With Bafa Airlines on aspern I cant fill long haul flights with 787s. I have best onboard service and best seats but I get only %50 load on all of my long haul flights. This is an example:
I cant fill even half of the planes with these prices and best services. I bought some 777s to check if this is the case but I cant change the planes because lack of slots. I’m curious why I cant get demand on routes like PEK, JFK etc.
My short and medium haul flights are always fullfilled. Since I have 80 787s I lost a lot of money because of my long haul flights. If I cant solve this issue I will have nothing except closing my long haul routes.
If someone has an opinion regarding my problem that would be great :)
There are several reason, why you cannot fill your plane.
1. Not all Routes have the same Pax interest. Some are easier to fill some are very difficult. I have the same challenge with my Airlines.
2. You don't have a real good IL in YYZ
3. You have IL's with Airlines, who have flights from Europe to YYZ
4. Many flights from Europe to Toronto exists at the moment
5. In general Pax don't like to fly from e.g Rome to Istanbul and then back to Toronto... and you have IL's with Airlines, who have flights from Europe to YYZ
Thank you for your answer. The thing is that I have this problem on all of my long haul routes. I just cant fill the plane even with low prices. Maybe the only way for me is to close my long haul routes. Pax dont like my long haul flights because of no reason :(
You seem to have good seats and service... instead of decreasing pricing, try to INCREASE them. It's quite likely your demand will not drop, and you will increase revenue. What seats are you using?
I would suggest you to first of all as falciformis said get regional Canadian ILs but you need much bettre seats. I use recliner short haul for all economy passagers (shortest flight is 200 km) and full flat bed for all buisness passagers (shortest 200 km), but I have 200% price and that drops my rating but I have learned that passagers do not care about the price and they care about the service. Well my competitors do fly more passagers but I have higher profit.
Also try getting a bettre service profile ( I have the best possible on all flights and to really make sure I have 1 for under 800Km 1 for over 800Km and about 5 for over 1500Km to make sure I am always the best but my double price sometimes destorys it and the fact that strangly aircraft condition is so bad for new planes, only 4 bars).
I use this system for Scandinavian Air and for Malaysia Air.
Sometimes your possibilities for optimization are limited. I personally doubt that using better seats than Comfort Plus or even raising prices will make your long-haul fleet any less cash-burning, but I may be proven wrong.
Long-haul in AS is a highly competitive market due to several factors. Many players dream of a large long-haul fleet which leads to excess capacities - and in contrast to shorter routes a healthy competition. You don't only need a regional feeder network (on both ends), the connections have to be very attractive (service, seats and so on). So it might not be successful to optimize your long-haul service alone.
In the end - if a route burns too much money (and does not generate a good number of feeder passengers in compensation), cut it.
