I think that AGEX will lead to slot release as bigger companies will make huge losses. This will be good for smaller and younger companies 
. Of course, for young servers (I am playing on Meigs) it will be easy to schedule a lot of flights per day for a profitable destination but as the server goes older (and more companies / competition on the market) we will be forced to reanalyze our flight planning and to keep only the necessary flights. So, it will become more realistic.
It’s not a matter of “kicking off the big airlines” - think about the expense the owners of those airlines have had to shed to remain on AS to grow that big. I look at Tempelhof - Nihon jet, Air Orange and Tasman Flyer - three biggies, all pounding out epic losses per week. I understand the need to adapt the game and make it a progressive, but it does seem a wee bit unfair.
Pedantically, it’d actually be unfair if they weren’t suffering - everyone else is, after all.
It’s been an interesting few weeks to watch, in any case. My perspective is perhaps a little less…desperate; I made a decision a couple of years ago that leases were dangerous things to overdose on and so exchanged hundreds of leased 737s, A320s etc for hundreds of old MD-80s. Consequently, I’ve gone through the depression on Croydon with no real trouble - my profit margin about halved, but was still above where everyone else’s was under regular economic conditions. My sense is that a lot of the really large airlines are at the point of needing to decide between being huge and being stable; there’s always an argument with browser games like AS over whether they’re more ‘game’ or ‘simulation’, and I think keeping a reliable money supply (as opposed to chasing every last passenger, hitting every destination on the planet etc) is the side of the game where you do need to sit down and think quite seriously about how your business is set up.
Fundamentally, I do think 75% of people’s problems in this situation do stem from an overreliance on leasing aircraft. Or, maybe not so much that - but maybe too much of a reluctance to get rid of leases where routes are underperforming. If I, as owner of 400 or however many MD-80s, find that I have routes that aren’t filling, I can just fly the aircraft less - cut out a flight or two a day or one a week from each aircraft or whatever. It doesn’t cost me anything, because I’m not on the hook for $350,000 a week for the aircraft, and I can make sure the passengers can get wherever they’re going on the other flights. If you’re leasing you can’t really do that - you’re completely dependent on being able to fly your aircraft for 36 hours every day just to pay for the lease, so when you can’t effectively do that any more you get into trouble. So - you, as the (for sake of argument) owner of a thousand expensive leases should look at where you’re at economically and decide whether you wouldn’t be a healthier business with half that number of planes that won’t turn around and stab you in the back the moment you can’t fill them.
Or don’t. You might survive this recession; probably the economy’s already improving. You might survive the next one, too, with the fat you’ll probably be storing when the economy improves. But you might not. I guess it’s up to you (the metaphorical you, that is) what you think is the sensible thing to do.
@prairiecentral, well, I would like to buy more aircrafts, however, I already do it and buy some leased a/c that fly on routes with low demand to make them profitable again. But, it would be nice - and more realistic, if the AS Team would rethink the credit system. Actualy I have to pay 1,0 or 0,8% for a 50m loan. So leasing the a/c is cheaper than buy a plane on credit. Of course I can wait one week and buy one or two a/c from my weekly profit, but if I want to restructure my fleet from leased to owned, it will take months or years. With securities worth more than 350m (owned planes, buildings) you should get better conditions … actualy buying a fleet isnt attractive as in RL. Image and securities should be part of the credit conditions, a rate of 0,2 or 0,3 should be possible.
Well, if you’re just buying out the virtually brand-new aircraft you’ve leased - then yes, it’ll take a while and be very difficult. A 20 year old 737-300 only costs $6m, though (and a 20 year old MD-82 only $5.8m for a larger aircraft) - and although it’ll cost you an extra $50,000 or so in fuel and maintenance a week over a brand new 737-700 it’ll save you $230,000 in leasing fees. So, ultmately the things pay for themselves very quickly at that price, whether you can fill them or not. There’s the new aircraft market system coming up, too, which will make using the older machines much more flexible if nothing else, but we’ll have to see how that pans out in practice…
Interest rates are outside my area of competence (never was big on loans, in game or otherwise) so I won’t comment on that part.
… I hope! I bought some older Versions of the 73G, but the negativ Rating annoys me and keep me from buying the classics. Use them on the US market wouldnt make any sense. I have to charge lower prices to compensate the negative rating, but I want to avoid it to charge different prices on the same route. So I have to buy the new ones.
Ok, first point (a lot of people are not aware of this, even if you are): the aircraft rating stat only influences your image, and it’s only one factor out of half a dozen doing that. It does not in itself actually make anyone less willing to get on your aircraft, it’s just a (very, very, little) bit offputting once they already have. IE, you’re free to charge different prices, but it’s a pointless waste of your time and money.
So. No, you don’t actually have to buy the new ones. It’s another of those things - you think you do, but you actually don’t - it’s not hugely meaningful. I mean, it is meaningful in an aggregate sense (you’ll end up with an image that’s slightly less than what it might be) but you can offset that in other ways (increase staffing levels, pay your staff more, don’t stuff aircraft to capacity, don’t fly aircraft for 16 hours straight so they’re falling apart and full of garbage for the last few flights a day - all of which you can afford to do, because you’re not stuck paying leases!) and even if you do all those things you’ll still come out majorly ahead financially. Besides, you already have a bunch of new aircraft - X number of old ones are just a drop in the bucket, since image is aggregated across the entire airline.
The actual problem with the older 737s is that they’re slower than the newer ones so there can be issues matching timetables into congested airports, but that’s hardly an impossible problem.