Are waves still useful when focusing on a large and geographically-distributed domestic market, e.g. China?

English Boards General
1

Hello,

Many AirlineSim players recommend setting waves. But I doubt the usefulness of waves in large and geographically-distributed (there is a high-demand airport nearby everywhere) domestic markets, such as China, maybe also EU.

I am in Junkers as based at SHA, and I arrange flight schedules nearly randomly. But they are mostly full, even if there are 5 same p2p A320 flights in the same day. And there is a conterpart also based at SHA with higher courage; they leased lots of >20a secondhand B737s (which seems to be discouraged here) for p2p direct flights from any provincial capital to any other provincial capital, with >=3 flights a day, and these flights are also nearly full; and they expanded fast, overtaking me in 1 month.

I guess this is a special case of China (maybe also EU), we have one or two “central city” in any province and they are big enough to support a high-demand airport. And domestic demands are overall very high, while international demands are relatively low except a few airports. This makes - C(31, 2) - 1 = 464 (excluding PEK-TSN) direct lines from any provincial capital to any other provincial capital; if considering HKG, MFM, TPE, and some other big cities (SZX, TAO, NGB, WNZ, XMN, DLC, etc), this number will be more. And other cities usually have no or low-demand airports, with train/bus connections to airports of these big cities. This is in reality, I don’t know if these assumptions are the same in the game.

And the same also applies to the EU? I have another holding to run intra-EU flights (which I initially wanted to do interline, but obviously failed lol), and inside EU there are just many big cities fairly distributed geographically: CDG, BER, FRA, MAD, BCN, FCO, ATH, BUD, ARN, and PRG (which I am based on)… But the problem becomes somehow different since there are fierce competition in the EU market, and there are higher proportion of “international” (EU to outside EU) demands, so waving might be more important, maybe?

The real problem is my China holding has a sub-company located at Baku, I wanted to serve it as a stopover hub, which… makes waves really important.

And this is the first time I have played the game. It is just so fascinating.

Yours
John Franklin (Kuayueren)

2

If you want to connect passengers to other flights via your hub(s), waves are still useful and helpful. If you have enough direct demand, then you don’t need waves.
But if you build waves in any case, you will always have more passengers.

3

Firstly Id say my experience is still very limited even though I’ve played this game on & off since about 2014. In that time I have had only two successful ventures.

But I have found that p2p does technically work but also it doesn’t. Yes there are some routes that have enough demand to support p2p unaided but relying solely on finding those routes would stagnate your growth. But that doesn’t mean your airline couldn’t support itself.

Over time it occurred to me that if you could tap into other networks & compliment their throughput traffic between your base & another airlines hub, then you have a good opportunity that is beneficial to both airlines.

You also don’t need a wave connection system since you could achieve it via interlining. So like I mentioned its technically p2p but your pax is then taking a wave connection with the interlined airline. I guess I could sum it up as thinking of your airline’s existence to compliment what & who’s there rather then directly competing within the markets. It does depend on how competitive the markets are though but I can genuinely say that Im based on a really cordial server & made some strong working agreements this way.

There are downsides to setting up an airline in this way though. While you might be able to mitigate the impact somewhat as your grow & flights naturally overlap to formulate a bit of your own network. You need to be conscious of the fact that if one of your interlinings cease trading then your demand factors may take a big hit since your airline relies upon other networks. This is a particular risk you have to take when your airline is very small.

This brings ud to the other use case of genuine p2p traffic which is generally domestic routes where competition isn’t too fierce. Sometimes its better to looks for domestic opportunities away from the main transit hubs & you’d be surprised how many people gravitate towards the main routes. I know I focused on direct p2p routes to allow your airline to be sustainable before considering expansion & business opportunities. At least you would know that you have a potential fall back point should you ever need it.

With my first long haul ventures I came to realise the benefits to larger airlines of accepting smaller airline agreements as the feeder traffic is always a welcomed addition :wink:

When I look back though, I wish I had paid more attention to the fact of how budget airlines operate & favour the smaller city airports over the main hubs. Since the minimum turn around times at some destinations when your flying regional operations can sting a little bit & as we know, our aircraft only make money in the sky.

Overall though I can say that I have not really ever looked at wave planning very closely in this game at all & if anything any waves I may have ended up creating either comes from a standard start of the day, airport operating restrictions or slot availability. In the end since I started my current airline in 2022 I’ve gone from a small very niche domestic p2p airline to the largest operator at LGW with an international portfolio.

I will say though that my hat goes off to those who make really big, yet organised networks, I would definitely say that the wave system is its own skillset that goes over my head but I still admire nonetheless. There is tons of really good advice across the forums & I’ve had many of late night reads when I have run out of things to do :slight_smile:

4

It depend on how large one want their airlines to be. If one is satisified to build an airlines that simply connect medium and large airports in a country then p2p only can be okay. But if one want to also fly to smaller airports inside and outside the national border then waves could be a good idea.