strange passenger preferences

[meiru]

I don't understand, how passengers choose the flights. But as far as I can see, it's more ore less a uniform distribution... so, the more flights you have, the more passengers you get and the more marketshare you can take... I'm not shure how realistic that is (ok, we all know, normally passengers are not very smart and often they don't know what they're booking)... but let's take e.g. the route from New York to Boston... I flew this with MD-80s and it worked... an other competitor flew it with 737 ... and it worked... and then someone came in with ATR72 ... he started flying this so often, that he had the same amount of flights like our two other airlines had together. And quess what? .. he got the market... he's flying two planes at the same time (often) or in the middle of the night (4.55) ... and, as I said... with ATR72 ... now, the problem here is simple... if you can't win with larger planes... and if the only solution to do the job is with very small things... then... it's strange... and ruining everything.
About the distribtution... I also have the feeling, that flying two 60 pax planes at the same time brings more passengers than flying a 120 pax plane alone and flying 3 planes of 60 will bring again more passengers... and that's definitively stupid...

[JonesyUK]

I'm not sure what times he's flying, but it's usually because with more flights, passengers usually have a better choice of what time they want to fly.

[JonesyUK]

The whole "fact" of pax preferring smaller planes is a myth. It's thought so because people just look at the LF % and nothing else really.

If you put a ERJ145 and B747 on the same route, with equal prices and dep/arr times etc (only diff being the aircraft type) guess which plane will have the higher LF if all seats on both are not sold? ERJ of course since if you sell like 45 seats there you get 90% LF but to get the same for 747 you'd need to sell 400 seats.

Though if repeating the same route again and again, the smaller plane will become more effective since the flight frequency and available choice is increased and that is preferred. But using a too small plane has bad effects on the other hand as paxes don't prefer slow / small / uncomfortable planes.

(but with all the variables and things affecting these the results may vary.. but they do not prefer small planes in design)

[meiru]

I made and experiment now... I took a flight and made a copy of it
same route, same time, same aircraft, same seat configuration

and guess what... I had (when flying 1 plane) at the same day (monday) 45y 1c, 56y 2c, 44y 1c
and now, with 2 planes at the same time... one had 36y 2c and the other 46y 2c so in total 82y 4c ... that's more than ever with one plane and that's only the first day...

I didn't look much at other flights on this route (other times)... but even if those flights would lose passengers, it doesn't make sense how they're distributed... why should someone choose to fly with my airline over an other, just because now I have 2 flights instead of one ?? and, why do those 82y and 4c not fly in one aircraft with 8c and 130y seats installed? ... that's completely stupid... just to say that... and I really think about leaving the game... because that's not fun... (and I'm even paying for that)

[meiru]

once again... we are NOT talking about different times... we are talking about the exact same time!! ... I do understand that providing a flight in the morning and one in the evening can make a difference against just one bigger flight in the morning... but... that's not the case here! ... and even if it would make a difference... it wouldn't be that big, if we are talking about 20 minutes... so, one flight with 200 pax every 40 minutes against two every 20 minutes would not really make such a big difference in reality... I simply can't imagine this...

[GDK]

hey my friend, I know what you are trying to say. we can see everywhere in the forum people telling smaller plane + more frequency is better but rarely people talk about time. if 2 flight starts exactly at the same time and you still get the market, then it is a strategy of 'more seat available=higher marketshare' and not realistic. i know someone will say in real life it really happens that many flights of the same route starts at the same time but the problem is are the conditions same as in the game where you are fighting in a tough competition against other players?

[JonesyUK]

I guess the coding for PAX preference includes flight frequency independant from the timings. If you flew 2 737's or 2 md-80's against 2 atr's, you'd get the same number of passengers (obvioulsy a lower load factor on the 737's or md-80's).

[meiru]

I guess the coding for PAX preference includes flight frequency independant from the timings. If you flew 2 737's or 2 md-80's against 2 atr's, you'd get the same number of passengers (obvioulsy a lower load factor on the 737's or md-80's).

even worse... if you fly two atr at the same time against one MD80 you get MORE passengers...
but this game, what is it all about here? ... shouldn't it be a simulation of the airline market? If it is, then it has to be realistic! And it can't be, that you have to "game-optimize" your routes and create things that wouldn't work in real life...

I understand, that it's not very easy and it happens also in other parts of the world. But it should be avoided. Some examples:

comparing CPUs... Intel sometimes optimized their compilers to create bether code specially for benchmarks... now what did we have in the end? ... CPUs that were not usable, but won all benchmarks... that's stupid... the same for the cars ... the so called "c-bar" is larger than usefull... why? ... because like this they get more "crash-points" ... cool... but now you can't see out of your aft windows anymore, because they became so small for this benchmark optimization...

[Powi]

The game doesn't care if you fly 20 flights all departing 0700 or evenly distributed over the day. The game considers both situations to be identical. (Actually 20 flights at 0700 is preferred for the game, because 0700 is a peak time unlike 1200 or some other time.)

More flights per week increase one's "score" and gives more passengers.

[GDK]

So is that means higher frequency flight will be better than less frequency flight regardless of aircraft size? When the frequency is equal, the smaller plane will win?

2 MD vs 2 ATR -> ATR win
2 MD vs 1 ATR -> MD win

If so, it still didn't solve the problem of flight at the same time.

I don't agree with powi. Yes, 0700 might be the peak hour but it is never possible that everyone fly only at peak hour.

[meiru]

hey my friend, I know what you are trying to say. we can see everywhere in the forum people telling smaller plane + more frequency is better but rarely people talk about time. if 2 flight starts exactly at the same time and you still get the market, then it is a strategy of 'more seat available=higher marketshare' and not realistic. i know someone will say in real life it really happens that many flights of the same route starts at the same time but the problem is are the conditions same as in the game where you are fighting in a tough competition against other players?

well, I'm not talking about frequency OR time... I'm talking about frequency AND time... high frequency is good... ok, but it shouldn't help you, if the planes are flying at the same time or within some minutes... and even then, not everybody would change to this company... if you have 10 ATR flights (1:50h in duration) every 20 minutes... or 5 737 flights (1:30h in duration) every 40 minutes... would you (as passenger) switch to the ATR, just because they have a higher frequency??

[GDK]

I'm having same thought with you. The first 2 sentences are what I trying to say. The last sentence is meant for someone else...

[meiru]

So is that means higher frequency flight will be better than less frequency flight regardless of aircraft size? When the frequency is equal, the smaller plane will win?
I don't agree with powi. Yes, 0700 might be the peak hour but it is never possible that everyone fly only at peak hour.

What I don't know is, why this model is so strange... in my optinion it should be modeled like this:

you have pax with a prefered flight time on every route
then, they choose between the flights they have... and for then every passenger decides according to the following rules:

1) time (closer to prefered time is bether)
2) price
3) flight time
4) CI and Route-Image
5) aircraft type and condition (should be included in the route-image, but we all know, that's not how it's working)
6) how often this flight is overbooked or really crowded (less crowded is bether)

... maybe we would have to review those rules, but that's about how I would do it...
and of course you can't calculate this for every passenger every day... it's just to explain the model... it would have to be programmed a different way round...

[GDK]

Yea.
Or in other word, it should not be possible in the game that 'all flight starts at 0700 hour' will work.

[Powi]

So is that means higher frequency flight will be better than less frequency flight regardless of aircraft size? When the frequency is equal, the smaller plane will win?

2 MD vs 2 ATR -> ATR win
2 MD vs 1 ATR -> MD win

If so, it still didn't solve the problem of flight at the same time.

I don't agree with powi. Yes, 0700 might be the peak hour but it is never possible that everyone fly only at peak hour.

You don't have to agree with me, but that's how the code works in this game. I agree that it's not very realistic, though.

[meiru]

You don't have to agree with me, but that's how the code work in this game. I agree that it's not very realistic.

I'd really like to see the code for this and to rewrite it... or... maybe only to rewrite it... 

[GDK]

So far it seems everyone in this thread doesn't really happy with this system. Soon, somebody will come and say they are happy with it....
There is another post in ATB titled 'PARAGON more realism...' also about this issue(at least the author was talking about this issue).

[meiru]

So far it seems everyone in this thread doesn't really happy with this system. Soon, somebody will come and say they are happy with it....
There is another post in ATB titled 'PARAGON more realism...' also about this issue(at least the author was talking about this issue).

how could ever someone say that this unrealistic system is good? a simulation has always to be as realistic as possible! that's what "simulation" means

[Sami]

(have to note that I really do not like the tone of some of the messages here.. not very beneficial way of expressing things)


As noted the dep.time of flight vs. other flights of company is not relevant yet, you can make all your flights depart at the same time if you wish but so far it has no negative effects, since the demand is modeled for the whole day only and not broken into smaller pieces (partly for not taking it over complicated). But it can (or actually SHOULD) be investigated for change later on.  (and all things are also not as nearly easy / simple to make work just by saying that "this and that should be made" - but as you know development is an (slow) ongoing project..)

[Sami]

Oh, have to add that the pax distribution system update has been in plans for some time but no estimate yet (and "in plans" means here just that "should update it some day soon", so no exact data yet)