Virtual routes

It’s suggestion and ideas week for me.

A feature that I’d like to see implemented in AS, is virtual routes. With virtual routes I mean connection based routing.

Current situation:

In connections, the total price of the journey is determined by adding up the two (or more) segments.

Proposed change:

Optional ability to setup certain connections and price them as one. Eg. I fly a LHR-KEF-JFK flight, so I could set up a price for LHR-JFK that would be different (ie. lower :wink: then the separate LHR-KEF and KEF-JFK added together.

Why ?

This is how real airlines operate. Also it would allow to fine tune pricing in a way that make the use of network more efficient. For example I could price the feeders more expensive to discourage bookings that terminate in the hub, while still pricing high demand connections competativly.

1 Like

Good point I would like to see the same

I can understand that you'd want to be able to set flights like this, but I think it might be one of those things that just adds more work on your end.

As the simulation works, connecting flights have a lower ORS rating than direct flights. This is in place because people usually want to spend as little time traveling between two points, and a stop-over adds more time for the traveling.

Another thing to consider is.. what about the people that want to fly only from LHR to KEF? Do they get the discounted prices? If not, then you'd basically be creating two flights that would compete with each other (LHR-JFK and LHR-KEF) for spots on the same plane. If I was trying to fly LHR-KEF, and was told that just because I wanted to stop in KEF and not fly onto JFK, my flight was going to cost more than the LHR-KEF leg of the connecting flight, I'd tell the airline to go fly into a mountain and find something else. 

As the simulation works, connecting flights have a lower ORS rating than direct flights. This is in place because people usually want to spend as little time traveling between two points, and a stop-over adds more time for the traveling.

And it would be good to be able to offset that by offering a lower price ;-)In real life if you want to book a nonstop flight between two cities, it is generally more expensive than a connection for this pricise reason.

Another thing to consider is.. what about the people that want to fly only from LHR to KEF? Do they get the discounted prices? If not, then you'd basically be creating two flights that would compete with each other (LHR-JFK and LHR-KEF) for spots on the same plane. If I was trying to fly LHR-KEF, and was told that just because I wanted to stop in KEF and not fly onto JFK, my flight was going to cost more than the LHR-KEF leg of the connecting flight, I'd tell the airline to go fly into a mountain and find something else.

Again, that is what is happening in real life all the time. If I look for a Lufthansa fare LHR-SIN, it is roughly €850. But if I look up FRA-SIN on the same date and the same flight (FRA-SIN sector) it is €950,that is more expensive ! The reason for this is, that Lufhansa cannot fill the flight from FRA alone, they need the feed. However they get a better network wide load factor and profit margin by pricing it like that. If an airline bases it’s business model on connections, they price them individually. Not by adding different legs together. AS simulates connections heavily, so why leave out this important aspect ?

I think this idea is really good as it adds realism to the simulation and makes it more complex. The problem I see is that it becomes impossible to manage once your airline reaches a certain size. If you have for example one Hub-Time and your airlines has 20 aircraft you might have to set up to 20 fares for each aircraft, i.e. 400 fares for your fleet (only for one Hub-Time, if you have more it will be ofcourse more). An other thing to consider are the Interlinings. How do you proceed with that? It would require an enourmous amount of coordination for both partners.

I would suggest a simplified model (which is not as realistic as your suggestion, but it is easier to handle): Add the option to have an amount of discount (f.e. 5% or 30% or what ever) for connecting flights which is then applied to all of your connections. You could have an other option to specify the distances for which the discount is applicable, f.e. passengers from a flight less than 500km connecting onto a flight less than 5000km receive 5% discount, passengers from a below 500km flight onto an other below 500km flight 20% (values are just an example).

This would be a lot easier, but still more realistic than the current solution.

I would leave out interlining connections from the equation. Generally this does not exist in real life interlining either. Codesharing yes, but that is a whole another story.

My idea was, that this would be an optional feature. So you wouldn't have to do it on all possible connections. Just the ones you want to compete on. Others would stay as they are now.

Or maybe both ideas could be combined ?