I am running an airline based in Brasilia on Gatow.
I'm planning to lease Embraer 195 jets and I'm a little confused on what routes to offer.
I'm thinking of having flights from Sao Paulo > Brasilia > Salvador and back.
Do you think this is a good setup for my airline? I'm trying to start a successful airline.
Seating / Service:
I'm a little confused if I can lose money for having comfortable but not a lot of seats. Is 75 comfort plus seats profitable? I don't know if I should offer meals and snacks on the flight?
Hard to say whether this route works as is lot of depending on your onboard service, pricing, seat comfort, staff mood etc. Personally I am not a big fan of "Via" routes so I would stick to a route structure like A-B-A instead of A-B-C-A.
What you can do is to find out whether there is enough demand on a certain route, is by going to the airport page (in this case the airport page from Sao Paulo). Go to the Flight Schedule. Here you can see how many flights on a daily basis are going to a certain destination. The more flights, the higher the demand (generally speaking). If you have a look in the Flight Schedule at the country Brazil, you will see that a lot of flights are going to Belem, Belo, Brasilia, Curitibia etceteras. So this give you a good idea about the demand and the chances of having a good Seat Load Factors on a specific route.
I would recommend starting with routes to those destinations.
But keep in mind that there is competition on those routes. To find out if the route is really successful, enter the route into the Online Reservation System. Routes that are all Fully Booked by your competition seems to be popular. You can also fill in the route into your route management (which I prefer). Both ways are good to verify whether the demand is high.
And make sure you have a good balance between seat comfort, onboard service and pricing. Preferably its better to have more ORS points than your competitors! ;)
I’m a fairly new player myself so I can’t give you any advanced advice, just one thing: Start playing. You’ve restarted your company a couple of times within the last few days without doing very much - the learning curve in this game is quite steep and reading and asking in the forums is always a good idea, but you can’t make your way without making your own decisions. I’ve restarted various times in a couple of different countries on different game worlds and tried different things before I could find a way of playing the game that suits me at least in the very beginning stage of the game where I still am. And I guess most people did it that way.
The second thing is that you’ll need patience in this game, and even more in brazil, as you have competition there, although I cannot evaluate how strong it is. You might consider starting in Peru on Gatow, as there is no established airline, just one very small airline that started just a few days ago. You possibly won’t be able to grow as big as in brazil, but you will have it easier in the beginning.
I’m a fairly new player myself so I can’t give you any advanced advice, just one thing: Start playing. You’ve restarted your company a couple of times within the last few days without doing very much - the learning curve in this game is quite steep and reading and asking in the forums is always a good idea, but you can’t make your way without making your own decisions. I’ve restarted various times in a couple of different countries on different game worlds and tried different things before I could find a way of playing the game that suits me at least in the very beginning stage of the game where I still am. And I guess most people did it that way.
The second thing is that you’ll need patience in this game, and even more in brazil, as you have competition there, although I cannot evaluate how strong it is. You might consider starting in Peru on Gatow, as there is no established airline, just one very small airline that started just a few days ago. You possibly won’t be able to grow as big as in brazil, but you will have it easier in the beginning.
I think I could make it work if I choose a smaller hub with good demand. Maybe Porto Alegre, Recife, or Salvador
Try it out. Although the airports you mentioned are all at the edge of brazil and therefore probably not suitable for a hub.
I still have the idea (for myself) of starting on an established game world in Manaus, providing regional service in the north of brazil at first with the chance of overtakting the country when the time is right... I don't know if it would work but I think it's worth a try.
Try it out. Although the airports you mentioned are all at the edge of brazil and therefore probably not suitable for a hub.
I still have the idea (for myself) of starting on an established game world in Manaus, providing regional service in the north of brazil at first with the chance of overtakting the country when the time is right... I don't know if it would work but I think it's worth a try.
Manaus is a good airport, got a good demand, but it's quite long from 'good' airports. I'm starting to expand my operations there now, almos two months after creating the enterprise.. :s
And stop reseting! That's the point. Try, if it's not working, then reset.
About Porto Alegre, it doesn't work well for me (obviosly you can try).. I can't fill my flights from there, so, making that airport a hub isn't my main target.
And, hm, conection flights isn't the best thing you could do, I think. It's strange here, I'd rather do a São Paulo -> Brasilia - Brasilia -> Salvador OR São Paulo -> Brasilia ... São Paulo -> Salvador!
So you are saying that I should have direct flights instead of connecting flights?
Hi,
if you just started a new airline, you don't have many planes. So you need to find a few routes that have enough (direct) demand. As your fleet grows, you can offer more connections to more destinations.
So in theory, waves and good connections are very important. In reality you will only have few connections during the first weeks ;-)