Hello Everyone,
I am a new airlinesimmer and must say I am loving the game. Had to reset twice, but hopefully this time will be the one that will finally make it :)
I have a small question, which I hope can be answered by the experienced folks here.
Read in a a lot of thereads and saw on youtube that taking care of the domestic / internal traffic first is of vital importance for getting enough demand to go international - given how the simulation mechanics work.
What happens though if the selected country only has one major existing port or one major port and a bunch of tiny other ones? Is going international then justified at the start or simply such countries are not currently "playable"
Thanks for your time and congrats to the devs on great simulation :)
Well, I'm still learning the game, but what I think is the most important thing to not on this topic is that the game mechanics (almost) require you to have transferring passengers or cargo from one route to another as there isn't enough direct demand on many routes. So, to start an airline you want to have some routes that do have enough direct demand, as you don't have a system of (many) transfers yet, to start with. Then, later on, you can expand to routes that have less direct demand because you have other routes to fill your capacity.
The thing to start with are thus those routes that can be filled with only direct demand and mostly those routes are domestic routes like Sydney to Melbourne, New York to Washington or Beijing to Shanghai, but for small countries with only one (big) airport, like The Netherlands, Singapore, Qatar or Panama, this can't be used. The thing is that most of the countries have international routes that do have enough direct demand like Amsterdam to London or Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. In those case these are the routes to start with.
There might still be small countries in which it is difficult to get an airline going as even the best direct routes aren't enough to give you profitable starts and you need a bigger network than you can create with your initial money.
Makes sense, thank you very much for your input.
How is it looked upon among players when someone starts in the country which is already taken by someone else? I saw some prospective targets with not much going on there.
It depends of the market. There are some markets on Airlinesim, where you shouldn´t even think about connections, you fill your planes more easily with point-point flights. The EU is such a market, China, USA. I´m trying it now in Australia, seems also to work there.
But countries with only one main airport are a different thing. Best examples are Hong Kong and Singapore: You can prosper there, even with competitors, as long as you have an elaborated hub-spoke-system. My favorite example is Vietnam: You can survive there as regional carrier with (mainly domestivc) point-point traffic. But you can grow really big if you think about catering domestic markets of neighbouring countries (e.g. China).
Main problem in one-airport-countries: If a competitor eats up all the slots, you are locked in.
Europe is one domestic market! Even if your airline is based in Amsterdam, you can freely fly between spanish airports.