Hello,
I'm quite an old member of Airlinesim. I used to have good skills of running an airline, even had an AAA airline. But now I've lost the skill and I don't know how to get a good rating and some money.
Can anybody please suggest anything. I would be very pleased.
Thanks
Mike Calls
P.S. Your information would be usefull for other starting airlines. :)
Your overall rating depends on a combination of factors. The trick to receiving an AAA rating, and maintaining it, is to keep the sub-criteria high. Because the rating only refers to your financial health, you’ll fulfil almost everything by making a profit whilst keeping your debts low. Other ratings (ORS rating, image, etc) track how popular your airline will be. A new airline will never be able to up their rating until they start earning and spending money, so your rating won’t increase until your scheduled flights start operating.
Keep track of your maintenance categories. Pick one kind of aircraft for your regional routes, one for your main routes, and eventually one for your longhaul routes. You may see a variety of cheap aircraft available on the secondhand market, but it doesn’t make sense to operate 737s and A32Xs because you would need two sets of spare parts and certified engineers. (also need to train two types of a pilot.) You are allowed 3 maintenance categories with no penalty, but adding a fourth category raises your overall maintenance costs by 15%, with an additive 15% for every category thereafter. (4 categories=15%, 5 categories=30%, etc.)
Don’t assume your flights will always be full. We have cyclical business cycles (also known as the AGEX-AS Global Economic Index) which affects the number of passengers who will be flying. In good times (high AGEX) our virtual people have the money to travel, but during the recessions, there are fewer travellers. Price your flights so that you can still earn a profit even when your aircraft is three-quarters full, and you’ll give yourself a fairly comfortable safety margin.
Lastly, interlining contracts cost money, for both you and your partner. They’re great for increasing traffic between your hub(s) and theirs, but don’t send them out (or accept them) if your flight network and theirs never meet. If you’re a domestic-only airline in Khartoum, there’s very little point to signing an interline contract with a domestic-only airline in French Polynesia (Far enough away that even a 787-9 can’t reach, let alone with a significant capacity).