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Most probably he gets his flights filled by some good working hub system.... This way he may niot have the best rating for the citypair in question but sufficent ratings for his connections...
And/or he has some good Interline agreement that fills his flights...
In addition to what Stimue said:
Have you checked how many seats he actually offers?
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No. I tried it, but I didn't find it. Where it is? How can I find it?
“good working hub system” 1 day after company was founded??? Sorry, but I really look for serious explanation…
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Why not?
It’s al about the number of aircraft scheduled.
I could easily built a working hub with 732s from day one, but I couldn’t with new E95…
As for the number of seats offered, check Database -> “fleetlists”
Could ypu please tell the name of your airline, server and competitors airline and I will take a look.
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AirlineSim is all about connections. Offering many connections is the way to success. Note that a connection is not just simply having two daily flights. Those flights have to feed into others in your hub, and you don't seem to have any hub waves. Opportunistic scheduling with no distinct waves can work (and there are many airlines that start on servers doing exactly that), but you need many, many planes, and, if starting on an established server, a lot of patience.
You have quite bad SLF (I calculated it to be about 60%) and I do not see any kind of hub system on your side so that might explain your loads. Your competitor has a very well made wave system but has even worse loads than you (20% SLF). How I see it your competitor has very high maintenance ratio on all his aircraft. He gets the full loads as he has connection and his passengers will connect on to hub routes (even as a startup I think atleast 10% of all passengers should be connecting), on my airline in KUL (stapleton) about 80% of all passengers are connecting.
Bahrain is not a high demand airport and you have very big competitors around you which already fill most of the market for the area. So your number of direct passengers is very limited and you really need a hub system.
Another hint: on Ellinikon, there is no money in short haul ;) We have the latest pricing model that greatly increases the value of medium haul flights (like transcons in the US) at the expense of short haul. On Aspern, I built a nice airline using CRJ700s on short haul. Tried the same on Ellinikon and am STILL working to transform my airline away from that low margin business model, a year later. You want to be flying traditional "mainline" jets (737 or A320).
You can still make substantial money on shorthaul with a new pricing scheme, but not as much a syou could before. Flight unde r500 km hardly break even, but anything over 500 km can be profitable with a decent load factor. Of course, with the new pricing model, long haul is the most profitable of all.
It’s been said already by CBE in this thread:Thanx for the fleetlists.
It is your good craft, if you could easily built a working hub with 732s from day one. But if you did it against companies offering direct flights or very well maintained shorter connections… operated by new 737 NG, Airbus or ERJ… on very competitive market… with lower price… then SOMETHING is really wrong. For what is then the “Popularity with passengers” rating? What is its influence?
I know, that it is all about the number of aircraft scheduled. But it is really wrong, if it is possible, that 2 daily new E95s flights (connections) can be beaten by 3 daily 35 years old 732s flights. If so, this is no a game for me…
I am a long-time professional in this business in real world and I cannot and I dont want to switch my thinking this way
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I consider that this simulation is better than some “Airline Empire” or what
Your competitor has a thoroughly timed hub while you have nothing to offer for connecting pax.
Consequently, his aircraft are crammed with connecting pax. How many connecting pax do you have on average?
Though let’s see if he can survive. There are some factors I see that aren’t really promising. Having timed arrivals and departures is great, though half of them are useless.
As for the rating and how it basically works:
The one who has the best rating gets the most pax.
BUT it’s not that you get the vast majority of them.
Pax are allocated in a rather socialistic way (I certainly don’t like it), should say:
At the ratings you posted, he’d still pull quite a number of pax from your flight.
While you get some more origin to destination pax, he fills his flights with connecting pax.
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You think that? Thousands of people everyday fly on ancient MD80s without being scared because of its age. The largest airline in the United States is flying over a hundred 737 Classics. Most people that fly are completely indifferent. Just take a look, the vast majority of people are not scared to fly.
Don't worry about aircraft speed on short haul. It won't affect the ORS. That only starts playing into long haul.
I assume you mean the BAH-RUH route?
Your competitor has a flight leaving BAH to RUH at 6:00. He also has 22 other flghts that arrive at BAH at 4:xx, i.e, just over one hour before the flight to RUH leaves. If only 2 passengers in each flight want to move on to RUH, that's 44 extra passengers on his BAH-RUH flight right there! Likewise, his flight leaving at 12:00 has 9 flights arriving at BAH within 2:30 hours of it. Obviously, those that leave from airports close to RUH won't want the connection, but you get the point.
You, on the other hand, have only 1 flight arriving at BAH at a convenient time to catch that 12:46 plane (i.e, arriving at BAH at 11:45 or a bit sooner). So yes, you will fill the plane with more direct passengers than him as you've got a better rating, but he makes up for it by having lots of connections feeding passengers to that flight.
And the fact that there are direct routes with a better rating than the connections doesn't tell you much: even if 50 passengers will choose the direct route and only 2 will choose the connection, that's 2 passengers multiplied by 22 different flights!
This game is heavily modeled after Lufthansa's hub system at FRA. The most important thing to be successful in the game is to make sure your passengers can change from one airplane to the other in the minimum time possible. Like your competitor is doing: have all flights arrive at nearly the same time, then all leave again at nearly the same time (between 1 and 3 hours after arriving). Ideally, the transfer time should be as close as possible to the minimum transfer time (1h in BAH's case), but no less.
Off-topic: I think you're overestimating the general public's interest in aviation. I would bet 90% of passengers, if shown a picture of a 737 and an A320, couldn't tell which was which, and would have no idea which plane is "better" other than a general gut-feeling that big jets are probably more stable and thus safer than small turbo-props. And they certainly couldn't tell the plane's age if the airline installed a brand new cabin. ;)
Old planes have HUGE affect (negative) on ORS rating, but indirectly. You can never reach image of 70 or 80 with 40 year old planes. In best case scenario maybe 20. You would need to compensate by other means.
Now having said that, the highest impact of negative image will be on direct routes because with connections you can compensate by short connection times or flying under seven routed even between 3 different countries.
His connection flights may be in high demand and that’s how he may be filling his flights. Now, he maybe on page 3 or 6, but if previous 5 pages have a booked flight on any of the legs, passengers are not booking those. He may have actually one of the only opened flights and that’s how he get passengers.
And @ bobb - not just Lufthansa, basically any non-ULCC carrier - Air France, KLM, Iberia, Delta, AA, United, S I A, ME3, Air Canada, LAN, Avianca, Copa, Ethiopian, etc.