Competition Information

[jmcmanna]

Is there any area that I missing where I can find what other airlines are charging on specific routes, their load factors, delayed/cancelled flights, etc . . .?  I see the "Statistics" area that gives a lot of averages; I am hoping to find this information on specific routes for competing airlines.

[Dazwalsh]

you wont see prices or any finances for any airline in the game, you will just have to guess how well they are doing from the stats page.

[RonWelty]

I think to the game be more realistic we could see their prices and what companies compete with our routes...

[Dazwalsh]

you can see the aircraft they use and the frequencies on the airport info page, i think its good and challenging that we dont see other peoples profits displayed in full.

[thedr2]

What needs to be remembered, is using $1 fares won't neccesarily fill your plane. You've got to remember it's about image and service too. Especially with C+F classes.

[flyer123]

it is not good when we cannot see normal market information like fares of competitors, this would support us a lot, like in real lfe, right?

[Sami]

Airlines in realworld do not supply load factor or cancellation information on single routes (or, some may but at least I don't know any that would?). They supply monthly / weekly / quarterly statistics of the whole company (or some region, or part of operations).

Also for the prices. AWS price model is simple, only three fare classes. In reality there are something like 20+ fare classes, and the price what you see for example when checking a price for LHR-FRA flight on lufthansa right now is definitely NOT the same if you would have checked it a week ago for the same route. So the point that "in reality you can see competitor prices" is not accurate really either. True, you can see the rough amount for that given time on that given day but that's not really the whole truth. And airlines themselves do not publish the price information either (I mean like "the average price on our route xxx-yyy is $500, which would be equivalent to if AWS showed the prices), except for advertisements which again is only one (chepest) fare class of that route.

And in AWS, like in reality, the ticket price is not the only thing affecting to the amount of pax you receive. There are dozen+ of variables, such as flight times, flight frequency, company image, how well your route is known, ...etc. So seeing that competitor flies the route with $120 isn't all that helpful as you may think (agree, it would help you to find some hints on how to price it but still it doesn't give you an easy way to beat them just by pricing to $100 instead).

There's a bit of bacakground info why it hasn't been made visible..

[flyer123]

Airlines in realworld do not supply load factor or cancellation information on single routes (or, some may but at least I don't know any that would?). They supply monthly / weekly / quarterly statistics of the whole company (or some region, or part of operations).

Also for the prices. AWS price model is simple, only three fare classes. In reality there are something like 20+ fare classes, and the price what you see for example when checking a price for LHR-FRA flight on lufthansa right now is definitely NOT the same if you would have checked it a week ago for the same route. So the point that "in reality you can see competitor prices" is not accurate really either. True, you can see the rough amount for that given time on that given day but that's not really the whole truth. And airlines themselves do not publish the price information either (I mean like "the average price on our route xxx-yyy is $500, which would be equivalent to if AWS showed the prices), except for advertisements which again is only one (chepest) fare class of that route.

And in AWS, like in reality, the ticket price is not the only thing affecting to the amount of pax you receive. There are dozen+ of variables, such as flight times, flight frequency, company image, how well your route is known, ...etc. So seeing that competitor flies the route with $120 isn't all that helpful as you may think (agree, it would help you to find some hints on how to price it but still it doesn't give you an easy way to beat them just by pricing to $100 instead).

There's a bit of bacakground info why it hasn't been made visible..

Yep you are right, this fare calculations are very complex in the real world and there are a lot of fares out there. Anyway it would be helpful if there is a guidline, but it is right that it reveals maybe  a lot as there are no discounted fares or other discounts for travel agents or so on. Maybe there is a middle way...

[arjanhak]

Anyway it would be helpful if there is a guidline, but it is right that it reveals maybe  a lot as there are no discounted fares or other discounts for travel agents or so on. Maybe there is a middle way...

Isn't the suggested price when you create a route a reasonable guideline? So far that's the only guideline I have so I hope that it is reasonable 

[Sami]

Isn't the suggested price when you create a route a reasonable guideline? So far that's the only guideline I have so I hope that it is reasonable 

True, but as you are founding start-up airlines, you might want to lower that for about 10-15% .. and then remember to raise it back up when your image gets higher, as then customers know you better and may just pay some more 

[jmcmanna]

I understand that the pricing has been broken down into a more simpler system, and that makes a whole lot more sense for the purposes of this simulation.

But, airlines know what other airlines are charging on similar routes.  They don't just randomly all have similar prices that rise and fall at the same time to match or undercut each other (or start a "price war").  On the airport information page, there's a link to see all the routes for that airport.  Adding the ticket price to that page next to the other route information would be extremely helpful to determine the current market price of that route.  Unless you're the only airline operating that route, there's no way to know what the average market price of that particular route is.  Since how much we charge directly affects how much we make, it's a pretty important piece of information to have when making your fare calculations.

[Seattle]

We dont have prices, so we can avoid pricing wars, becuase if everyone undercuts eaxh other, than the price could resemble 50$ on JFK-LHR, even though that would lose money.... and probably people who charge 350$ would also lose money as there were many flights which would be charging 50$, whicg means that the 350$ airline would try to lower the prices to make less losses or breakeven - that could all be avoided with hidding the ticket prices- competition would be determined by who has the best image - the best schedule -the best class comfort and most people would make money.

[Echoco]

I thought price wars was a good reason to join an alliance, so airlines in the same alliance might agree not to go into each others routes reducing competition.

[Seattle]

In joining an alliance you get a small load factor boost, you can agree to make alliance hubs, connect your hubs, squash competition, become part of an alliance greatly honered, earning you a name, and finally you get to make PRs - oh so fun 

[blumage]

I thought price wars was a good reason to join an alliance, so airlines in the same alliance might agree not to go into each others routes reducing competition.

Who tells you that these things don't happen?  You can reach an agreement with your alliance member to fly the route even.
In the past beta although not really implementable in the game we've tried doing codesharing. Interested party agree on a certain amount of price if demand is enough or we just take turns. Some of us flew on an M-W-F basis while the other flew T-TH-S

[toyotaboy95]

Airlines in realworld do not supply load factor or cancellation information on single routes (or, some may but at least I don't know any that would?). They supply monthly / weekly / quarterly statistics of the whole company (or some region, or part of operations).

Also for the prices. AWS price model is simple, only three fare classes. In reality there are something like 20+ fare classes, and the price what you see for example when checking a price for LHR-FRA flight on lufthansa right now is definitely NOT the same if you would have checked it a week ago for the same route. So the point that "in reality you can see competitor prices" is not accurate really either. True, you can see the rough amount for that given time on that given day but that's not really the whole truth. And airlines themselves do not publish the price information either (I mean like "the average price on our route xxx-yyy is $500, which would be equivalent to if AWS showed the prices), except for advertisements which again is only one (chepest) fare class of that route.

And in AWS, like in reality, the ticket price is not the only thing affecting to the amount of pax you receive. There are dozen+ of variables, such as flight times, flight frequency, company image, how well your route is known, ...etc. So seeing that competitor flies the route with $120 isn't all that helpful as you may think (agree, it would help you to find some hints on how to price it but still it doesn't give you an easy way to beat them just by pricing to $100 instead).

There's a bit of bacakground info why it hasn't been made visible..

AirAsia does  sometimes and mentions it in press releases (http://www.airasia.com/site/ch/en/pressRelease.jsp?id=1ef8c200-7f000010-6270b000-66a50431)