You see, not everyone lives in the big cities. There are people who need to get to a large hub from smaller cities all the time. But they don’t get booked. For instance AMA-DEN - the game would have me believe that nobody in Amarillo would ever need to go to Denver, and that’s just not the case. And Amarillo, TX is not a small town either. I know the game developers can have passengers from medium or small cities if they want. You know who they are- those dudes with 375 planes and fly to ALL airports with an unlimited supply of AS$ to do whatever they want. (wish I knew how to “develop”)
I just looked up the Amarillo airport on Wikipedia…there were 32000 passengers last year on direct flights to Denver. However, I don’t know if the game models the demand that closely.
I think demand in this game just doesn’t work this way. For instance, CLT is a 10 demand airport currently, and it has a lot to do with AAL’s effort of developing it into a transfer hub. In terms of direct traffic, it’s perhaps not a 10. Similar things can be said about perhaps MSP and DTW. My point becomes clearer for cargo. Is MEM arguably the best cargo hub because there’s just so much demand in Tennessee? Probably not. In reality, if a carrier as significant as fedEX decided to set up somewhere else, then that place could have just as high a demand as MEM. In the cases of smaller airports like AMA, many passengers just get ferried to hubs for their travel, therefore not reflected as demand in this game. And I guess it ties in with the game’s focus on through traffic. And on a side note, that’s perhaps why many of us resort to the hub and spoke model instead of a model that gives more focus to direct flight like the one of perhaps WN. Although, in reality, the latter model also has gained much success over the years.
There’s many things to take into consideration at medium and small airports especially in the US. Like Amarillo almost all the flights are to Dallas but almost no one is just flying Amarillo to Dallas they are connecting out of Dallas to another place. Same with Denver or Houston with United as both of those are United hubs those 32,000 passengers might be going to hundreds of destinations. Also they get split up between all qualifying flights in the OSR system not just direct flights and also they will drive to another airport with qualifying flights too. meaning yes American airlines can fill multiple 737-8 in a day but in the game you might be able to get 40-50 pax between Amarillo and Dallas just because they are not going their in real life.