I've started a new airline called Iceland Airlines on Gatow and would like some guidance:
1. Which airports are close by, have a high passenger demand, and little to no airlines there?
2. Which aircraft should I start with, i wanted one that is good, cheap, and can serve flights into Canada and Northern Europe?
3. Is it wise to build a passenger terminal at my hub in Reykjavik Keflavik?
1. You should check the Countries tab in your top menu. You'll find all kinds of information there. Pro tip: high passenger demand leads to many airlines in that airport. Check the maps, check the countries, and decide for yourself.
2. Like anything in AS, there's a trade-off between "good" and "cheap". Embrear 195s are cheap and good, but have limited range. CRJs might work but don't carry a lot of passengers. Airbus 318-319s and Boeing 737 have a good balance and a lot of options in the same maintenance category. Once you've chosen where you want to fly, you might want to check out the Aircraft Type Evaluation in your top menu. It will give you a good idea of what aircraft would work best for you.
3. Not until you are making a lot of money. Terminals are a waste of money until you are making more money than you can spend.
1. You should check the Countries tab in your top menu. You'll find all kinds of information there. Pro tip: high passenger demand leads to many airlines in that airport. Check the maps, check the countries, and decide for yourself.
2. Like anything in AS, there's a trade-off between "good" and "cheap". Embrear 195s are cheap and good, but have limited range. CRJs might work but don't carry a lot of passengers. Airbus 318-319s and Boeing 737 have a good balance and a lot of options in the same maintenance category. Once you've chosen where you want to fly, you might want to check out the Aircraft Type Evaluation in your top menu. It will give you a good idea of what aircraft would work best for you.
3. Not until you are making a lot of money. Terminals are a waste of money until you are making more money than you can spend.
3. But how would i make money, i'd liquidated 1000000 times and I never seem to earn any money
You need to decide what you are wanting to do as an airline, and you have to accept some general facts about the game. These facts are:
* You will restart a lot. It's not a bad thing. Just learn from what doesn't work and move on.
* You won't make millions your first several weeks, or maybe even months. Don't get discouraged.
* Playing on an established server (like Meigs, Devau, Nicosia) is not easy. Gatow might be even harder.
If I was creating an airline in Iceland, what I would want to do is make connecting flights between North America and Europe. Get something like a 737-700 with good range and fly New York/Toronto/Philadelphia -> Iceland -> Paris/London/Lisbon/Madrid and then reverse back. This way you will get several chances at bookings and passengers. Fly with good service, don't charge too much, and make sure your customers are comfortable. That's really all you can do. Even if you start in a 10-bar, high demand airport, you aren't going to be able to fly only direct flights. You have to make connecting flights, so pay attention to arrival times, departure times, and get them to line up as much as possible. Then you just have to wait... and wait... and wait. This game is a marathon, not a sprint.
Unfortunately, I don't know if it will even work for Gatow, or any of the other established servers. Many slots are going to be taken up and it won't be easy to match your flights up in a way that will help you make money. It's just very hard to get started on those game servers.
You could do what I did -- work on learning an airport. Find one and start running flights out of it everywhere you can. Learn where people like to fly, learn where they don't like to go. Gather up all that information, keep records, try new ideas, remember everything that works and everything that doesn't work. Then, when there's a new game server opened up, jump in and establish yourself in the airport you've been learning about. It's frustrating, I know. It's time consuming. But this isn't a game where you can just jump in and your video game instincts make you the biggest badass airline in the game. The people that are successful at this put forth the time and effort to figure out what works and what doesn't.
Good luck. :)
Yes... data gathering. That is one of the most important aspects in this game. And not only airport/demand data. Also data on configuration and onboard service, which combination for what distance gives you which ORS rating. ORS ratings are important in the game, the bottom line ORS rating impacts your display position (consider ORS "the" google placement optimization... the better google display position the more business you get...same with ORS: the better display position the more pax you get), the top line ORS impacts your connecting flights, as that will be the base number taken into consideration for connections (+ total travel time factor). So 32/90 will get you lots of O/D pax, but 60/80 will get you lots of connection pax. The first one (top line) is mainly affected by overall airline image and aircraft age, the second one is mainly affected by price to value ratio (price to seating to onbaord service ratio).
So gather lots of data... I have a full spreadsheet and still adding to it every day the new things I learn.. Data allows you to see, for example, that on some routes you are better off lowering price than improving service, to get same exact ORS. This is also statistics game. Not in pure sense of finding probabilities, medians, and outliers... but rather in using data to predict results.
And to use data, you have to gather that data first.
Now one important thing: If your airline starts to become stable, do not start experimenting new things with it. Invest some credits and open a second holding, or open new airline in exact same spot on a different server and experiment there. Yes it will cost you more... but take it as an R&D expense :)
Now one important thing: If your airline starts to become stable, do not start experimenting new things with it.
This is good advice. As the saying goes: "If it's not broken, don't fix it." This can be a critical factor for a new airline with narrow margins.