Sorry to ask so many question. I have been reading the wiki but it does fall short in a few places so I wanted to ask a few questions here then I should be good to go.
What do you find is your best means to start a business? I know the Q400 is about as good as it gets but what type of seating do you use? Do you go ECO+ which I think is about 52 seats or so? How much do you bump your price when you do that?
Can you hit multiple airports with one plane like Southwest airlines does in real life? IE Could you go from Houston to Tulsa, then Midland, Then back to houston so it’d increase load factors or do they always stay basic leg to leg?
What kind of service levels do you aim for on your flights? Where is the line really drawn with the pax. I know they want more than your average person but should it be maxed out?
When you’re first starting out how much capital do you keep in reserve? If you get the Q’s and figure about a mil a piece plus the 100k per month lease is $3mil enough to spare? Should it be $5mil.
there is no such thing as the best plane. I have a few rules of thumb that work for me…
I don’t use a turboprop if I can fill a regional jet, and I don’t use a regional jet if I can fill a narrow body;
but I avoid using my 737’s on very short routes because their profit margin drops too much;
and I avoid using my Dashes on routes with heavy competition: with the same seats and service, Dashes get a lower rating than regional jets and narrow bodies.
You can schedule your flights any way you like. Well, as long as the plane arrives on sunday evening where it has to leave on monday morning.
AS passengers check value for money. Cheap service and cheap prices will get you a high ORS rating. Expensive service and expensive prices will also get you a high rating. And high ratings get you more passengers in a competitive market. As long as there are more passengers than seats in our planes, you can charge them through the nose. If there are more seats than passengers, your ORS rating becomes more important and you may have to lower your prices.
I use EcoPlus and charge default price plus 30%. If I used economy seats (not standard seats) and charged default prices, my profit margin and my ORS rating would be fairly similar. But I like running an oldfashioned flag carrier
I leased planes until I ran out of money. That means I ended up with less than one million dollar. But hey… 200.000 dollar will pay the first salaries. The planes have only flown four days when you have to pay the first lease, but another few hundred thousands should cover for that. If you need more than one million, your planes have flown half empty, your prices were too low, or you changed the cabin configuration several times
I’ve had the best luck using 50 econ and 9 standard biz seats on my Qs (2 econ FAs and 1 in biz). I generally start with 125% price and see how that goes.
I try to have 4 or 5 bars on my service levels, but pay attention to what it is costing me. In biz class on short flights for instance, the cost of providing the service is so high compared to what I can charge for tickets that I find it is more profitable to operate at a much lower service level and simply drop my prices a bit. In general, the longer the flight the better the RoI on services.
Since every stop counts as a connection, multi stop itineraries are less desirable (and you can therefore not get as much in ticket prices for them) In your Tulsa/Midland example you’d be better off offering a lower frequency (even non-daily) non-stop to each.
Is a via flight considered as a connection flight (where you need to have at least an hour between connections and the ORS rating is much lower than a direct flight)?
Don’t be sorry man for asking questions! Be sorry only you’re trying to reinvent the wheel yourself! This is a game which is supposed to be fun for those who play it and interact through it with other players. And also, nobody has to answer any question if he/she doesn’t want or doesn’t like. IT’S OPTIONAL!
A via flights is just a fancy looking connection flight. It offers no advantages (outside Africa - more on that elsewhere). Incidentally, you don’t need an hour between connections. I assume you are thinking of transfers, but passengers continuing on the same plane don’t need transfer time. There is turnaround time (think of it as refuelling, taxiing etc).
More stops usually means a higher overall flight rating, but it is possible to beat a route with fewer stops (say 1 vs. 2) if you offer very good service or prices.
Is there a way anyone can look at my airline and see what they think?
Also when I look at my route and see an amount for depreciation/leasing of say $1,000 does that mean that money is going towards paying my lease amount or will I still pay the $100k for the Q?
Also I accidently selected the wrong aircraft to cancel a lease on. Is there anyway to undo that?
Leasing: This is the calculated share of leasing expenses. E.g. if you operate 20 flights per week that all take the same amount of time, leasing would be calculated as 100000AS$ divided by the percentage of the whole operating time per week this flight will take. So for 20 flights of equal distance and duration, leasing would tell you 100kAS$ / 20 = 5000AS$ per flight.
You still only pay 100k AS$ once per week.
The cancellation of a lease is final and cannot be revoked. You still may lease it back from the market as soon as it has left your fleet.
If you want a quick once-over for your airline, tell us which server you play on (and maybe even provide the airline’s name ).
Sorry for adding this in here, but it seemed like a relavant thread of basic questions.
Again sorry if these are really basic and obvious, I tried to find it on the wiki, but perhaps my searching skills arent that good?
[list=1][]If I canceled a lease in my holding, will I get the deposit back? My plan is to cancel a couple of leases in a holding company, and start a new enterprise with that money.[]If I open a new enterprise will it be able to interline with my holding company?[/list]Dita
yes you will get your deposit back. But as the weekly lease is paid at the end of the week, you will get the deposit back minus your last lease.
And yes again. Holding and subsidiaries are allowed to interline with each other, lease (owned) planes to each other and offer ground handling to each other.
I thought I was done… When do the servers update flight loads? I managed to get on the new server and am curious when I should check. I want to get the jump on things before my flights take off half empty.
A’s pax boad B’s plane to fly internationally into B’s hub where B has an interline agreement with C to handle local feed. I need to know if I should get the other two to sign one as well. Or if that is where alliances come in.
Not exactly sure what you are getting at, but think of interline agreements as links in a chain, not as codeshares (which do not exist in AS).
For a passenger to make a connection between two flights those two flights must be on the same carrier or on carriers that have an interline agreement.
Alliances have no effect on the ORS or passenger decision making. They are principally a social networking thing right now.
If a flight is having problems getting booked is it possible to adjust the prices on that particular flight or must I wait until a new flight comes later in the week?
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, and a domestic based ©. My company has an interline with both A and C. If A’s pax get on my plane and fly into my hub can they connect to C’s seats or do A and C need an agreement as well?