Company Image - Where am I going wrong?

[schro]

So I'm a fairly new player to the game - I've been around about 3 weeks, and I think I've been moderately successful so far (i've got a 57 plane fleet in Modern Times #1).

I'm trying to figure out where my CI is going wrong, as it climbed to about 60 and has been slowly sinking into the mid-40's without any changes to what I'm doing.

Here's everything that I've checked/doing that should impact CI -

1. Staffing is set to autohire/auto pay
2. Most routes are scheduled for minimal delays - my average delay is 1 minute and have a less than 3 % cancellation rate. When looking at causes of delays and cancels, less than 50% of the cause.
3. Route image for most routes are at 100, except for the newest which are still climbing.
4. Average fleet age is going down, currently hovering between 14-15 years. Earlier in the game it was averaging 18-20
5. I have reviewed all a/c for A, B, C and D check - all are up to date and properly scheduled.
6. Marketing. I have two campaigns going - Radio/Internet for my base country and internet for the whole world. I have a spend of about 1.1 million on marketing, and I've got about 70 million in revenue. I usually advertise routes with Newspaper/Internet when I start them for 6 months until they reach a RI of 100, then I stop advertising them.
7. Alliance - I recently founded an alliance with a few other playeres - my CI was hovering around 50, and with that founding, it increased to around 60. Now it is down to 46 and trending downwards.
8. Due to the fuel prices, I have been increasing fares - loads are down about 2% on average as a result of about a 10% price increase over a few months.

I can provide other information as needed, but what baffles me the most is the 25% drop in CI over a few game months without any significant changes to my overall airline operation - I'm trying to figure out the cause to correct it rather than blindly throwing another million dollars at advertising.

The only things that I can think of that would impact it are as follows:

-Outlier a/c age - I have a few planes that are getting up to the 23 year old mark, but still have a little bit of life left - could having a few a/c above a certain age threshold impact CI like what I've described above?
-Marketing as a proportion of revenue - I have not expanded the scope of my marketing since I've added my last 10-20 planes or so - so could the level of marketing be insufficient for the number of pax carried and/or revenue earned?

Any thoughts from the great wizards that have been around a while would be greatly appreciated!

[Sami]

All in all seems that you just need more marketing (larger campaings, or more of them).

[schro]

All in all seems that you just need more marketing (larger campaings, or more of them).

Seems simple enough.  Thanks for the input :-D