How to manage routes/planes

[Curse]

Hi there,

I now play AWS for two weeks and have some problems in managing my airline.

1) At start I created a Excel-document with distance and pax demand (economy, business, first) and if and when yes, how often I fly this route and plane type. In addition I have a Word-document with the flight IDs, routes and plane type.

But this is circumstantial and inaccurate (*1,5% rule, average pax per route).

How do you handle this? Do you buy for example 50 planes and then look where to fly them? Or order one by one?

2) In schedule there is a lot of space, mostly Saturdays a big part of my fleet is grounded half day. How do you fill these spaces? Flying a 737-400 (174/5 configuration) 200nm for 15 pax?


Thanks for your help and hope, you can understand my poor english from hell.

[Branmuffin]

2) In schedule there is a lot of space, mostly Saturdays a big part of my fleet is grounded half day. How do you fill these spaces? Flying a 737-400 (174/5 configuration) 200nm for 15 pax?

I usually try to fly my medium range planes as far as they can go first, and I save the shorter routes to fill in holes in my schedule which are created when I can only fly a certain route every other day, or when I have to find a shorter flight for one day so I can schedule an A-check next to it. Also, if that 200nm route with 15 pax can make a profit, I will fly it for sure, no matter how small the profit is.  I'm sure that some will argue that it's probably better to keep the plane on the ground to save on wear and tear (minimize the flight hours and takeoff/landing cycles on the airframe), but in my opinion, any time the plane is sitting on the ground, it's losing money.

Thanks for your help and hope, you can understand my poor english from hell.

Don't be hard on yourself; your english is better than some native english speakers I know

[swiftus27]

What kind of planes are these?

here is a trick:
1.  Fly somewhere 1300+nm west at about 9pm.  Make sure the plane doesnt land after 2300.
2.  Have it return (make sure it takes off before 2300) and land after 0500.   Then, during the gap in between the flights, find a shorter route you can fly. 

Sorry to say, but there is too much 'white' on your scheduling.

[Curse]

These are 737-300/400. The main problem is my airport, I think. There are no cool unflown routes in the west and without legs I have four destinations >400 pax.

I´ll see if I can fix this, but a question on this: How long the white spaces between two flights must be for no delay? I use often "turn-around-time*2" in routes and "turn-around-time*1,5" between two routes.

Airport is Moscow-Domodedowo by the way, mid 1995.

Anyway thanks for the trick, use it by now for my profitable routes to Asia and Western Europe (733/734/752/F100).

[swiftus27]

Find out what time it takes you right now to turnaround a plane.  Just add that to where your flight landed.  There is no need to double it or make it 1.5x.  You CAN afford to have 3-5% delays.

[Curse]

Ah, no reserves required? Good to know, thanks a lot!

I'm looking forward to my first proper (?) game world, after Demo and Beginner#5.

[EYguy]

The point is: you have to keep your a/c airborne as much time as possible. Now I do not know which world are you playing in but if possible, try to leave your a/c on the ground for as few hrs as possible. Consider that Emirates has an outstanding performance because it can keep its a/c airborne for an average of 18 hrs/day compared to the 13-14 hrs of european and american airlines.

[hybridace101]

A common problem that I see in overcoming this challenge is the risk of "short turnarounds."  Of all the possible delays, this one appears to be the one that hits a CI the most.  My CI was stagnant at 75 for some time because of this but then I looked at the causes for delays as I know delays and cancellations pull down CI or keeps them from going any higher.  When I increased turnaround times, it was at the expense of suspending some "red eye" flights which had a brought a decent amount of cash but my CI went up again.

You will need at least 4-hour window (including waiting times) between short flights. 

[Curse]

Brood about it for some hours.

I have scheduled a Fokker 70 to fly from ABCBA. This takes 70% of the day.

Now there are two options for the remaining 30%;

a) fly a short route ADA
b) leave the 30% clear and fly ADEDA with another plane

The problem is; if I fill every small white space with short routes, there will be no demand for legs on this route, for example Moscow-Tivat or Moscow-Tivat-Amsterdam-Tivat-Moscow.

I know, I need twice as many planes as if I fly only ABA routes, but I have nearly unlimited F70 on order and below the line I will earn more money - or the same money - with more planes and routes. Or is this an error in reasoning?

[mikk_13]

The big thing here is if you own the plane or lease.

If you lease it, you need it flying as much as you can. If you own it, you can afford to not stress too much about flying 24hours a day.

[amollen]

I'm not sure if I agree with that, you need tour assets in the air regardless if they're leased or owned.

If you let a bought plane set around too much you're wasting the chance to make more profit (opportunity cost)

[knutm1980]

I had some issues with scheduling initially. I just crammed as much as I could with as little turn und time as possible into my scheduling. I ended up with a bunch of cancelled flights and a terrible CI. I've left some more generous room between flights similar to what you have posted, maybe slightly tigheter, but now I'm taking on a lot of competition and winning. Many say that time on the ground is money lost, but too little time on the ground, especially short haul flights with multiple departures a day, will hurt you more than you will gain in profits as the game goes on. Long haul flights are a beast of their own, they need to be scheduled so they depart at a reasonable time and leave at a reasonable time..or when the airport in question is open, meaning you may have to leave the plane for several hours at its end destination before flying back to your hub. But once they are back, its a matter of assuming a good turn-around time and getting it back into the air asap really. I have again based these on slightly lower times than actual turn arounds in the flight schedule.

I agree with amollen as well, keep the planes in the air whether they are your own or leased, your mechanics should keep them in good nick.

[Branmuffin]

We all know that peak times to fly around between 0600 and 2300, but what about a flight that leaves at, say 2000 and gets in at 0100? Is there a LF penalty, even though the flight departed during a peak time?

[auerbacs]

The problem is; if I fill every small white space with short routes, there will be no demand for legs on this route, for example Moscow-Tivat or Moscow-Tivat-Amsterdam-Tivat-Moscow.

I know, I need twice as many planes as if I fly only ABA routes, but I have nearly unlimited F70 on order and below the line I will earn more money - or the same money - with more planes and routes. Or is this an error in reasoning?

No, I think you've identified a real trade off here. Not only will you kill demand that could have allowed you to do an ABCBA instead of ABA, you also use up your airport's slots faster doing it that way. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you, because I think that you'd need to do a lot of math (and it would have to be specific to your situation) to really work out which option makes more sense financially. I would probably let the plane sit rather than wasting the opportunity for yet another ABCBA route, but that's because I'm optimistic and always think, incorrectly, that I'll eventually use up all the demand on ABAs and I dread the route reorganization of 50 planes when this happens. So I go ABCBA or nothing to avoid that chore.

[Curse]

Hmh, I'll finish this game (Beginner#5) with my current tactic, because I'm the only one who is based in Domodedowo and I have huge hubs at Amsterdam and ParisCDG (no airlines based there) and the demand from Moscow to other cities is extreme low. Don't know if this is realistic, but in mid 1995 every day 1500 pax from Stockholm to every little farm house in europe, but only 450 from Moscow to Frankfurt or 500 from Moscow to St Petersburg.

For the next game I'll take an airport not in the mid of nothing (maybe LA, Amsterdam or Madrid) and use for every single flight own numbers and flight times. Have tested this with four 734 and they earn a) bit more money b) fly more routes. But now I don't bring oneself to reschedule 180 planes (+12-15 every RL day) and I'm gaining good profit ($95 mio/week, $8 Mio Marketing and earning $20-25Mio).

Also I learned it's not very easy to replace 40 752 and 70 73x, so the goal of the game - find and eliminate faults - was achieved.