Another example of ridiculous staffing levels!

[NorgeFly]

I know staffing levels have been discussed multiple times before and I am not usually one to moan, but I think that this example of ridiculous staffing costs is worth mentioning.

I just added an additional E195 to my schedule with three return trips per day (additional frequencies to existing routes - no new routes) and the number of additional staff required is 180 at a cost of $1.31m per month. Only 30 of the staff are pilots/cabin crew.

The lease of the aircraft is $495,000 per month (which is below market value) which with staffing takes total fixed costs (excl. maintenance) to $1,806,000 per month or $416,770 per week (averaged over 52weeks).

With an average 85% load factor on all flights (about average for my airline) I can generate around $700,000 revenue per week. This leaves around only $283,000 to pay for fuel, air traffic costs and ground handling which will come to around $316,000 (figures taken from other real flights to same destination on same a/c type).

So basically, with this aircraft I can expect to make a loss of something like $33,000 per week before I even pay a penny for maintenance. Even with average LF's of 100% on the flights, it will still only make a $90,000 profit per week.

More generally, my airline has a fleet of around 130 aircraft and carries around 1.8m passengers per month yet I have almost 19,000 staff! At current fuel prices (which are very high), my staff still cost me three times more than my fuel!

Please re-think how staffing levels and costs are calculated soon as this has pretty much rendered any expansion of my airline in ATB absolutely pointless 

[Maarten Otto]

Good point, So it's not only Baby airliner who runs into trouble after he has 50 EMB120's....

I think a re-design of the staffing levels is desperately needed as soon as possible. A solution would be to base the required staff levels on the number of seats one can sell, minus 10% (as a 90% load figure is quite high in the game already).

When I have an airline operating EMB120's (30 pax seaters) then my ground staff handles 34 pax PER SHIFT on average...  Even in a communistic country they work harder then that. In other words, staff utilisation is something to invest in. (can't this be included in staff training?)

[Curse]

There is another problem I know now.

In scenarios like ATB you must pay much for staff than in Jet Age, but the pax aren't paying this more for tickets. So staff expenses in Jet Age are huge too, but you can compensate them better.

Please notice in this point you have to use much more staff for older aircraft than for newer, so it might seem there is no difference, but the difference is clad by the three or four pilot aircraft.

[Sami]

The profit margins are too high so what I can do is reduce the number of staff but then their salaries will be higher. As the overall staff expense level must stay. Though be noted that adding extra bases does penalize you a bit in terms of extra staff, as otherwise the expansion would be even faster and bigger guys would be even larger and so on. And also that the "known issue" is already the small airline / regional airline staff levels that will be updated at some point.

But an airline with only E140-E170 series fleet CAN work very well, that is tested. Even E120 airline works but you need to be extra careful there.

In scenarios like ATB you must pay much for staff than in Jet Age, but the pax aren't paying this more for tickets. So staff expenses in Jet Age are huge too, but you can compensate them better.

Incorrect - the ticket prices and staff wages are both tied to the same inflation index. And for salaries there is also the country variation too, so Norway is a more expensive country in terms of salaries than Malawi ..

[alexgv1]

I have just dug out some facts and figures from my lectures last year to help point out this claim.

You said your airline has 19,000 staff and carries 1.8m passengers -- This gives a figure of 95 passengers per staff member.

Now to put things in comparison:

Ryanair employs 2,300 staff and carries 27m people a year;
11,700 passengers per staff member

easyJet employs 3,600 staff and carries 24m people a year;
6,666 passengers per staff member

Aer Lingus employs 3,900 staff and carries 7m people a year;
1,795 passengers per staff member

Air France-KLM employs 64,000 staff and carries 65m people a year;
1,015 passengers per staff member

British Airways employs 51,939 staff and carries 35m people a year;
674 passengers per staff member

It shows both ends of the spectrum here - budget and full service airlines.

Even British Airways has a passenger to staff ratio of 674 which is 7x what you have (95).

Many airlines like Ryanair save costs by cutting staff numbers (in fact BA is probably overstaffed) by driving efficiency, increasing hours, cutting pay, taking out the human element (check-in desks, web booking, etc.).

Sami, I can understand your plight. But it would be good to choose between a mix of staff quality and quantity (represented by staff numbers and salary and morale also coming into it).

I hope this helps demonstrate how the figures at out of real world values, Sami if this means reducing staff costs I'm sure there could be another way to introduce them to make the game balanced.

[jimsom]

Well, the problem is the costs. The costs for the operations are not very unrealistic since things like catering, ground handling and tech
often is served by other companies and not the airline itself. A future Airwaysim game could probably contain the opportunity to choose
between different ground handling companies with different costs and qualities instead of having own personnel hired.

[shaolin]

Well, I think staff levels and staff wages should be manageable by the players. I mean that any single player should be allowed to devise his own business model with no penalizations.

Currently instead, if a company have a lack of staff there is no way to avoid delays, cancellations and a reduction in CI.

[Maarten Otto]

The biggest problem is not the wages (they are okay) but the number of staff required in relation to the number of seats one can sell.