Fleet Commonality Data Collection

[Sanabas]

Page 6 & 7 of https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,34106.100.html turned to commonality costs, and how they change as fleet types change. The numbers were surprising, and I want to investigate them more, but I need more data.

I'd like to collect a lot more data, to try and figure out if there's a formula, and how it works. Easier to plan my own airlines then, and easier to helpfully answer questions from people. So, if anybody would like to provide it, please post it in this thread. 1.3 gameworlds only, please.

Either a before & after screenie of the fleet commonality page (as JumboShrimp posted), or the before & after totals for fleet commonality, plus the breakdown of total planes (as dmoose posted) would be awesome. Doesn't matter how many fleets you have, as long as the fleet size has changed between the two datapoints.

[ag321796]

Hello man,

I've been following the costs in an excel spreadsheet.
In it I detailed the costs of the aircraft fleet since my 2 to 39.
It contains personal office costs, insurance and fleet commonality.

I'm out now, but later I come here to post the data more accurate.

A quick summary, the costs increase until the third or fourth plane of the same model and then goes down until it stabilizes.
If you add another type of aircraft, costs just doubled or tripled. That's what happened to me when I had only Boeing 757 and Fokker 100, and bought my first Airbus A321.
I had to buy 7 or 8 aircraft to achieve the same profit that was having before the purchase of the Airbus A321.

You can then ask if it's worth having another model aircraft, I say yes because it is impossible to find always the same aircraft for sale, there is a lack of aircraft on the used market and then you must have at least 3 models to have a rapid growth.

[FlyTO]

When I had 4 types (A300, A320, A330, B757) it was about 200M/ month
Now without the A300, it's about 50M monthly. much more manageable.

I have previosuly written about the high costs in fleet and staff in this MT5 v1.3 than last game world MT4 v1.2, sorry no pics on iPad.

[Sanabas]

When I had 4 types (A300, A320, A330, B757) it was about 200M/ month
Now without the A300, it's about 50M monthly. much more manageable.

I have previosuly written about the high costs in fleet and staff in this MT5 v1.3 than last game world MT4 v1.2, sorry no pics on iPad.

What's your total fleet size? Low 400s?

[ArcherII]

Strange. My commonality costs are around 28,5mil per month while running 4 fleets in MT5.
My airline https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Info/Airline/238/

[JumboShrimp]

Strange. My commonality costs are around 28,5mil per month while running 4 fleets in MT5.
My airline https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Info/Airline/238/

The penalty seems to go up exponentially with size of the airline (total number of aircraft).

Which is just complete opposite of what would happen in real world.  When you have 4 fleet types, 100 aircraft in each in real world, your cost per aircraft would be lower within each fleet type than if you had 4 x 25 aircraft.

The whole title "Fleet Commonality" implies savings for having many planes that are have commonality.  But in AWS, it does the opposite of what the title implies.  Pay more when you have a lot of common aircraft.

[Sanabas]

Strange. My commonality costs are around 28,5mil per month while running 4 fleets in MT5.
My airline https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Info/Airline/238/

I'm not in the gameworld, so I can't see your airline, sorry.

What I'd really like to stick to is the change in costs when the fleet numbers change. I assume your airline is relatively small, but to get helpful data I need the commonality costs with your current 4 fleets, and the cost when you're at 3 or 5. I'd like to work out an approximate formula, so that with x planes in 3 fleets, I know what the % increase will be when you move to 4 fleets. And the same for 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 4 to 5, etc if I can.

I'll start putting figures into this post as I get them, see if it's possible to pull out a formula. Ideally, if you don't post before & after screenies, I'd like things in the following format (no need for the %, I'll do those myself. I just want fleet size, monthly commonality costs for the fleets that are there before & after, ignoring the just added/removed fleet):

MT5, Jumboshrimp: 376 planes. 3 fleets, $30,323,261. 4 fleets, same 376 planes (leaving out new fleets) cost, $107,563,449. 4 fleets = 355% of 3 fleets.

MT5, Jumboshrimp: 680 planes. 3 fleets, $57,954,427. 4 fleets, $391,958,477. 4 fleets = 676% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Dmoose: 33 planes, 3 fleets, $646,185. 4 fleets, $777,804. 4 fleets = 120% of 3 fleets.

DotM (1.2), Sanabas: 316 planes. 4 fleets = 287% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas: 82 planes, 4 fleets = 213% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas, 87 planes, 4 fleets = 219% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas, 92 planes, 4 fleets = 225% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas, 108 planes, 4 fleets = 121% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas, 115 planes, 4 fleets = 129% of 3 fleets.

JA5, Sanabas, 121 planes, 4 fleets = 101% of 3 fleets.

More data points I get, more accurate I can get a formula.

[ArcherII]

My airline has a total fleet of 205.

    Fleet type                Monthly cost
74 - A320 family.           7 978 988 USD
35 - A330 family.           9 881 041 USD
21 - B787s                   4 899 806 USD
75 - Q400s.                  5 781 471 USD

Of course it's not a JSW or Delta type of airline but numbers are decent. I have to say that although there was some jump from 3 to 4 fleets, it certainly wasn't that much as posted above, with maybe an addition of 2-3mil to each fleet. So I'd assume that if I've had a larger number of airplanes in each of the current fleets maybe the monthly cost would be higher per frame and it should not.

[Sanabas]

Obviously can't definitively test it unless you decide to BK for some reason, but I think if you dumped the 787s, your remaining commonality costs would roughly halve, from 8 mill/9.9 mill/5.8 mill, down to 4/4.9/3.9. So I think that overall, your 21 787s are actually adding over 4 million/week to your commonality costs, plus whatever they add to staffing. I hope they're making at least 300k profit per week each.

What's really crazy is that for you to have 184 planes, and add 21 787s, you're looking at $4 million/week extra in commonality. For Jumboshrimp to have 680 planes, and add the same 21 787s, he's looking at ~70 million extra per week. I think that needs fixing.

[ArcherII]

Yeah, well...I'm kinda running an experiment myself at this stage of the game and I'm looking to replace all A330s with 787s. Average weekly profit from them is around 1,5mil (all owned and 8 more to come with future orders underway). It would be a long wait but I will have the numbers for you when I reach 3 fleets.

EDIT: And you might be correct on the numbers you've got. But actually having the 787s adding 16mil per month on commonality costs is quite negligible to me as weekly profits are around 60mil with fuel over 1000USD. One of the things I'm researching is costs of flights at different distances with both A330 and 787s. There're some interesting numbers there.

[JumboShrimp]

What's really crazy is that for you to have 184 planes, and add 21 787s, you're looking at $4 million/week extra in commonality. For Jumboshrimp to have 680 planes, and add the same 21 787s, he's looking at ~70 million extra per week. I think that needs fixing.

Imagine that you want to lease or sell some aircraft that would be 4th type, and an aircraft from the 4th type gets delivered while you are sleeping, or even if you are awake, and aircraft happens to get delivered on Wednesday, when the Crew Training charges are assessed, and you lose 70 million on that aircraft....  Aircraft that you never intended to fly in the first plance no flights scheduled, and there would never be any training involved.  That needs fixing as well.

You may want to lease an Ebraer jet, or Q400, where the whole aircraft is worth less than the incremental crew training for one week...

[JumboShrimp]

Yeah, well...I'm kinda running an experiment myself at this stage of the game and I'm looking to replace all A330s with 787s. Average weekly profit from them is around 1,5mil (all owned and 8 more to come with future orders underway). It would be a long wait but I will have the numbers for you when I reach 3 fleets.

EDIT: And you might be correct on the numbers you've got. But actually having the 787s adding 16mil per month on commonality costs is quite negligible to me as weekly profits are around 60mil with fuel over 1000USD. One of the things I'm researching is costs of flights at different distances with both A330 and 787s. There're some interesting numbers there.

Replacing all of your A330s with 787 is probably the best course of action for you...

As far as A330 vs. 788, I can't imagine one instance where 788 does not outperform A330, especially at longer distances....

[ArcherII]

The 788 does outperforms the A332, while the A333 is really a close call actually. But as everybody knows, the 788 has the range the A333 needs in orther to be the best plane in AWS.

[ag321796]

More data to your formula:

*All cost included with engine maintenance

With 2 Fleets:
6 Fokker 100: $ 629,992    =    $ 104,998 per plane
13 Boeing 757-200: $ 1,478,978    =    $ 113,767 per plane
Total: 19 planes and $ 2,108,970    =    $ 110,998 per plane

With 3 Fleets:
6 Fokker 100: $ 1,113 .875    =    $ 185,645 per plane
13 Boeing 757-200: $ 2,689,353    =    $ 206,873 per plane
1 Airbus A320-100: $ 695,774   
Total: 20 planes and $ 4,499,002    =    $ 224,950 per plane


Current with 3 Fleets:
17 Fokker 100/70: $ 1,877,888    =    $ 110,464 per plane
24 Boeing 757-200/300: $ 3,864,691    =    $ 161,028 per plane
6 Airbus A320/A321: $ 1,185,987    =    $ 197,664 per plane
Total: 47 planes and $ 6,928,566    =    $ 147,416 per plane

Then we see a big boom when we add a new aircraft type, the third to the fourth increase even more and I believe that from fourth to fifth even further and so succeptible.
But if you keep buying the same aircraft, prices will fall until they reach close to the unit prices prior to inclusion of the new model (see the cost of my Fokker 100).

[Sanabas]

Sweet, thankyou. If you have the data, can you please give me the other jumps? Or email me the spreadsheet/post a screenie? I think there's an email link in the bottom left of posts.

I actually think that after going from 3 to 4, the increases are negligible. With 4+ fleets, adding one plane of any fleet will actually increase the costs of all 4 fleets, due to that exponential growth of the 3 to 4 jump. I don't know if that happens with 3 or less fleets, if that jump is a constant rate or not.

You've got a 177% jump for the f100s, 182% for the 757s. The difference might be because of the engine costs jumping at different rates.

[Sanabas]

A couple more data points, and the last one is strange.

It also appears that the jump to 2 & 3 fleets doesn't grow exponentially, it's just a straight 100% jump from 1 to 2, and whatever it happens to be for 2 to 3 (~80% from Sergio's data). With 3 fleets, more planes in one fleet don't change the amounts for the other 2 fleets.

As I retired my c46s:

82 planes, 3 fleets: 117404 Britannias/287240 CV/392216 Connie.

83 planes, 4 fleets: 249186/612208/836596, all 212 or 213% of the 3 fleet price.

88 planes, 4 fleets: 256427/630063/861012, all 218-220% of 3 fleets.

93 planes, 4 fleets: 263667/647919/885428, all 225-226% of 3 fleet price.




Still only have 3 fleets, but I made a one-off purchase of an f27, and this time the change was very unexpected:

108 planes, 3 fleets: 130418/414187/443991

109 planes, 4 fleets: 157620/501285/537389, all 121% of 3 fleet price, and actually all identical to within 0.2%.

I have another one-off 4th fleet purchase due in ~6 hours, we'll see what happens then. I hope that the exponential growth was a bug, and Sami has now fixed it, and 4th fleets will simply cost you an extra 21%. So basically, with 1 fleet, you pay 1 x the base amount for a given fleet. 2 fleets, you pay 2 x base cost for each fleet. 3 fleets, 3.6 x base. 4 fleets, 4.4 x base for each fleet. 5 fleets and beyond I'll work out with more data.

[JumboShrimp]

I will have a chance to test this again in 5 RL days with a large fleet.

Sami did not post that he made any changes.  And maybe your fleet was not large enough to get the exponential jump from both, 4th fleet and from the size of the fleet.  We know that the jump, percentage-wise is smaller for small fleets than in large fleets (something that should definitely change, IMO).

[ag321796]

Today I had a surprise.

My Fleet commonality costs decreased by 57% (not counting the cost of engines).
It seems to me that is a discount when it reaches a certain amount of aircraft, was with me in 76 aircraft.

Look at the costs:

AIRBUS A320 FAMILY
QTD      ADMINISTRATIVE   AERO MAINTENANCE      CREW TRAINING          MONTH           ENGINE        WEEK/PLANE
12       $ 105 672                 $ 599 056               $ 956 195        $ 1 660 923          $ 185 476         $ 35 783
12       $ 60 746                         $ 321 790              $ 529 747         $ 912 283           $ 185 561         $ 21 276


BOEING 757
QTD      ADMINISTRATIVE   AERO MAINTENANCE    CREW TRAINING         MONTH            ENGINE      WEEK/PLANE
36        $ 170 406                $ 1 630 368              $ 3 592 208     $ 5 392 982   $ 564 655      $ 38 486
38        $ 94 866                $ 896 333              $ 2 004 289     $ 2 995 488   $ 590 410      $ 21 946



FOKKER 70/100
QTD      ADMINISTRATIVE   AERO MAINTENANCE     CREW TRAINING          MONTH     ENGINE       WEEK/PLANE
26        $ 103 034                $ 821 446              $ 1 581 471      $ 2 505 951     $ 337 000        $ 25 429
26        $ 59 489                $ 441 250                $ 849 507      $ 1 350 246     $ 337 156      $ 15 093


TOTAL
QTD            MONTH           WEEK
76       $ 8 272 040        $ 1 923 730
76       $ 5 258 017        $ 1 222 795

[dmoose42]

Something similar happened to me around 70-80 aircraft in JA #5 as well.  I didn't document the before and after, but I definitely remember it. 

[Sanabas]

I will have a chance to test this again in 5 RL days with a large fleet.

Sami did not post that he made any changes.  And maybe your fleet was not large enough to get the exponential jump from both, 4th fleet and from the size of the fleet.  We know that the jump, percentage-wise is smaller for small fleets than in large fleets (something that should definitely change, IMO).

I hope Sami made the changes without saying so, since there isn't actually a bug report thread about this (yet. I'll likely post one this arvo when I see what happens with my next delivery).

For the bolded bit, a couple of RL days ago, my 82 plane fleet was big enough for the huge jump, which was noticeably bigger at 87 & 92 planes. So I doubt that my 108 plane fleet isn't big enough to get the same thing.