Hello Airllinesimers,
A new server is about to start and I was wondering where to start as well as my strategies how to start well.
Starting in USA should be interesting, however we all know how competitive that market is and how fast everything fills up.
I want to ask your suggestions ( of course if you are willing to tell us) how to start in such a market? How to grow the fastest? How did you do it in previous new servers. Hearing your stories of start up in competitive markets would be great!! Share your knowledge :D
Be nimble. If you can't lease 100 old junkers first day then airlines will grow slowly and for the first month there will be plenty of passengers to go around. This means you don't need to concentrate on one city to build a network with connections since you should be pricing your flights for P2P traffic only. This will make you rich and allow you to see what cities are more open and which ones are less so that you can then concentrate your growth on that market and eventually reallocate your aircraft to it as network and connections become more important.
In most cases I failed on new servers because I was not fast enough to expand as fast as possible to generate a critical mass. So I am not in the position to give you good advices :blush: . My experience and way to do business on an existing server is a little bit better. For example I restarted my main company a few months ago and I "knew the country" and "the characteristics of aircraft". I also avoid former mistakes made by myself. In most cases, my airlines collapsed because I was too stupid to see the warnings on the wall ;) .
For me, a sustainable growth is better than a high growing rate, even in an empty new world. As competition is getting harder, in the long run you need competitive structures. I only use aircraft, I would fly with myself.
If in the start of a new server, just lease a lot of planes and secure high demand routes, then you're pretty much set. When the competition kicks in, you've got something to fall back on.