vastly cheaper service then you is treated equally by the games way to calculate desirability.

The quality if seats or on-board service does not have such a limit since you can use their full scale to impact your final rating (until you hit the artificial roof depending on other services).

Hi Alex,

there is a limit on the service you give. Limitation of the seat rating is done at "cabin configuration level". Installing first class seats in economy will not give you more than 5 green bars for your seats. And the limitation of your on-board service rating is done at that level. If your service has 5 green bars, throwing in extra champagne will not give you more than 5 green bars for your on-board service.

If you remove these limits, it would give (for example) 6 green bars for seating to high quality airlines that give first class luxury seats to economy passengers. And this would then also result in a higher ORS rating.

At this moment, offering luxury seats, free caviar & champagne to economy passengers does not give you a higher rating. It is only a waste of money. And I don't think the game would be more realistic if players who install first class seats in their economy configuration are rewarded with a higher rating.

At this moment, the same goes for pricing. You can lower your prices until your rating is 99. If you still lower your prices, you are wasting money because your rating will not go up anymore. Removing that limit would indeed make the game more realistic.

Isn't actually having price competition a very fundamental and important part of "a realistic economic model" which AS claims to provide???

I also think any such difficulties would be countered by the fact that you can make any quality of service work instead of having to experiment for months to find out what things are worth spending money on and what isn’t worth spending money on (like lower ticket prices).

At this moment, airlines compete for the best quality-for-money balance. Basically that means if your seats are twice as big as mine, you can sell your tickets twice as expensive and still get the same rating.

If you make price (one side of the balance) more important than seats and service (the other side of the balance), the game will indeed be more realistic... every airline will cut costs so they can sell their tickets cheaper. And if further lowering prices will increase the ratings, everybody will continuously lower their prices. They will have to: our virtual passengers use a mathematic formula to decide which flight they prefer. And if cheaper means a higher rating, cheaper will get more passengers.

As for game play... I don't think that would improve the quality of the game.

You missed this part of it: "will both have an identical desirability / price performance and attract equally many passengers (before taking any connections into account)."

Right now a carrier spending twice as much on service will have vastly more desirability and passengers compared to one with half ticket prices and lousy service.

I know your statement is not complete  :-)

I guess you mean: right now a carrier with full ticket prices and spending twice as much on service will have vastly more desirability and passengers compared to one with half ticket prices and lousy service.

But I know what you mean, and I don't know if you are correct. If you are correct, quality and service are more important than price. I have always been told that the game is balanced... that low price plus low quality will give you the same rating as high quality pus high price. But to be honest, I have never tested this out. I mean with a proper test.

Have a nice weekend,

Jan

20

But I know what you mean, and I don't know if you are correct. If you are correct, quality and service are more important than price. I have always been told that the game is balanced... that low price plus low quality will give you the same rating as high quality pus high price. But to be honest, I have never tested this out. I mean with a proper test.

Yes it’s very hard to do a scientific test due to the complexity of AS and I must admit I sadly have no data to back up my claims either. So unless someone has devoted significant time to test this only the devs know how the model really works…

I have however done enough experimentation back and forth with all variables to feel certain that price does not influence the desirability / ORS as much as it should in order for the game to be balanced, which is basically what most of this debate is about :slight_smile:

 

At this moment, airlines compete for the best quality-for-money balance. Basically that means if your seats are twice as big as mine, you can sell your tickets twice as expensive and still get the same rating.

I doubt that is true, because with twice as large seats you have half as many passengers meaning twice as much money per passengers to spend on other service that raise rating!!!