Dropping Like Flies

[UAL3422]

Hey all,

I've noticed that a lot of airlines around me seem to be either going bankrupt or have been closed by their CEOs. The main competitor in my HUB dropped out, and I figured this would be the perfect time to get on the newly opened routes and make some real money. Perfect timing too, as I am currently taking delivery of 10 new MD-90-30ERs.

For some reason, however, ever since I placed the order of those aircraft, my company value is dropping like a rock, and I have not been making profit. Everything that I've tried thus far seems to have failed, and today I received my bankruptcy warning.

I dabbled in cutbacks on personnel salary, that was an absolutely huge mistake. I'm looking at all of my flights, and they're all making decent profits, my best flights making 60-70k, and nearly 80% making over 10k. I just don't understand this at all.

Can someone please explain to me what is going on? Why are other companies dropping out like they are, and how am I getting sucked down with them? What should I do? 

[ArcherII]

How many fleet types do you have?

Because in this game fleet commonality is very important. Go to "fleet commonality" in the aircraft menu and there you will have the fixed maintenance costs per month of your fleet. Add to that the normal maintenance chacks (A & B) and from there you have the maintenance costs in your income statement.

But note that is advisable to have good commonality within your fleet. Commonality is used to describe how many fleet types you operate. For ex. you can have Airbus A318/319/320/321 and they are the same airplane regarding fleet. But if you add then another different fleet, say, MD90, your fixed maintenance costs will rise for both types, a 3rd fleet type will add even more to maintenance costs for the THREE fleets. And so on an so forth.

So when choosing an aircraft, you need to know very well the routes you want to operate, check demand and see if the aiplane fits with its seating capacity and range in that route. The advantage of Airbus 32x and 737NG is that for the same aircraft you get a wide capacity range to fill bigger or thinner routes.

That was for fleet commonality. If you opened a new base, your fixed costs will increase dramaticaly (specially staff costs) and if you don't have a strong economy, you would eventually sink.

[takasito]

For some reason, however, ever since I placed the order of those aircraft, my company value is dropping like a rock, and I have not been making profit. Everything that I've tried thus far seems to have failed, and today I received my bankruptcy warning.

Company value consists of cash in hand and the values of AC that you actually own (not at the initial payment but at the delivery). Unless you are making a huge profit, you'd better not to place any order.