regional airline or regional operations

[Sranan]

is this simulation setup for regional airlines or regional operations?

an example - airline operating 40-60 seat turboprops or jets to destinations less than 2000nm

not looking at making an abundance on profits/company value, but to make a profit and grow in a certain region by taking the 30-70 pax per day airports

[zorrin]

It is if you manage your costs carefully.

I started the last Beginner's World at Halifax, NS, fairly lateish about a month real time before it ended and some of my most profitable routes (by YPK & RPK) were using ATRs on short routes. I found that you didn't necessarily have to worry about a massively high utilisation, so long as they were flying to 5 or 6 destinations a day this made up for the utilisation loss because even on a 100nm route the ticket price isn't that much lower than that of a 500nm route.

The downside is that once you have covered all of the really close airports (say less than 200nm) you start running into problems with the overnight flights - however in BW with the low fuel costs you can throw in the middle of the night flights and even with low LFs of around 40% the flight generates revenue - not masses, but still if it's the 7th leg of the day it is fair to assume that the $6k it generates (after direct operating costs) on a return trip is all profit! My ATRs were posting weekly profits of between $150k-550k/wk. However I did own most of them - those I didn't own were on 15 year leases to make 'em cheap as chips.

However, because of the airport's limitations I soon ran out of destinations to operate the ATRs to - I would run them to max range which posed a problem because they're so inherently slow. I would maybe consider the Q400 as a more viable alternative because it's much faster than the other turboprops, burns less fuel than the jets. The speed differential over a jet is only going to be noticeable at the extreme range. Of course it all depends on the aircraft available right now...

Of course you'll want to keep the fleet types to an absolute minimum to ensure proper lean operation.

Of course with Halifax being small the fees are lower, but then so were the opportunities.

Worst case scenario - declare bankruptcy and try again!

Edit: As an example my airline in MT5 is a little over a year old, again starting at Halifax, NS. Fuel is currently $1,429.
I have 5 ATR72-600s and 1 ATR72-500 all leased at an average cost of $261k/mth, generating an average profit (according to My Aircraft menu) of  $298k/wk. If you exclude the aircraft that's in C-Check which skews the figures it works out to an average profit of $343k/wk/aircraft
Best earner:
Reg Sort    Owner    Value / Lease    Lease expires    Avg LF %    Routes    Daily profit    Prev. week profit    
C-FATA    Leased    243 330 USD / month    14-Jan-32    88.7 %    5    75 056 USD    498 928 USD (ATR 72-600)
Worst earner
Aircraft in maintenance - C check C-FATE    Leased    269 070 USD / month    21-Mar-32    81.7 %    3    -11 553 USD    71 434 USD (ATR 72-600), however figure is skewed because of maint.

Compare that to my fleet of CSeries (mainly CS300ERs) - total of 14 in service, 1 in C-check, ignoring the C-checker avg proft per week for a CSeries is $346k/wk/ac

Send me a PM if you want a more detailed breakdown of costs, happy to share what I can. Obviously you have to take the figures with a pinch of salt because of the differences in aircraft costs and fuel costs - in theory my leases will be higher than those in the BW, and without a doubt your fuel cost should be at least $1,000 cheaper!

[andriitis]

If you want a fast turboprop, have a look at the Saab 2000 - I think it is the fastest in the game, takes 58 pax and has a quite good range too. The turnaround time (for minimum delay risk) is 50 minutes however.

Also have a look at the available destinations, maybe you can combine using turboprops on < 600 nm destinations and smaller jets (with around 100-120 pax capacity) for 600-2000 nm routes?

[Sranan]

thanks

my brother is trying to do something in the BW#16 sim. his airline is sabaku luchtvaart.

i told him his marketing is what is hurting him right now. also he is using converted 40 seat f50 for his routes.

his idea and plan sounds good and like it would work. i told him it will just take a few real life days to see how things are turning out. i think he saw that i was making 25k+ profit per day per aircraft on mainline routes and was expecting more than his 3k+ profit per day per aircraft. he told me he doesnot know if he would be able to cover the leases.

[Sabaku_Luchtvaart]

yes i have only had one time a positve earning week. i think i will watch the next few days and see if the routes and earnings will increase. there is nothing i can really do right now because i am at 1,7mil and donot seem to be getting higher than 1,8 mil.

i think time will tell

[Sabaku_Luchtvaart]

thanks

i am trying to determine if an aircraft embraer 120 should be used or atr 42 should be used on the routes. only real difference is the number of seats and lease costs. operation costs, speed, are almost same. the saab 2000 isnot available for a few years.

i am really not concerned about making billions. i just want to see if it can make a sustained operation throughout the game world. if i ended with lets say 10m after starting with 4m (subtract the 1m loan from start), i would be happy.

i can pm you with what i am trying to do if you like

[zorrin]

Well it all depends on what aircraft you are already operating...

If you are going to run a very small airline you'll want to try and stick to one fleet type - because of the increase in costs as the fleet types increase. Okay it's only a marginal increase up to about 3 types (so I gather from these forums).

If it were me I'd stick to one type of aircraft.

You need to find the aircraft that will work on the routes that you have. If you are going for the regional only approach you need to sit down and crunch all the numbers for every cost on the types you are looking at.

For example what is the standard seating configuration - what is the max capacity, what does it cost to change to max capacity if you're going to go the High Density route. Does it make sense to operate a jet because you are flying further, do you fly far enough to make a jet worthwhile compared to the typically longer turnaround time as that of a turboprop.

Unfortunately the question you're asking is akin to how long is a piece of string.

Try it and see what works.

But definitely keep it down to one fleet type, and pick it carefully!

I would look at the lease cost, average fuel burn, speed, capacity and create some sort of formula that's meaningful to me - create some sort of cost per seat, cost per seat per mile etc etc. Be like a real airline and do a proper assessment - technical and commercial. And then assign each item a score value of importance and add up the points.

[Sabaku_Luchtvaart]

thanks

i am going to see how the embraer 120 will do the first couple of game years. so far it is doing fine. i maybe will look at atr4/atr7 once the lease start to expire. unfortunately the start of the game doesnot have regional jets or the q400. so i have to be patient see what will happen with the plans until the faster regional aircraft are released.

as i said the embraer 120 seems to be doing fine now. i have a few spreadsheets and it is really a matter of embraer 120 or atr4 right now. for what i can do now, the embraer 120 wins out and keeps more money coming in.

one thing i have been curious about with this sim...if a route has, lets say, a pax demand of 40, and an aircraft <an a320> is sent...does the pax demand increase? will the seats sold increase because of the number of available seats? or is it really sending to much demand on the destination and a money loss? i have seen different explanations of this and it isnot really clear to me.

[Karl]

My 2 EMB 120ERs are making money, but my airline is losing a lot of money fast - even with profitable 757s and 737-400s in the air. It must be related to auxilary costs.

[LeoDario]

My 2 EMB 120ERs are making money, but my airline is losing a lot of money fast - even with profitable 757s and 737-400s in the air. It must be related to auxilary costs.

It is most likely Staff Wages and Navigation Fees

[Sabaku_Luchtvaart]

well i was making a profit for a while. a small profit, but still profit.

once all 4 of the lease payments started, i was losing money. roughly 35k per week.

i trimmed down on some things and have made a small profit the last two game weeks.

[Sabaku_Luchtvaart]

update/summary

well i gave a try to running a regional operation for 1,5 game years...but had to bankrupt     in short - my plan was to run an airline out of smjp to the caribbean and northern part of south america <brasil, frans guiana, venezuela, colombia>.

i started out making money. the first 13-14 game months went fine. i had set 3x atr4 and 1x emb120. i had regular daily service to tncm, soca, sbeg, sbbe, svmi, tjsj, skbo, ttpp, ttcp, tbpb, tgpy. all of the flights got to 55%-60% LF and flight punctuality around 95% most of the time. all of the routes had 100% route image.

i realize the emb120 was a mistake because even though it is the same engine type, the different fleet type was a cost different to atr. i also realize that the marketing costs were a large part of hurting profits. the major issue came with leases starting to make payments. i also think the fuel prices had something to do with hurting profits. i ordered a few more atr4 but it became clear that opening new routes to mdpp, mdpc, sbfz, mdsd, and svmc wouldnot be good.

lessons learned:
1) use one aircraft type only
2) i am still trying to figure out the marketing piece
3) i should have acquire more aircraft up front to fly to more routes early on instead of stagger ordering and opening of routes later
4) i think the fuel price just hurts over time once it rises

i think it is a bit of shame that the sim is setup more towards bigger operations. some of the numbers in passenger demand arenot realistic on some routes which makes some airports useless. it would be nice if the sim was a bit more friendly to regional operations

maybe sami can do something where a scenario is only operation of regional jets and turboprops?? and making the passenger demand a bit more realistic when routing regional airports or travelling within a certain distance.