Holding Company in Financial Ruin! Any Suggestions? :)

English Boards Community Support
1

Hey, guys!

So I've managed to get my holding company into some financial trouble.  And I’m only willing to take some of the blame…   ;)

When I initially started my enterprise (beginning of June), I didn’t transfer enough money into one of my subsidiaries, so I read several suggestions in the forums recommending others in the same position buy a cheap aircraft and sell it to their parent/holding company in order to transfer money, then repeat as necessary depending on how much money needed transferring.

So that’s what I did.  I purchased a $38,000 Britten-Norman BN-2B-26 Islander and made roughly 45 transfers back and forth between my subsidiary and my holding company, transferring approximately 1,500,000AS$ from my holding to my subsidiary.  In hindsight, I should have purchased a more expensive plane and performed this procedure fewer times, but all the suggestions in the forums said to buy the cheapest, so I did.  At any rate, unbeknownst to me, every time I sold the plane to my holding company, it hired 8 pilots, in addition to flight management crew and administration crew.

So now I have 335 pilots, 50 admin crew, and 22 flight management crew.

I’ll take responsibility for the system hiring the initial 8 pilots and a few admin and flight management crew when I made the initial sale, since I didn’t have the option turned off to hire pilots/crew when a new plane is purchased.  But why would the system hire additional pilots and crew for every single purchase?  Why doesn’t the system check available employees and say “Oh, you already have 8 pilots certified for the Britten-Norman that aren’t in use, no need to hire 8 more, I’ll just use those!”

Anyway, I guess there’s nothing to do now that it’s done, I’m just a little miffed and looking to vent.  Although, if you do have any suggestions about how to get out of this, that would be great.  For now since my holding company only has enough money to meet this week’s payroll, I’ll have to transfer money each week going forward from my subsidiary to my holding, while laying a few people off each week until we’re back to zero.  Oy.   :)

Joe

2

In the game settings, disable the “automatically assign pilots” setting. That will stop the automatic hiring. You can assign pilots manually from the fleet management screen if you need to. (And since you can’t create a transfer flight without pilots assigned, you’ll always get a reminder that you need to assign them whenever you get a new airframe.) Assigning pilots manually uses logic and uses existing certified pilots before hiring already certified or training new pilots.

It may just be easier to liquidate and restart if you’ve only been operating for a month, but that’s a decision that you’ll have to make on your own. Chances are, the game charged you for seat installation every time you sold the plane back too, which also ate up some of your cash.

If having pilots automatically assigned always hires new pilots, then that’s a problem - I’d post about it in the suggestion forum or file a support ticket, as that’s a problem that could break the game for new players.

3

Ken,

Thanks for your reply.

Fortunately, I had the option for automatically assigning cabins turned off, so no hit with repeated cabin installations.  

I'm going to try and work through this without liquidating and consider this a major learning lesson, but I will certainly take your advice and contact support.

Thanks,

Joe

4

Not sure if you have done this already or not, try to reduce the wages that are paid to the pilots and other staff to the minimum it will let you, save a bit of money at least.  :)

It will effect their mood and your overall rating but it wont matter as you don't operate any flights with the holding company.

5

trebor,

Great suggestion, that was the first thing I did to try and minimize costs!  As you said, since it's just my holding company, I don't mind taking the hit to the overall image rating.   :)

Thanks,

Joe