Is Demand Strictly Ranked by ORS Rating?

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I recently encountered something quite confusing, so I would like to ask for other people’s information on this. On the same route (X-Y), I saw in the ORS that my flight (flight A) has a rating of 50 (final rating, as ranked in the ORS booking system) and another competing itinerary, which is a connecting flight (X-Z-Y) has a final rating of 35.

Before the demand calculation time for city X, I observed that my flights (all of rating 50) are equally ranked 1st in the ORS system. However, after the demand calculation time, it turns out that their flights with lower ratings are cleared, but only like 70% of my flights are fully cleared.

I feel confused because I thought the demand calculation is strictly according to the ORS rating, so a higher rated flight is always cleared before a lower rated flight.

I do, also recognized that the demand computation seems not strict, so it is not always the case that all 50-rated flights will be cleared before the 35-rated flights will be cleared, but seems to follow a proportional pattern (so higher rated flights get proportionally larger stake of the total demand).

However, I am not sure about this fact. And does not have a clear answer to the question I met.

Thanks for everyone if you have some thought on this.

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By the way, I have a even stranger observation, that one of my newly opened route, with a very high ORS rating (basically top1-2) among hundreds of possible other itineraries, but my single flight with a high ranking only gets less than 1-2% of the total seating filled (it’s not an A380, just a narrow-body with <200 seats).

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You have to consider multiple factors in this case.

  1. Demand is not filled „top-to-bottom“. It prefers higher ratings and will place more PAX/Cargo in this aircraft’s but it will also give a portion to lower ratings.
  2. Connection PAX/Cargo through the HUB of the other player. Maybe there are connections you do not have (X-Z flight) and/or the flight already has connection PAX/Cargo (both flights, in X-Z through IL and Z-Y through IL/other flights of this player into Z).

From my personal experience I can tell you that there is the possibility to build HUBs with 90% or more connecting PAX/Cargo and basically near-zero-demand for the HUB-Airport. Connections are very strong and should not be underestimated.

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Another point to consider are the number of seats. If your competitor has as smaller aircraft or a premium seat configuration it’s also easier to fill the.

Generally important and the reason new player might struggle on older game worlds:
Relevant for demand distribution is not only the ORS but also the frequency.

Simple example:

  • Demand between X and Y is 300 per day.
  • You have 1 daily flight with rating 100
  • Competitor has 4 daily flights with rating 50

→ You get 100 passenger, your competitor 200 (50 per flight).

This has the effect that on gameworlds that are running for quite for a while it’s pretty hard to start a new airline. The sheer amount of connections provided by competitors (also with lower rating / only transfer flights) will “eat” the majority of the demand.

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