There are some huge airlines in the USA. Usually the most experienced players there. I am still learning after a year of playing different tactics, and I have years of management experience in real life. The competition in SEA that has a bunch of widebodies started in JFK and is leveraging that success to come into other American markets. This is a big downside of playing in the same market as the big hardcore players (USA, China, EU). I like smaller markets without open investments so that I’m not directly competing against the best players.
I think rubiohiguey2000 had a less-than-tactful way of saying it, but his general advice is sound.
NO NO, everybody had a very polite and clear way of telling me how things works.
I’ve been re-reading the beginner guide lately. I think I’ve done everything correctly.
My avg. seat filling percentage is 97% and I’ve got at least 15% of profit margin every flight.
Probably mine was just inexperience.
1)Should I have started in Mexico or Brasil or Argentina or S.Korea (As I was planning to do) instead of US?
2)I know that U.S. was an easy market. Was that correct?
3)I think I’m still in the game, as I’m leasing my 2nd A321.
Xiguan, right?
On a quick look I’d say the market is absolutely empty. There are some bigger airlines, yes, but none if them really caters the market.
The best hubs you could ever have are 99% available. Get yourself some CRJ and build connecting hubs northeast-south or east-west on some small airport with lots of slots.
And try to increase your margin. 40-50% in an empty market.
Not at all. It’s a huge market, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find a niche where you’ll be left alone, but usually really experienced hardcore players start in those big markets (US, EU, China), so you’ll probably have the most skilled players as your competition.
From what you’ve written, I’d guess that you’re profit margin is way too low. In the beginning of a server, you really need to try hard to maximize your profits. That starts with adjusting prices to a lot more than the standard price (I’ve found 160% is a good figure, but you can probably go even further.) Especially in the first weeks, don’t worry about a competitor having lower prices/better ORS rating than you, at least on trunk routes. Your planes will fill up anyway, since demand exceeds capacity.
Next big difficult issue: Yield optimisation. That means finding the sweet spot between selling as much tickets as possible and selling those tickets for the highest possible price. You’ll get more money from only filling 80% of your seats for 350$ each than filling 100% of your seats for 150$ each. It takes a lot of time to find that spot, in real world airlines there are big offices only tasked with that issue.
yep, west coast market is getting already quite busy, at the very beginning of my game I earned +45% circa and already done most of the things you suggested me.
With all respect - if you have only 21 Mio AS$ company value after 4 months, you had never ever 45% margin. Or you have let the airline run for a couple of weeks without adding planes.
Something is wrong here.
You have 4 maintenance categories = means 15 % more maintenance costs.
You can easily reduce this to 3 mantenance categories and safe this 15%.
Think about "Cessna 2088 Grand Caravan2 and “SSJ 100-95”.
Finally, your network looks a litte bit like a “knitting pattern for socks”. Sorry
Finally, I also looked at your airline.
Read the hints from everybody given in this thread. Not really anything to add. Except that you should concentrate on 1 hub.
With a setup like yours, it would also not run better in other countries. You should really rework on a strategy and a setup. Use waves, one hub and not more than 3 types of planes.
ok thanks, actually I use the spoke and hub system, I have 2 hubs: SEA and SMF.
Ok thanks also for the 3 types of plane advice. RIP lil cessna caravan, my fav airliner
You are also flying from LAS, PDX, SLC, SFO to multiple destinations. You have more than 2 hubs.
Can you explain please how your hub and spoke would work? I cannot see specific wave times, neither in SEA nor in SMF. Are you sure you have scheduled waves somewhere?
Hi there. I guess you are referring to my airline, TMA based in STL on Yeager.
It is the first time I am actually successful in the US (and I have been playing a few years, mostly Mexico).
Here is how I made it to 40 aircraft in a few weeks :
chose a cheap fleet of old aircraft. My fleet is mostly comprised of 20 year old+ MD´s with leases around 25k / deposits 250k which enabled me to start quickly with a lot of aircraft. I also keep to a pretty simple fleet because the more diverse it is, the more expensive it is to maintain.
I schedule my flights around 3 main banks for optimal east-west and vv connections. I also focused on mid-sized city, such as SMF or LGB or GEG connecting them via STL to the likes of other smaller markets such as PBI, BDL or PVD, as well as larger airports. around 85 pct of my pax are connecting pax in STL.
I took advantage of the new ORS which is focusing less on comfort and more on price. My old M80´s have mostly 150 seats (C20Y130) and I get an average margin of 40pct. On my 3 longhaul routes I get even more than 50pct by cramming in more seats on my cheap 767´s.
I have IL´s at just about every destination and am an active member of an alliance, coordinating flights with alliance members.
I am not here to “crush” the competition. I do not flood a competitor´s market. I just open routes that make sense for my airline, and I focus on 1 hub only at the start until I cannot grow there.
If you need any guidance, or screenshots of my flights just let me know, I am happy to help!
STL is not a good place for connections. You would have been better off in LIT, ICT, OMA or even MCI would have been better. But LIT and ICT are great especially if you start there on new sever where you can build traffic flow when there is zero supply and grow along.
Dude, what you can do is fight with your chest, it boosts the price of your ticket to 185%, but it’s in your cabin configuration: Longliner Recliner.
You can buy more than one passenger or go to their flights to make sure that it will charge 185%.
It does this that I’m sure will try the forward and will grow your company. beauty, anything I call in my Whatsapp 5519991830853 that I help you, ok, hugs.