first of all, welcome to AS. As you have already noticed, it is a challenging game and thus requires patience, willingness to learn (both by reading and from mistakes) and at least a general idea of economics. I am not refering to understanding what hedge fonds do these days - I think nobody really does - but to realize that there is demand and supply and that they interact would be helpful ;-)
be advised, that there is more than one way of being successful in this game. Some things are generally accepted while others rely on my own experiences and other players might use very different approaches. Personally, I am aware that my basic strategy concepts could easily be improved, however, I have a certain time budget and some more benefical strategies would simply be too much for me to handle.
and three last but certainly not least things to keep in mind:
- AS is a game of months, if not years. Nothing of importance ever happens within hours.
- I will not tell you how to do things. I much rather will point out some factors to consider, help you evaluate decisions, etc. I am not going to play the game for you
- you will have to read and understand. If things are unclear, please, go ahead and ask and I'll try to explain more or differently. If you don't, I assume, you understand what I am getting at.
Starting Location
In my opinion, choosing a location for your headquarters is the MOST IMPORTANT decision you will make during the entire game!
the home country of your holding defines what traffic rights you have. (for traffic rights, check http://en.airlinesim.../Traffic_Rights).
first of all, that will tell you, from where to where you will actually be allowed to transport passengers (pax). but just as important: it tells you, where others will be allowed to transport pax to. why is that important? well, take the US, for example. Let's say you picked MCI. Well, even if MCI were vacated, every US based airline has the right to swoop in and build up a hub there. A big airline might just decide to make your hub his hub and drop some 200 planes on that airport. There is almost no way for you to compete and you will be out of slots almost instantaniously.
Same goes for the EU. Any EU-based airline can operate a hub within any EU city. Countries open for investment can even be accessed by ALL holdings worldwide. I think, you see where I am going.
If you are new and unexperienced, you should really really consider if choosing to play in the US, EU, China or any of the other major markets is really the best way to learn that game. Personally, I very strongly recommend to find another country. This will not only keep up your motivation as you will actually see reasonable growth, but also gives you the opportunity to learn the game as you won't be stuck with your first three aircrafts forever.
So, I believe what you should be looking for is:
- a country with a medium to large national market with at least one airport with a pax rating of 6 or higher. (it is absolutely possible to build from smaller airports, but becomes increasingly difficult), that is not investment open nor - preferably - in the EU, the US, ... you can get a general impression of national market size by checking how many other airports (at what pax rating) are there. also, throughout the entire game, wikipedia will be a great source for transportation statistics. If the airport of your choice only serves 500k pax a year, it will be way harder to start than picking an airport with 10 millions anually, for obvious reasons.
- the airport for your headquarter needs to have a minimum transfer time displayed on the airport information page. If it does not, it will read transfer impossible. Obviously, you could only handle direct OD-pax (origin-destination-pax) here. AS, however, is very transfer based.
- it is preferable not to have a night time ban, as a night time ban clearly limits your scheduling opportunies.
- make sure, the airport has a lot of available slots left. not only does a lack of slots limit your scheduling opportunities, it also indicates the presence of a strong competition.
- once you have limited your list of potential home airports, you should consider their geographical situation and market opportunities. as you will outgrow your national market at some point, you need to understand your role in the bigger continental and world market, as you will now have to compete against everyone else. so, look at a map, find your airport and ask yourself: who would use this airport as a hub? if your hub was in Phoenix, would you expect any pax from Europe to use your hub to go to New York, Brazil, or South Africa? I guess not. Might they be going from Europe to the West Coast or Mexico? Way more likely.
so, here is what you should do:
find an airport that meets the criteria mentioned above. I usually have two or three countries in my mind I would like to start in. I, then, check the different servers to find one, where that particualar country/market is under-served. Due to the number of servers and countries, that shouldn't be too hard. Just - for the sake of learning - do not choose the US or the EU. That's something for another time.
I usually check the statistics page of every server and look up the pax/week for the countries I am interested in. some examples of countries that I suggest for starting (if no or little competition it present): Mexico (usually already well served), Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Iran (keep in mind there are some travel restrictions in place), Marocco, Saudi-Arabia, etc.
Those are countries with a medium to large national market, some with better placement for later longhaul operations than others. But there are many more.
In my opinion, it helps, if you can associate yourself with an airline in the chosen country. Helps with the fun and long-term motivation.
I recommend you pick one country and check all servers, when doing it for the first time. It will give you a better idea what you can consider to be under-served, as on some servers, you will find airlines in that country transporting 2 million pax/week and on other servers, only one airline carrying 150k pax/week. That should help with getting an idea of what might be possible and what you can expect.