Just an idea for updates going forward - I find the game really realistic and enjoyable in many ways, but one glaring omission for me is the on-board service. In reality, we’ve had decades of being charged extra for seat selection, baggage, meals etc. Sadly the game doesnt seem to implement any of this and it makes it difficult to operate as a low cost carrier, as the ORS would just hammer you for the poor on-board service, and without the chance for additional revenue that the upcharge services would provide.
I’d love to see options around on-board service, for example, choosing a caterer if its not included in the product (similar to how you set a maintenence provider), and being able to set a price for baggage, seat selection etc, all of which could feed into the ORS score.
I feel that the game currently provides somewhat insufficient support for low-cost carrier gameplay—except on extremely price-sensitive routes. For example, based on what I’ve seen from other players’ descriptions, in the early days of the Paine server, passengers were highly sensitive to fares, forcing airlines to slash prices. However, this wasn’t truly full LCC gameplay, because passengers were focused more on price than on service.
That said, I’m a bit concerned that the seat selection fees or paid baggage services you mentioned lean more toward commercial marketing. In real-world airlines, this falls under the product or PR department’s responsibilities. Maybe this feature could perhaps be implemented as a “marketing strategy” option. For players, it would act as a black box: once you select the right strategy, the virtual product and PR departments would automatically go to work. Players wouldn’t be able to observe the detailed process, but the results would show up in ORS ratings, load factors, and revenue.
As for LCCs, from my experience the virtual passengers in AS pay very close attention to ORS scores. If you use bad aircraft, bad seats, or bad service quality, the ORS score will still drop even if your prices are low. If the ORS scoring algorithm could be adjusted so that low fares can offset service shortcomings, then true LCC gameplay would become viable. However, based on my understanding, many low-cost carrier passengers are not happy, but they have travel needs but are short of money, so they have no choice but to fly with low-cost carriers.
I have stated this many times in the past and I’ll happily repeat it: The long-term goal of the transition to the so-called Distribution System is to enable players in AirlineSim to run different business models, including “proper” low-cost carriers. For this to work, a lot of individual components need to be refined and tuned, including but of course not limited to service profiles.
So none of the ideas here are new and they’re pretty much all on the roadmap in one way or another. So to get a full picture, I suggest to skim the roadmap overview. Ironically, “Ancillary Revenue” is one of the features that only has a note on there, no fleshed-out roadmap item. Mostly because it is so tightly related with service profiles and their roadmap item is effectively one for ideation/concept.