Is anyone of you having trouble filling economy seats on long-haul flights? About one or two months ago, demand started to fade away especially in economy. I used to have 100% loads on long-haul flights it fell to 40% by now even though I have not changed anything to the flight. I have even increased my short and mediumhaul network by 30% in terms of fleet capacity. I wonder why I suddenly lost so many passengers even though I increased my transfer possibilities.
I'm not sure which server you are referring to, but some possible reasons for loss of demand would be:
* Drop in the AGEX or generally low AGEX performance.
* Excess drop-off. This is generally found on newer servers (Gatow and Aspern). It can be found on older servers if the route hasn't been used. It seems (and this is purely conjecture on my part) that certain routes that are dormant for a while, meaning they have 0 viable connections in the ORS, tend to accumulate demand. Once there are viable connections on the route, the demand begins to be drained away. Think of it like a sink. The faucet continues to add a little bit of demand every day. The drain is the flights, taking those passengers to their destination. After a while, without a drain, the sink gets very full, and can take a little while to drain it, but once the drain does its job, the sink doesn't have that backload of water to get rid of.
* Connections. This is probably the issue, but it's not easy to verify. If you had a flight from JFK to LHR, and some of your passengers on that flight transferred from LHR to another flight to CDG, you might lose them if someone started up a direct JFK to CDG flight. Or someone could have come up with a better connection, like maybe JFK to MAD to CDG.
Hi,
a dropping AGEX and other routes to fly from A to B may well have an effect on his flights. And if he plays on a new game world, saturation is also a probable cause for lower seat loads.
But I don't think passenger demand is accumulated on underserved routes. Passenger demand is calculated on a daily base for each airport. Passengers who don't book a ticket, disappear forever in cyber space ;-)
You can see a "drain" effect on a new route. But that is purely caused by the fact that tickets are booked three days in advance.
Jan
Normally I would agree, but I have had experiences where I've run a route without transfer passengers and it steadily went down over time in the number of bookings. As the only person running that particular route, and it was on an older game world (Devau), I figured the phenomenon was the "sink effect". I wish I had saved screenshots of it. That company is long gone now.
Normally I would agree, but I have had experiences where I've run a route without transfer passengers and it steadily went down over time in the number of bookings. As the only person running that particular route, and it was on an older game world (Devau), I figured the phenomenon was the "sink effect". I wish I had saved screenshots of it. That company is long gone now.
Are you sure what you saw was not more competitors growing their networks and providing via flights covering the same destinations with non direct route? (1-2 transfers elsewhere)
I don't know. I was still learning back then. Still am, really. It could possibly be that now that I know any viable route, regardless of connections, can receive bookings if the ORS rating is high enough. I just thought that, on an older server where flights aren't being added by the thousands, they wouldn't happen after I established my own routes and got full bookings. If anything, I'd think the bookings would increase in time rather than decrease.
I am on Gatow. I am the largest airline in Vietnam and my main hub is SGN.
I am on Gatow. I am the largest airline in Vietnam and my main hub is SGN.
There seems to be barely any demand between CAN and HAN. I guess they did just have a war in the 70’s, but…
It is caused by AGEX. Before they adjust the AGEX, the effect was so great that my long-haul flights are all in loss. Now they adjusted the rate so that the reduction in passenger number in bearable. To counter this, you might want to consider:
1. Stop the long-haul flight (why bother to fly an empty plane)
2. Increase the no. of transit passengers by expanding your short-haul network
- Continue the long-haul, just for the sake of those transit passengers