USA startup ... options

English Boards General
1

Hey there,

I am going to make a challenging attempt to start an airline in USA on an established server, and I found some markets where I think I could start (they are not that saturated).

Which of these markets do you think it would be best to start?

EWR (9 bar demand, good gateway to Europe, but only 6 slots per 5 min, 1:30 min connection)

MSP (9 bar demand and in the middle of the country but way north, but 10 slots per 5 min,1:30 min connection)

STL (7 bar demand, in the physical middle of the country, 7 slots per 5 min, 1:15 hr min connection)

MCI (7 bar demand, in the physical middle of the country, and 11 slots per 5 min, but 1:30 hr min connection)

All airports have at least 30% slots available (STL and MCI have more).

What do you think?

George

2

Have a look at "trunk" routes, when you start up you need a few "money maker -> trunk routes". If these trunk routest are saturated, find another aiport ;-)

3

To start? EWR for sure - it is surrounded by short trunk routes like Arjen mentioned. To IAD, DCA, BWI, BOS, PHL, just to name a few.

But if you want to establish a strong (really strong) hub, then no because there isn't that many slots for you to play with.

If you think there are enough slots in MSP, go for it. It is a real life hub which means you will have a lot of routes with good demand...

4

30% isn't a lot of slots left, especially if you want grouped together slots for hub waves. If it's an older server, chances are your competitors will be giant dinosaur companies who can't manage their whole network very nimbly. So aim for high growth and squeezing them on big routes early on. You have to be more nimble than they are, because if you are squeezing them on a route and the owner of the big airline isn't very competition friendly (which I have found to be the case on at least one older server) they will just price dump you into a bloodbath which a small airline can't survive. If you find a "friendly giant" then hopefully you can tolerate each other on routes.

You probably won't be able to make any of those airports a fortress hub unless you can succeed in killing a huge airline (which decreasing AGEX might do anyways)

5

If I were you I won't go for the US, it is a hell like in real life. 

6

...in the physical middle of the country

Personally I like a hub in the middle of a country like the size of the USA for operational reasons.

7

If I were you I won't go for the US, it is a hell like in real life. 

I am running profitable airlines in two other countries...and I want some challenge to see if I can make it work.

Queensferry made quite a profitable and sizable airline in USA on an older server...

8

I am running profitable airlines in two other countries...and I want some challenge to see if I can make it work.

Queensferry made quite a profitable and sizable airline in USA on an older server...

In this case I would consider 7 bars airport. Alternatively, you can think about SDF, which people usually neglect that it is a 6 bar airport.

9

Have a look at BNA ... on most servers there are a lot of free slots and it have enough demand 

10

Okay, I'll break my silence. I was thinking of posting what I've observed in creating my airline on Aspern out of MCI, then I thought maybe I shouldn't share my secrets. But I woke up in a good mood, so here's what I've learned about a place like MCI, STL, or even BNA.

* Being a 7 bar airport, there's some generated local traffic, but the big thing is transfers. I'm currently running just under 3000 weekly flights out of MCI, and my load factor from there is 98%. I'm running about 60% internal transfers, 22-25% external transfers, and about 16% direct flyers, both for arriving and departing (also note, I have a MCI-based feeder airline that runs about 85% external transfers). So transfers are big in a place like MCI, and MCI is great for transfers. It sits in the middle of the country, and you can easily reach either coast, a good chunk of Mexico, and some of Canada with a regional jet like an E95 or CRJ or a small narrow plane like a 736.

* MCI is very near some major airports that have big demand. ORD, MDW, MSP, DFW, IAH, DEN, DTW. All these airports are 8 bars or higher, and are within a space where you can fly to them multiple times a day if need be. There are other good airports around like STL, BNA, and OMA. These are the main backbone of my airline. Each one of those top destinations have, I think, at least ten flights per day. Now the hardest part of this is most of those are going to be near full, so it will take a good amount of time to get them scheduled, and you can pretty much forget any kind of "wave" situation. Personally, I find the "wave" template both tedious and unnecessary. Now again, this stuff I'm talking about I learned on Aspern. As they say on TV, your experience may differ.

All this could be said for STL too. BNA is a little bit more geared towards the east. I'm not sure why people like to start in JFK or EWR. You are putting yourself in a tight corner up there. You can go south and you can go west. Going east requires something like a 739 or a wide-body, and that's expensive. I find that the more successful airlines, when you look at their little map on their info page, it looks more like the spokes of a wheel than a wedge or triangle shape. Some people like to go with big planes and long flights. I prefer speed... get going and get it done.

Again, all this is stuff learned mostly on the Aspern server, which is a totally different situation than yours. Just trying to help a bit, since you have been very helpful to me in the past and present.

11

Caithes, you started on Aspern so you started with full server demand being unmet. You were able to grow your airline to almost 300 aircraft, by adding flights. But I guess first month on Aspern even MCI to Cedar Rapids Iowa was full :) As you grew your airline, you built your network, so when the demand became met by supply, you already had a sizable network to support so many connecting passengers. Regardless of what anybody tries to say, there is economy of scale in AS, and big airlines feed one end of their route spectrum with passengers from other end of route spectrum.

What I found out about big hubs at server start (or when country opens up by major bankruptcy) is that the big hub should be your primary point of focus, because of huge O/D, which makes you money to then later expand and maybe build a hub out of really centralized location (e.g. for intra-European traffic, it's great to start at LHR, but for connections it's best to be in Zurich or Frankfurt, etc. [excluding slot considerations] because they are more centrally located). I guess the same goes for the USA. But this is on server start or when major liquidation occurs. It may still hold true that to get off the ground, a major market (9 bar demand) could get the airline through first few weeks.

It would be almost impossible to start at MCI or STL and make money on O/D traffic. Even if your flight gets to the top of the ORS on the first page, there are tens of thousands of connections where you simply do not get enough pax for O/D traffic unless you really depress the price and thus increase the first (connection-relevant) ORS rating. So without connections, you cannot make it in established market like USA or Europe. But (some) of the old servers have advantage of having used aircraft, which can be had for cheap, and you can immediately get maybe 15 x 737 classic and build the mini-network from day one. 

 [side note: on older servers some established airlines (e.g. since 2011 etc.) use 737 classic and there are NONE to be had on Used Market by new companies. If I was AS, I would offer "special type" of A320 or 737NG with slower speed, so old 733s/734s could be replaced by big players for 73Gs/738s without worrying about slots, thus freeing those planes for new players so they could compete with them, and I would make a rule that any airline over 2 years old must have new fleets...same as a rule was made that old seat configs must be changed by March 31, but this should go to the suggestion box anyway]

[here goes my observation, that excluding image factor for age, lease+maintenance on 20 y/o 733 = lease+maintenance on new 73G, but 77 has the advantage that while you have to pay lease even if your aircraft sits for hours on ground to meet waves, maintenance is dependent on flying time. So underutilized 733 will be cheaper to operate than underutilized 73G...which is same as in real life e.g. Allegiant Air, again this formula is excluding image factors and slight "thingy" that started to appear in ORS since about a month ago that slower aircraft cannot reach 99 ORS on some routes in Y and on all routes in C, max goes to 98].

On older servers where there is limited supply of used aircraft, it is virtually impossible to start at 6-7 bar airport with new aircraft and make money, because again, you need immediate (as in from day one) network connecting to at least 10 or 15 destination with a wave.

CAITHES, one question, at the end here:

you wrote "Personally, I find the 'wave' template both tedious and unnecessary" does that mean that your airline is not using waves? Do you just schedule flights as the space in flight-plan becomes available until you reach the lowest maintenance ratio? I guess that with current saturation on Aspern, waves may become important. (I found it out myself with existing airline I play with, while the market was not saturated, waves did not matter much. With dropping AGEX and market becoming saturated, waves are very important, and flights that were out-of-wave synchronization are suffering decline in LF, while the best-wave-positioned flights are as strong as ever).

BTW, what value does AGEX have right now on Aspern?

12

AGEX is relatively high right now on Aspern. Somewhere right around 1000 to 1020.

I think I might have been a little vague about my strategy when it comes to the start. When I speak about being so close to the heavy demand airports, that's how I started. I didn't fly to anything lower than 7 for the first month or two. I would fly DEN-MCI-ORD-MCI-DEN or another similar east/west path or north/south path, and I initially lined up my flights to come and go in general "waves".

In a older game setting, I believe such connections are absolutely essential at the beginning. You're right in that you aren't going to fill your planes up with direct flights. You are going to need a combination of direct and transfer. For transfer, it's less about what your hub's demand rating is rather than the ones on opposite ends. If I were to start in a game world, I wouldn't arbitrarily choose a hub just because it has a lot of slots available. That's important, but what is also important is getting routes that are going to be profitable and also open. That's why I would use the ORS to check flights. Maybe check out CLT to DEN, or BWI to PHX. If there's a dearth of direct flights, then I would run a connecting flight between the two airports to get passengers. The reason I suggest MCI is because it's a very short flight between large airports that, while they might not have a lot of slots available, can be used to get you passengers because they simply have such a high demand.

If you try to start in EWR or some other high demand airport, even if it has slots, you are still going to run into the fact that demand is limited while supply is not.

When it comes to the departure waves, I found it tedious to figure out a bunch of variables. Frankly, I was on the game (and still am) often enough to expand exponentially at the beginning, which allowed me to not have to schedule all my flights to leave within an hour's time. I could space my flights where I needed to in something like a staggered wave format. Having enough airplanes has allowed me to do that. Will it stand up? I don't know. If it doesn't, I'll adjust and move on.

I'm sure you've probably already have a front-runner in mind. Give it a try. If it works, great. If it doesn't, well then it goes right along with the 99% of airlines that start and don't simply don't make it.