During Scheduling
let's finally schedule some flights. FINALLY!
Open an office
you will need to open an office at the desired destination. Simply go to the airport info page and hit "open office". At this point, there are no costs for that airport. Only when you start flights to/from there, staff will be hired to man that office. Costs are all part of the airline-wide salary calculation.
Scheduling
Go the the scheduling page of the aircraft you want to create a schedule for. Scheduling is rather self-explanatory. Just plan the flights the way it fits your network plan. It will show you, if the flight can be operated in general. If check marks are red, you obviously need to check why. It's usually aircraft performance, night time ban or slot availability. Adjust the scheduling accordingly.
Keep in mind, that "aircraft performance" only evalutes if the aircraft can actually make it from A to B. It does not check if you can operate at full capacity. So, if you are flying at the range limit of your aircraft, the available TOW might be reduced. In that case, you might not be able to actually sell all or any seats due to weight restrictions. This is something you probably already checked when deciding on a/c type. If not all seats can be sold, it happens in a fixed order. First, cargo is left behind, then Y, C and F.
First destinations
regarding your first destinations, I recommend to stick with national, as the competition will be lower or non-existent, depending on the market. Once again, a very good source is wikipedia. For a lot of airports, a list of busiest routes is available. That gives you a good idea where to start. The "pax demand" rating of an airport is also an indicator, but don't assume you will automatically get a full flight just because you connect two 7 bar airports. First of all, competition is bigger the larger the airports, secondly, just because a lot of people travel through, e.g. Atlanta and Caracas, it doesn't mean a lot of people want to go from Atlanta to Caracas.
Also, a good indicator is political and historic ties. You can't transport pax from Cuba to the US (see flight rights and restrictions), but Brazil and the Iberian peninsula have strong ties and thus demand.
A great tool to evaluate your situation is AS RouteMap
Maintenance ratio
On the scheduling page in the upper left corner, there is a display for the maintenance ratio. Everytime your aircraft is on the ground for more than two hours (again, due to rounding 2 hours plus 1 minute to be on the safe side), maintenance will take place, no matter if the aircraft is at your hub or anywhere else. It also does not matter, whether this was a scheduled maintenance break of if a flight got cancelled and the a/c is grounded because of it.
The update to aircraft condition will be displayed once the a/c takes off the next time. At this time, the costs for maintenance will be deducted from your bank account. If no money is available, no maintenance will be conducted.
The maintenance ratio should be as close to but not below 100%. If you go below 100% (which, in rare cases might be a reasonable interim solution), the a/c condition will continously fall until it is below 50%. At this point, the a/c will not depart until enough maintenance could be conducted to get back above 50%. You need to avoid that, as not only do you have to pay compensation to pax for cancelled flights, but also will your a/c most likely not be where you need it to be, so either you cancel the following flights and get the a/c to the right airport, or flights will be cancelled (and compensations paid) until the schedule requires the a/c to be where it got grounded again.
Once done with scheduling, make sure, all flights are displayed in green. Everything in red obviously needs to be checked. If you have already set prices, service profiles and such for the individual routes, you can activate your schedule. There are two options available, listed below.
If you have not yet set the mentioned above, do not activate until you have read the "inventory page"-part further down.
Scheduling an individual aircraft
- maximize a/c utilization (if flying to the same destination again and again gives you a maintenance ratio of 90 or 200%, it's no good)
- having an a/c fly only one route all day long, it is way easier to substitute this a/c for another type if you want to change the capacity
- having an a/c fly east, then west, then east, then west, ... you have perfect "transfer" conditions, as pax can simply remain seated in that a/c and are not subject to the minimum transfer time at your hub
- having an a/c fly only one route can cause problems with hub waves if the times don't fit, respectively the overall time your aircrafts are grounded to meet the hub times is distributed very unevenly, distorting economic performance data (so you got to be careful when interpreting the income-cost sheets of single flights)
- if you plan to not use hub waves but offer a higher frequency, the frequency will depend on the number of a/c used and the trip duration, if you fly only one route with a particular a/c
- some routes simply won't offer enough demand to fill all the trips you might be able to offer with one a/c on that route
Long story short: I don't really bother with that question. I usually start with four daily flights to major national destinations (if there is little competition), two daily flights to medium destinations and one daily flight to small destinations, if I do not know the country (I would not necessarily try bar 3/2 or lower airports at the beginning). Once numbers come in, I increase the frequency and price on those routes, that book full fastly or even right away. how many different a/c are being used for that route only depends on maximizing a/c utilization and your scheduling doctrine.
FYI: you will find, that later on, you might offer one daily flight that is being operated by seven different a/c throughout the week to maximize utilization of the single aircrafts.
Activation of schedule
You can activate "right away" or with a 72 hours delay. "Right away" means the earliest flight booked into the system will depart no earlier than 24 hours from now. This makes the flight available to one booking cycle. The same flight on the next day would obviously get two cylces, etc. If you activate with a 72 hours-delay, all flights would get the maximum of three booking cycles. (some special conditions can reduce those numbers by one, but that's not important at this point. you can find plenty of information on that on the msg board).
Which one to choose depends on whether you expect the flights to book full with one cycle. in competitive markets, that's usually not the case. If there is no competition, chances are good. And worst case scenario, you could still cancel the empty flights. Keep in mind the costs for pax compensation, so accepting the loss from a half full flight might still be preferable to cancelling. Also, you won't be able to fly the return flight, so do the math before cancelling.
This system of pax distribution also requires you to be patient before you decide whether a route is going to work or not. Since only connections that reach their destination within 72 hours are being considered. so if part of the connection is longhaul (either because you operate that or you have an interlining partner that does), they might only become available with the second booking cycle. Also, directly after introcuding a new flight, the potential feeders and connections might have already booked full by other connections. Only beginning with the fourth day, the new flight actually has the full potential of being booked. So don't judge a new flight before that.