Hello all,
Just wondering, how much do older aircraft put passengers off? For example. If I was to lease an 11 year old Dash 8-Q300B I could save $33,000 per week in leasing costs, would I be likely to lose that many pax?
Cheers.
On high density route - that particular plane - I don’t think so.
I don’t think older planes affect pax bookings; however, they damage the image of your company of you use too many of them.
Unlikely. Age has an impact on overall rating but it should be FAR from such an extend.
But the one thing you need to consider is maintenance: 11 years as opposed to new (~1-5 years) means an increase of 40% for maint costs. Should be below 33,000 but may come close to 20,000.
Question to the team:
When using the evaluation tool via my different companies (both with the same maint settings), I get two totally different figures for maint costs (~25%) for the same query. How’s that?
The majority of aircraft within my airline group are "older" airplanes and for example Sparrow Air operated older and newer types (A320-family) alongside each other and I noticed no difference. However I noticed that the seating configuration greatly affects the acceptance of my passengers for my flights. For example the 757-200 of Sparrow Air are no longer the youngest ones but passengers are pleased to ride in those aircraft - even on very long flights from Indonesia to New Zealand. Demand generally jumped after a change of the configuration from 210 to 188 seats in my Boeing 757-200s to increase pitch in Business Class. One of my subsidiaries (Sparrow LinK) operates 50-seat Dash 8-300s and these aircraft are not that young but very much in evidence.
Regards
I’m currently operating an airline that has 20 Bombardier Dash 8 Q100B…the average age is 18.5 years…so it affects my image…but do i care? Nope…i’m the only airline in the country and all of the country is 1 bar demand airports other then the main airport…so it depends the situation your company is in…as for mine…i’m fairly enjoying a monopoly so i don’t care about the age
Even in highly competitive markets I don’t suffer due to the fact that I am utilizing older planes. 
Some of my competitors operate really modern fleets on key routes while Sparrow Air operates older aircraft like the 109-seat MD-87 or 155-seat MD-88. I experiemented for a longer time until I got the “correct” configuration for these aircraft and as you know it is always a compromise: comfort, capacity, costs per seat, performance/payload etc…
The Dash 8-100 is really a fine aircraft and I am very pleased with these 37-seaters. 
Regards
The Dash-100 are not profitable…specially being very old aircraft…they are hard to make any money while trying to keep prices low
My Dash 8-100s are profitable. Sparrow Air and their subsidiaries are not in the position to operate aircraft which are not profitable to operate 
. They have to make money to pay the bills.
Out of Curiosity, does anyone know how the maintenance costs increase as aircraft age increases?
THe reason I’m asking is I’m currently running quite a successful fleet of 737-400’s in the 18-22 year range and I’m trying to work out if upgrading to newer 737-800’s is worth the increased leasing costs if they have the same floorspace
Well you will have to teach me your tricks because it didn’t work out too well for me with a big fleet of Q100s.
The Q100 is a great aircraft, I own/operate 45 of these beasts all of which turn a tidy profit.
I also run 5 different configs for these, one of which is only a 13 seater! And still a profit…
I suppose you have the maintenance ratio between 100 to 200% ? My seating configs are Economy(600AS$/seat) and my on-board service is 5 stars…and my prices are set as default…but my planes have a 350% to 500% maintenance ratio…i find it hard to manage old aircraft…but thats just me lol
My Dash 8-100s are configured to seat 37 seats - like most Dash 8 in reality. I splitted the configuration to 9 Business and 28 Economy Class to have a CY37-seating. Maintenance-ratio is in most cases close to 100 and 200% depending on route-profiles and frequencies flown within a 24 hour frame. Sparrow Link currently schedules 23 Dash 8-100s and additional aircraft will probably leased to enhance the network. The regional-subsidiary of Sparrow Air needs to operate their aircraft as much as possible like their bigger sister Sparrow Air. The bills for maintenance are higher but the bottom-line is fine. For example most MD-87s of Sparrow Air have a maintenance-ratio of 100 to 120% and they are running smoothly and with healthy load-factors. Sparrow Air once perated the Dash 8s on its own but decided to transfer such ops to a subsidiary to lower costs and thus all aircraft below 100 seats are no longer operated by Sparrow Air. The smallest aircraft are 105-seat Boeing 717-200s. sadly I can’t add more seats to reflect a more realistic capacity (110 to 125 seats because passengers won’t like that) to lower the operating-costs even more…
Maybe you should try to use the Dash 8-300? The 50-seater have a higher chance to break-even due to the higher capacity. Sparrow Link operated eleven Dash 8-300s and these airplanes are amazing. Visually I prefer the ATR-aircraft but the characteristics of the Dash 8 much better fit into the requirements to operate into tiny airports within Indonesia without or with only marginal payload-restrictions.
Regards
I play in Ethiopia, from the looks of it, my Q400B can only land in certain airports…so i will need to lease some Q200B for regional flights…i’m trying to set up a 4th hub time for my aircrafts to fly back to ADD but the issue is, in Ethiopia, the only airport with no night-time ban is ADD. So old airlines in this case are eating up my cash…this time i’ve kept a balance of 5.6AS$mil just incase ill need to make adjustments to make my routes profitable. So in this case, i’m losing money because my plans are sitting on the ground for long times…not an easy game to understand but still fun!
Maybe you are able to re-schedule your Dash 8s with the aim that they leave the restricted airports before the ban prevents them to operate out of an airfield? So you have your Dash 8s at ADD and ypu can look at additional destinations served at night to aiports without restricions.
Even without a ban I like it to use my aircraft on red-eye flights to maximize their utilisation and to enhance the chance to "collect" many passengers at my hub to fill a late-evening departure to the East. For example there is a late-eving departure of an MD-87 of Sparrow Air at 11:55 PM from Jakarta to Jayapura in Irian Jaya. That’s quiet a long flight for an aircraft that size. The airplane arrives at 06:55 AM the next morning and after a short turn-around this cute MD-87 departs again to Jakarta at 07:25AM with an arrival at 10:30 AM at Jakarta with perfect connections to other flights. IIRC correctly this plane continues to operate four short domestic legs and then rests in the hangar until the plane is readied for her next departure to Jayapura 
Some aircraft are scheduled to fly through the darkness of the night to enhance the schedule and to play with the different time-zones within the Indonesian archipelago.
That is the correct way of thinking! We all had our lessons and collected our experiences. Every airline in airlinesim has a different business-stratgey, different markets, different approach towards the markets.
Just try and try and you will be successful!
Regards
This can be really problematic due to the fact that you can’t spread the weekly lease-payment on a high number of flights. So you schould really find a way to increase the utilization of your Dash 8s.
Regards