Some questions about aircraft age

[stansu]

I have been wondering how aircraft age affect your airline other than maintenance cost. Let me be more specific:

1. Does it affect company image?
2. Other than company image does it affect LF additionally? (For two airlines with same everything, same competition, same company image but different fleet age, will LF be different?)
3. Is the effect global (average age has impact to all flight) or route a/c specific? In other word, if I have very low average fleet age but one route uses very old a/c, will that specific route suffer?

4. Another question unrelated to fleet age: when two airlines compete, assuming everything equal, same frequency too, but different number of seats (say 1 733 per day vs 1 734 per day), are the passengers distributed 50:50 between two airlines or proportional to number of seats offered?
Thanks

[Aerlingus1916]

To briefly answer your question, no. It has no immediate affect except that the aircraft might be in worse condition since its older.

To answer Q.4 in that case there would not be a difference except maybe one extra passenger because there is one extra seat
Hope this helped:)

[Mr.HP]

To answer Q.4 in that case there would not be a difference except maybe one extra passenger because there is one extra seat
Hope this helped:)

He meant flying a B733 with 126 seats vs a B734 with 162 seats. The pax should be 50:50 share (given total seats provide > total demand), and the B733 operator should have an advantage since they pay less cost for B733

1. The manual says A/C age affect CI, by how much maybe only sami knows
2 and 3. IMO, no

[exchlbg]

Distribution is all equal numbers at first, then come all the different bonuses/maluses.
If everything is equal, both aircrafts should see the same number of PAX. LF are only for report purposes, they don´t play a role in PAX distribution process, since no values are tied to them.

[stansu]

Thanks that clears it up for me.

Another follow-up question:

(1)
I remember seeing that flights per day's benefits is capped at 5.
When I already have 5 flights on the same route with more than 1-hour separation, and wanna add a sixth flight, is there any benefit continuing to have a one-hour separation from existing flights?

(2)
If I already separate them by an hour, is there additional benefit to further spread them out throughout the day?

More specific example for the question above:
(A) Departing 0800, 0900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300
(B) Departing 0800, 0900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1200
(C) Departing 0800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800
Will I get the same passenger count in the above three schedule?

Thanks again!



Thanks

[exchlbg]

Flight benefits capped at 5? I don´t remember seeing that and it makes no sense.There are limitations, one is not more than 40 ! departures to same destination and the malus you get using aircrafts to small for that route against opponent using "appropiate" material.
Try to keep your flights minimum one hour apart, except on very busy routes.You will see bad results if you don´t.
Further spreading won´t bring much more benefit, except you spread into the busy morning and evening rushes, where you might see a slightly better demand.Avoid starts or landings before 6.00 and after midnight if possible, but do it if otherwise the plane would sit on tarmac.
I try to spread my flights evenly over the day just because it´s reasonable and logic.
Maybe the schedule 2 is a typo, otherwise the two departures at noon will be counted as one, leaving both of them half empty or worse.3 will show better results for morning and evening rushes.
You won´t have free choice of flight times very often, it´s tricky enough to build an economic schedule overall despite all limitations like curfews/slot restrictions and different distances/aircraft speeds.
Much more important is to keep your planes busy and not on the ground waiting for that perfect moment to depart.

[Sanabas]

Thanks that clears it up for me.

Another follow-up question:

(1)
I remember seeing that flights per day's benefits is capped at 5.
When I already have 5 flights on the same route with more than 1-hour separation, and wanna add a sixth flight, is there any benefit continuing to have a one-hour separation from existing flights?

It's not that there's a benefit to continuing to maintain 1 hour separation, it's that you'll still get punished if you use less than the minimum required separation for that route, whether that's 1 hour or something shorter.

It's not capped at 5. But the benefit does seem to lessen as there are more daily flights. I did some testing in the last north american challenge. Seemed like on smaller (say under 1000 pax) routes, having more than 6 daily flights wasn't making much difference, that 6 a320s vs 18 turboprops would end up resulting in a near 50-50 split. But on bigger routes, there was more benefit to more flights, 6 daily 747 domestics vs 15 a320s would be something like 65/35 in favour of the 320s. All based on small sample sizes, and trying to extract things from the publically available data, of course. So don't take those numbers as definitive.

(2)
If I already separate them by an hour, is there additional benefit to further spread them out throughout the day?

More specific example for the question above:
(A) Departing 0800, 0900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300
(B) Departing 0800, 0900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1200
(C) Departing 0800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800
Will I get the same passenger count in the above three schedule?

A & C should get the same. B will get significantly less due to the two flights at 1200.

[Troxartas86]

I had 30-year-old Soviet pieces of junk including the very first plane I leased on day one still in the air at the end of the last DoTM. Age ain't nothing but a number (albeit a really really high one when it comes to maintenance fees).