Does adding flights influence the passenger demand in any way?
Hi,
adding flights does not increase passenger demand. But adding flights may offer other/more connections and fill up your plane anyway.
Jan
It’s always advisable to check your market share on a route that you wish to put a new airplane on.
If you have 100 % market share and only half-full planes with normally priced tickets, you can still try and lower the prices, but chances are that there is just not enough passengers for this route. Expanding a network might help, but that works as a long-term solution. I don’t recommend it if you’re a beginner. For instance, my hub is set at a smaller airport, but I’ve managed to get a large network started that succesfuly fills my flights. I’m still expanding the network but I earn most of my money on other routes - the ones from big airports.
If you have several competitors on the route, then it’s easier - first ballance your prices to the point of filling your planes (while still earning money, of course). Then put another airplane on the route and watch it fill up, carefully balancing prices on new flights. If you do it right, your market share will increase and those of your competitiors will fall.
I just wanted to add one thing, you will always have certain trunk routes to large airports/major regional national airports where you are able to get many pax even without much transfers, try to always have some extra flights in these routes so that you don’t have all the flights running at 100% this will greatly help you when you start/increase flights to smaller airports. Always check on your trunk routes and as soon as you have too many 100%s add a flight or 2.
Excellent point about trunk routes above by miha1981! If you find one, and there are many, make sure you charge a high price. Use the most efficient aircraft for that route (even if it is a q400) and add tonnes of frequencies.
quick question, what if the route only max out on one direction but not the other? should I still add flights or expand my connections?
such an inbalance is probably based on the amount of connection passengers on your flight as well as on your competition’s flights. so I would guess it depends on your schedule. raising prices one way might be an alternative
indeed. Also try and look to add connections to the other flight.