Since i’ve started with this game I was always wondering; why do some popular real life routes have such low aircraft loads on Airlinesim?
For example; my airline is running a route AMS - MAD which, in real life, is a popular route, but in Airlinesim I got average loads of 30/40%. The price is low, cabin service fine, and it has economy seats.
I’ve got no trouble filling a 737 on AMS - LHR, but on AMS - MAD (And many more routes) it’s a pain in the ass.
Are there more factors for producing passenger demand?
Is there a website where you can find passenger demand in real life?
Most of my passengers are actually flying on more than just a single route here. In many cases this is the same in reality. This means that even though people fly on the route MAD-AMS, they actually don’t want to go to AMS but somewhere else. Statistics usually don’t represent such behavior and thus lead to misinterpretations of actual demand.
Build up a hub system which creates demand for connecting flights and search for good interlining partners and your MAD-AMS route will be fully loaded in no time!
I agree with the importance of transfer passengers to fill a plane. But as far as I know the real life data that are used in the game are airport-to-airport data, rather than origin-to-destination data. Let me give an example…
Let’s say a 1000 people a day travel between AMS and CGK. In reality some of these people take KLM or Garuda, but there are also passengers who fly with Etihad or Qatar Airways. As a result there may be only 500 passengers between AMS and CGK in the game, plus 250 between AMS and DOH and 250 between AMS and AUH. So although the Netherlands still have ties with Indonesia, there may be less passengers in the game who want to fly from Amsterdam to Jakarta than you expect.
@Basje
I didn’t find your flight to Madrid, but there are many airlines operating the AMS-MAD route. So competition was probably fierce.
I checked your ratings on a few other routes:
AMS-FRA: 60
AMS-LHR: 56 (by the way, Air United also sells his tickets for 110 dollar, but his rating is 98
AMS-VLC: 92
AMS-YYZ: 89
Factors that influence seat bookings are
actual (in-game) demand between two airports
your ORS rating (you will get a bigger share of the passengers if your rating is 99 than if your rating is 60)
transfer passengers (MAD: not really from FRA or LHR because there are probably many direct flights from these airports to MAD)
a good network (a flight from Hamburg or Gdansk may bring transfer passengers to Madrid if there are no direct flights from those cities to MAD)
Success with your airline !
Jan
PS you can check the ratings of your flights by using the Online Reservation System. Check "flights in 48 hours" to get a few flights from every operator. Hover your mouse over the green bars to see the exact rating.
PPS ignore the prices of your competitors. They may use better seats, or offer worse on-board service… all these factors are summed up in the ORS rating, and that’s what counts.
What they said. But a fair warning about the interlining…you will find it hard to interline with any company(atleast on my server)…i’ve been trying hard to get other players to sign contracts with me but so far i’ve found myself without any.
I’m only going in my second week of operations and so far i’ve been doing decent. Wish you all of the best of luck!!
Try to accompany a message with good reasons (if there are! - otherwise you shouldn’t do it yourself) for interlining, this might help. Me personally - and I guess a lot of other players do it the same way - usually delete interline requests without any message.
Hi, I was wondering how did you figure out that the rating was 60, 56, 92, 89, etc.? I know there’s the five green bars, but how does that get calculated into numbers? Thanks.
I always send messages to players before sending in an interlining offer detailing my strategy and my plans for the future including the benefits they would get!
in most cases I sign the IL agreement. If they fly to my hub or I fly to their hub, that is. Especially new airlines on an established game server can use the extra passengers.
I often get IL requests from new airlines that disappear after one week. That means you have to pay salaries to surplus staff. Perhaps that’s why people don’t sign IL’s with a new airline. Although the surplus staff isn’t a real problem. As your other IL partners grow, you need more staff anyway.
Another reason may be fear of competition or alliance rules.
Writing a message may help. But as a starter I would not tell an airline with 200 planes how much he would benefit from an IL with me. I would tell him I need his transfer passengers
