Unable to run an airliner with small Ac's

[Maarten Otto]

This has been mentioned before I believe, But when I had a look at my fleet commonality page I was astonished by what you have to pay for a Fairchild Metro III (19 pax) compared to a jet.
And that's not just it. Crew training is almost ten grand... a bit high for such a small plane I guess.




So what is going on? Is it even possible to run a airliner using small aircrafts af all? With the current game engine I doubt it.
If it is possible... the please someone just tell me how couse I doubt it can be done in the current climate.

Solution:

- Make it worthwile for players to esteblish a airliner with small ac aswell by lowering the expanses of these things. I doubt any real world airliner using these kind of planed pay 70 grand per month for maintenance to the engines alone.

I know that more AC of a fleet type makes it economically more beneficial, but even with five or ten of these I guess the company would bankrupt soon.

[lilius]

Its not that difficult to run an airline with small A/Cs at all. Just stick to ONE type of aircraft and ONE type of engine. The marginal? cost will be lower for each aircraft of the same type.

[ekaneti]

You cant really run an airline with planes that have less than 30 seats. Fixed costs are too high relative to your revenue potential

[Maarten Otto]

I am currently running an airline with nine 30 seat Ac's and the Staff levels are insane.

Why do I need:
economics and finance        35
Corporate communications   21
Customer services               140
Flight operations division        59
Technical services and main 67
Ground handling                86
Route strategies dept        69

Nine Embraer EMB-120

So that will be 15 customer service people per AC
6,5 people per AC for Flight operations
7,4 guys per plane to keep it in the air
9,5 blokes to get the bagage in and out the AC... thats three bags per person.... job done.

More realistic would be:

4 People per AC for Customer services (2 at chek-in + 2 at gate)
1 person per plane for flight operations. (I look/monitor  24 trains simultanyousley at my work so why should the flight operations devision work any different then rail does). So for the game make it 3 per AC (morning, late and night shifts)
2 mechanics. Come on... its a Embraer EMB-120, not a A321 or B767 so it doesn't need the same amount of technicians.
3 persons for ground handling per plane. (one to fill it up and get it empty, one to drive the trolly and one to get it onto the belt.


To run 9 small Ac's in the game you need 624 people employed.  A bit out of order for such a small airliner.

[swiftus27]

I must agree with the above poster.  I tried making a fleet of Fairchild aircraft work.

I failed almost instantly even with great LFs.  

Seriously, you can empty that plane of its baggage with a one armed drunk ex convict in 20 minutes.  You DONT need 5 guys.

I do disagree with the above poster about the numbers needed, though.  For instance, in flight ops, you would need more than 3.  Even if you had one person for each shift, that means you have 21 shifts to fill for the week.  No one person is working 7 of them.  So you need at least 4-5 (factor in vacation and sick time along with some necessary overlap to do paperwork). 

[LemonButt]

http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2010/bts004_10/html/bts004_10.html#table_04

[Razor2]

Thats exactly why I stopped playing...You can only play this game 1!! way, full featured full size carrier with jets, the game is geared for it and all other business models suffer.

I would really like to play a successful:
- Bush Airline in Australia with tiny 9-15 seaters
- Regional airline with small turboprops
- Low fare carrier with a low overhead
- Premium, all business airline for the super rich

[jimsom]

We have talked about this earlier. We all know it's not possible with the staff and maintenance costs to run a small business.
Let's just really hope the developers can do something about this very soon...

[swiftus27]

We have talked about this earlier. We all know it's not possible with the staff and maintenance costs to run a small business.
Let's just really hope the developers can do something about this very soon...

I totally "lol'd" there

[Sumarno]

I've had some success with small aircraft cenetered airlines but with very limited objectives.  The idea has to be to be profitable and maybe have the majority of the market in your airport.  Too big a base, and the landing fees kill you.  Agree you have to stick with single airframe.  Have never had luck with very small aircraft (less that say 30 pax).  The SAAB,s ATP, Dash Q400 and ATR 72 all seem potentially viable.  I normally ruin things, though, by trying to expand to jets to early.  What makes a good hub for a regional prop operation is usually not so good for long-haul carriers since simply not enough demand.  I've played with Bali now a few times, the Azores, and Spokane in the US as regional /commuter hubs.  They are viable.

[jimsom]

I've had some success with small aircraft cenetered airlines but with very limited objectives.  The idea has to be to be profitable and maybe have the majority of the market in your airport.  Too big a base, and the landing fees kill you.  Agree you have to stick with single airframe.  Have never had luck with very small aircraft (less that say 30 pax).  The SAAB,s ATP, Dash Q400 and ATR 72 all seem potentially viable.  I normally ruin things, though, by trying to expand to jets to early.  What makes a good hub for a regional prop operation is usually not so good for long-haul carriers since simply not enough demand.  I've played with Bali now a few times, the Azores, and Spokane in the US as regional /commuter hubs.  They are viable.

Well, Saabs, ATPs, ATRs aren't small aircraft, they are medium aircraft.

[Sami]

Any improvement ideas should be posted to feature rq forum. This thread for example: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,7709.0.html

[ekaneti]

You can run a very profitable airline using ATRs. I think you can run a breakeven airline using Saabs

[coopdogyo]

You will be rolling in the money using SAAB-2000 there is no other plane that lets you carry 58pax with 1 FA and let you fly over 300kts.

[LemonButt]

I just bankrupted my small airline (3 Airbus, turning small profits) in Euro Challenge to see if I can competitively run an airline using small aircraft.  I leased 3 brand new Dash 8's directly from Bombardier, which put me at $0 until they show up and start flying.  The aircraft are starting to be delivered here in the next couple weeks.  I'm going to be going into the red in the beginning obviously, but I'm hoping the diminishing marginal maintenance will make all 3 planes sustainable with lower overheads per plane.  The planes are also brand new, so the ABCD checks should be as low as possible.  I'll let you know how it goes   I'm based in Lyon, France and it seems to be, for the most part, wide open.

[Nonkan]

I just bankrupted my small airline (3 Airbus, turning small profits) in Euro Challenge to see if I can competitively run an airline using small aircraft.  I leased 3 brand new Dash 8's directly from Bombardier, which put me at $0 until they show up and start flying.  The aircraft are starting to be delivered here in the next couple weeks.  I'm going to be going into the red in the beginning obviously, but I'm hoping the diminishing marginal maintenance will make all 3 planes sustainable with lower overheads per plane.  The planes are also brand new, so the ABCD checks should be as low as possible.  I'll let you know how it goes   I'm based in Lyon, France and it seems to be, for the most part, wide open.

It should be no problem with that aircraft, it's not that small and Lyon has a lot of free routes since the guy that was big there started picking on me and for some reason later went oit of business

I wouldn't say that an airline with Dash 8's is a small airline. A small airline is trying to make profits with Cessna Grand Caravan for example, or the Embraer 120, but I do not think that is possible. My EMB 120's make about 150 k weekly profit each in Euro Challenge, but I would need a lot of them to pay for marketing and staff.

I started out with 2 ATR72 and now I have a fully own fleet of 105 aircraft.