Due to the increasingly limited slots, I have started to question if what I’m planning is efficient or not.
Thought of asking you, if you have identified any efficient method of organising an airline schedule considering connections and slot availability.
Do you use excel, or just plan it by heart?
For my airlines - for example Ozbek Qanot - I am using excel sheets. But as you already realised, Ozbek Qanot will fail and therefore I am surely the wrong guy to ask about that stuff. :D
I suggest you rely on shamanic prediction and black magic.
Hahaha, sorry about that. Just consider my previous message as a sign of appreciation or jealousy. Your krylya is tough competition as it is. Imagine Ozbek’s run on my airline. Anyway, no personal stuff involved, I admire your operation and would appreciate if you are to take my comment as an in-game joke :).
Getting back on-topic, thanks for sharing that you use excel. I have tried it too, but I find it pretty annoying since I cannot predict airports’ slot availability :(.
Slot availability is a task. ;-)
I agree it can be annoying but I can say it is a pretty cool feeling when you finally find a free slot perfectly fitting.
Back to your first question: I think it is vital in long-term-playing to have a good system. And I believe that without excel or any other tool you will quickly be lost.
And don´t worry, no hard feelings. :-)
I suggest you rely on shamanic prediction and black magic.
works for me. a rain dance every one in awhile doesn't hurt either :P
As a newcomer I'd also be interested in knowing the advantage of aircraft utilisation vs hub efficiency. I have a pretty slick hub operation up and running for my early-days airline, but it comes at the expense of some aircraft efficiency (i.e over 150%). I'm playing in Europe, so the big airports are pretty congested meaning that I tend to plan my schedules around those slots first.
Any thoughts on whether hub efficiency should be at the expense of aircraft utilisation?
You can improve your aircraft utilisation by assigning more than one aircraft to a certain flight schedule. Example: You have two aircraft, both with a inefficient schedule, let's say 180 %. Maybe you can squeeze in another flight, but utilisation would go down to 80 % for aircraft A. If you manage to assign this flight (or maybe the whole schedule) to aircraft B on every other day, both will have a sufficient ratio around 130 %. It's a laborious business, though, especially if you want to replace one of them later.
I think that it doesn't matter so much. Of course you can save some money by keeping your maintanence ratio between 100 and 110% or so, but if an airport is really congested I rather look at the slot situation...and I think its a myth that you have to use excel tables etc etc. to run a good airline. I'm not really using any tools for the flight planing and I'm quiet sucessfull...I just wouldn't have enough time to use 25 or 30min to schedule one aircraft (at my current size I get 2 or 3 aircraft each day - so that would be 1 hour or 1,5 hour only to plan the aircrafts...I rather spend that time to update the fares on existing routes etc.).