I have a very strange problem on my hands on Stapleton and Tempelhof.
I had some LET 410 aircraft making feeder flights to CLJ airport. Loads especially on business class weren’t satisfying so i changed the cabin configuration to accommodate more economy class seats and applied this cabin configuration to the aircraft. I also added some new flights on other aircraft also to CLJ. After this move i get no pax for these flights (for some but very very few fligths i get like 1 pax).
Maintenance ratio is more then 100%, aircraft condition is 90 to 100% and all flights are domestic (so traffic rights should be ok). I don’t know what could this be ?
You had for sure better seats in business class than in economy class… now you have more seats - means that the economy class get a little bit more tighter, that’s all about why you don’t get passengers anymore. Lower prices by 5-10$ and it should be fixed.
I don’t know if there is a “technical” problem if your flights actually have bookings. If bookings are very low, you should have a look at the competition and compare flights/ratings. Your flights between Cluj and Bucharest are fully booked, which one would expect between a regional airport and the capital. So the problem lays in the other domestic flights and the international flights from Cluj.
If I am correct, the biggest airports in Romania (apart from the capital) are 4 bar airports. I don’t think you should expect a lot of traffic between Cluj and the other domestic airports. Make an exception for your Cluj-Timisuara route because it connects to a Timisuara-Budapest flight. Unfortunately, there are also direct flights between Cluj and Budapest.
As for international flights, there are several foreign airlines with routes to Cluj. Some use narrow bodies on their routes to Cluj. All of these have better ratings than your Dash flights. You are not in a comfortable position with a network that is mostly operated by Dash and Let planes… Big airlines like Vienna and FWI fly to all your international destinations. A passenger from Cluj who wants to fly to Rome (for example) can choose between a jet-jet flight (CLJ-VIE and then VIE-FCO) or he can take your prop-prop flight. I don’t need the ORS to guess that the jet-jet flights will have a higher rating.
You run a relatively small airline. If I was in your position, I would (at this stage, with your current size) only operate one hub in Bucharest. And I would use the Dash and Let planes for domestic flights, and only use jets for the international flights. I am not telling you how to run your airline, I don’t even know if my strategy would work, and I am sure there are several strategies that work. But another point of view sometimes helps to look at things in a different way.
While most of your observations are correct there is one that is not. I have problems only with domestic flights to and from Cluj. You say i should not expect a lot of traffic. Yes, i don’t but before the cabin configuration change i had pax on these routes, not many but still there were a few.
