I am struggling to understand relative demand and how it will affect my airlines on older servers. For example, let’s consider the link ORD-MSN. I am assuming that under the new regime, demand for this link will be reduced as in real life these are almost certainly mostly connecting pax. Can someone help me fill out the unknowns in the following equalities:
for MSN:
demand to ORD will decrease by X
demand to [???] will increase by X
absolute demand remains the same (since X = X)
I suspect that [???] is something along the lines of “all destinations where there’s flights from ORD, weighted by their actual capacity”.
for ORD:
demand to MSN will decrease by X
demand to [???] will increase by X
absolute demand remains the same (since X = X)
It is less clear to me what [???] is here. I suspect that it is something along the lines of “all destinations where there’s flights from ORD, weighted by their actual capacity, except for nearby destinations that are likely to be mostly connecting pax”.
Can anyone shed any light here? I understand that the specifics of the demand system is a closely guarded secret, so I don’t expect exact details, but hope that someone can at least confirm that I’m not wildly off base in my assumptions. Thanks.
My guess would be, that the demand out of ORD is different than you suggest. The demand to MSN will decrease, and the demand to the destinations which now have more demand out of MSN will decrease also. There wont be an increase on any route since the connecting passengers formerly travelling via ORD tend to search for a direct connection. As none of them planned to go to ORD it is no ORD demand. That does not mean, that those passengers will no longer tend to fly to their final destination via using the ORD hub, but it means, that if anybody offers a direct connection to their final destination they will choose that one.
But that is just guessing from my side. Honestly I can not say which airports will suffer or benefit, addtionally I still have those reports here in the forum in mind where longhaul demand dropped by 80%. Unfortunately AS newer gave an official response to that, so I guess we will have to face major demand changes on longhaul flights and maybe also on some short- and midrange destinations. Time will tell, it will take some effort to sort everything and I can already hear the complaints.
What you describe makes sense, but in New demand data and airport bars Simulogics stated that “There is absolutely no change with the patch regarding the overall passenger demand per airport”. Thus, I believe that if there is a drop in demand from ORD to MSN that there must be an offsetting increase in demand from ORD to somewhere else.
This should be the case, yes.
It’s just the relative demand that changes, not the absolute value per airport.
I expect the excessively blown up demand on “big” routes (ORD-JFK/DFW/ATL…) to decrease, while other destinations might increase and demand to new ones will be created.
For some regions, the changes will of course be more noticeable than others - just because some regions saw massive changes in the last decade, that weren’t reflected in the old data, e. g. China.
I wouldn’t expect too much trouble, because hubs should be able to even out many changes with overall demand staying the same and some passengers likely just picking another connection via the same hub.
Again, some region (e. g. where new airports are being added) might feel more of a change than elsewhere. Still, an additional airport will just mean more overall demand in that area, so that doesn’t sound like a disadvantage either.
The load drops some players experienced on Quimby were just because the first iteration of the new relative demand data still had flaws (with way too high demand on certain long-haul routes). Can’t make any comparisons from that situation vs the now planned release on all game worlds.
As the aim of this patch was to reflect reality a bit more precise, especially for major hubs like DXB, AUH, I wonder if it can achieve the aim by leaving the demand there where it is. Given the example of DXB there surely is not demand between HAM and DXB for direct passengers, so logically the demand between UAE and Germany is way lower than the demand has been before. I do not really understand why all of a sudden there now should be more demand out of DXB to other destinations. Lets say that 50% of passengers on the flight HAM-DXB are having their final destination in Far East and are no longer reflected in the demand data of DXB, for which reason should now e.g. the demand of DXB to any other airport grow? Realistically said the demand of DXB with passengers that really have DXB as their final destination might completely be represented with a 6 bar demand. So on what data is the new relative demand based, is it based on passenger numbers of airport/countries, is it more guessing by AS staff or is it a mixture of the giving AS data and any of the other numbers?
I am asking because I in some way hope, that there are other possibilities trying to understand the new relative demand instead of just plan in new flights to numerous airports and checking the demand deleting most of them afterwards again.
As Colt says it is not obvious to me how this new system will reduce the importance of real-life hubs. In my example, ORD will still be the most natural hub for the former ORD-MSN passengers, plus it will receive a boost in demand to other destinations. I think it will be hard to reduce the importance of these hubs as long as their absolute demand remains unnaturally elevated, but I hope to be proven wrong!
I think that’s the major problem here.
AS demand data is based on real life traffic data (that is supply!) - It is impossible to get reliable real life demand data for every airport or region there is.
So what to do other than trying to get some traffic away from the big routes - that’s what the patch tries to achieve. Simply cutting demand on the big airports doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, because you’d base it on what?
I’m also curious as to how the patch affects my airlines.
