Deciding for Airwaysim - reasons why should I chose it?

[rubiohiguey]

Hello guys,

I have set up trial accounts with couple of sims, basically 3 major ones - Airlinesim, Airwaysim, and Airline Empires.

I liked airline empires at first, but basically it is more game than a simulation. Game - because you can make unrealistic amount of money in very short time. In less than 2 weeks real time (3 years playtime), my airline is worth over 65 billion dollars, has 1200+ aircraft of which 400+ are idle, and makes 300+ million operating profit per day. Imagine when the remainder of 400+ aircraft is put on route. I developed excel spreadsheet system so I can keep track of routes and revenue differences and act where necessary.

But I am getting tired of this rat race to click-and-fly. The 95% difference maker among airlines is price, so whoever offers the lousiest service with high frequency with cheapest planes and undercut price get most money. People do not analyze, they undercut you even if they could make more money by matching your rate (e.g. because demand is not met). Again, it's the same click-and-deploy mentality.

I have studies business administration and I want more thought-provoking sim. A simulation where I have to challenge my business skills and not my hand wrist that goes sore by clicking and deploying planes for an hour at the time. Clck and deploy. Click and deploy. And still 400+ planes left idle.

So I am considering airlinesim and airwaysim. Basically, the only real difference I see between the two is how fast the time runs. In airwaysim it's 30/mins of real time for 1 day of playtime, here in airlinesim its 1day/1day as I understand it.

So my question is: why should I chose Airwaysim?  Can you name reasons why airwaysim is better (than airlinesim)?


And one last question, what is the bulk of time you seasoned players spend most time on when playing airwaysim? In airline empires, it's clicking and deploying planes (I can get $4/hour unskilled labor to do that, haha). Do you spend most time on things that make your brain sore (thinking/analyzing), or your wrist sore (clicking)?

Thank you for your valuable inputs.

[Aoitsuki]

I have touched 2 other airline simulation and truth to be told, if you are thinking of using real world business knowledge to this game.... I don't think any airline simulation will allow you to do that(perhaps finding what is the best way to earn revenue).

One thing that I think that airwaysim has designed well(and also terrible) is their slot system. It pretty much disallow unlimited flight/plane deployment. Depends on your location, once you clean the slot, that's it, you will need to play the waiting game as nobody can deploy more route. Price does make a difference but you cannot aggressively slash price cause at one point you will not earn profit. There are other elements that will affect you load factor.

This game allows casual player at smaller airport, you don't need to be online every few hours to initiate a new flight. as they are perma. scheduled. but at the same time, neglect your airline a little bit too long may get you bankrupt.

I guess there are + and - in every sim. and i find aws probably one of the more challenging game there is. Sadly much more difference can be found in real games, not in trial/beginner's world.

[LemonButt]

I choose AWS for several reasons.  The interface for other sims doesn't even compare to AWS--sami has done a great job with this.  I have been playing the game for many years now and sami is constantly adding new features/functionality.  A few years ago when I started playing there was no basing system (although we had ABCBA routes), there were no fuel contracts, no hedging, and many other features I"m sure I'm forgetting about.  Just when you think you've mastered the game, the game changes whether it be slot growth being fixed to being changed to 50%-150% growth over time or rebels taking over Algeria (LOL!).

If you're really looking for a thought provoking sim, AWS may or may not be the best one to play.  I must preface this with the fact I have an AS in Business, BS in Applied Mathematics, and an MS in Entrepreneurship.  In my opinion, business administration/management as a major is a joke--you are taught how to manage an existing business and that's about it.  My (soon to be) ex-wife went back to a school for an MBA and her classmates would call her and ask to talk to me so I could explain how to do their homework.  So the bottom line is any clown can run an existing business and AWS suffers from this to a certain degree.

So the real question is not IF to play AWS, it's HOW to play AWS.  A monkey can run a successful airline in AWS by simply using nothing but B737 or A320, which is what many players do and they label themselves "successful".  It's not very difficult to be successful when you're using the most fuel efficient aircraft in the game with the lowest overhead costs, even if you have heavy competition.

However, if you choose to play the game and win with strategy (see Porter's Five Forces, particularly Understanding Michael Porter which is excellent: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Michael-Porter-Essential-Competition/dp/1422160599) then you will actually get something out of playing the game.  The key is to challenge yourself and beat the clowns with B737 by using strategy.  For example, I've made it a rule to not use Airbus or Boeing aircraft (they're the most efficient in game).  Thus, I'm using older and/or less fuel efficient aircraft and need to devise a way to be successful.  I've run an all-CRJ airline successfully (and BK'd my competitor that was an all Dash-8 airline) in the past and I'm currently in DOTM flying out of curfewed airports (and learning a thing or two about how to do it successfully in the process) flying the less popular models (BAC 1-11, L1011, NAMC YS11).  The reason it takes strategy to win is because you'll end up flying against the monkeys flying B737 that are successful in spite of themselves.  If you browse the forums, you'll see all sorts of examples of players competing with strategy, most notably Sanabas who currently has an active "small aircraft" airline in DOTM and documented his decisions extensively in a forum thread.

So the bottom line is if you think AWS is a strategy game and you decide to compete with strategy, you will never get bored and always stay challenged.  If you think AWS is "entertainment" and just a way to kill time by using the "click and deploy" method you outlined, it can be that too, but IMO you are wasting your money and you aren't going to be a better in business as a result.  Truthfully, AWS is more about economics and opportunity cost than business, but most business people have no concept of opportunity cost so it is a great lesson.  There are no solutions--only trade-offs: Do you wait 4 years for the most fuel efficient aircraft or do you order a less efficient aircraft you can get today?  Do you fly a route with 100 demand that a competitor already has 100 seats on or do you choose to fly a route with 50 demand and no competition?  Do you set prices higher with less pax or make them lower with more pax--which is more profitable? etc...

As far as time commitments, it just depends.  If I am facing strong competition, I will put together a giant spreadsheet with all viable routes, calculate required planes, and systematically expand to give myself a competitive advantage to eventually BK my competition.  This could take several hours a day to map out and execute successfully, especially if I'm operating on razor thin margins and counting every penny.  On the flip side, I setup my airline to be on autopilot (no aircraft deliveries, etc) and spent a week in Africa back in March with no internet access and came back and my airline was fine.

My suggestion to you would be to join Modern Times #9 when it opens up and see what you think.  Modern Times is probably the most popular scenario in AWS and is also the largest with the most demand and most players, but also means more ways to fail.  Most players will play Beginners World and be wildly successful because the settings are so easy, but once they enter a real game world it is baptism by fire.  If you've had success in the other games and understand the concept already, spare yourself from joining Beginners World and jump right in to a real game world to see what it's all about.

[rubiohiguey]

Thank you both for your replies!

[Mr.HP]

In airwaysim it's 30/mins of real time for 1 day of playtime, here in airlinesim its 1day/1day as I understand it.

35 mins/day means more action. I got bored with the waiting in airlinesim. Leased a plane from across the ocean, and it took 2 real days to get it delivered. Also, cost to play for airlinesim is much more than airwaysim. So I quit after my demo credits in airlinesim ran out

Honestly, I haven't fully grasped the game, yet. So, can't really say airlinesim is worse. But my first impression was not so great 

[esquireflyer]

Just when you think you've mastered the game, the game changes whether it be slot growth being fixed to being changed to 50%-150% growth over time or rebels taking over Algeria (LOL!).

That thing was painful.

I'm currently in DOTM flying out of curfewed airports (and learning a thing or two about how to do it successfully in the process) flying the less popular models (BAC 1-11, L1011, NAMC YS11).

Those are still very fuel efficient planes, although they are less popular for other reasons, such as range limits.
If you want a risky financial challenge, fly Concorde. Or anything Russian!

[BD]

...So my question is: why should I chose Airwaysim?  Can you name reasons why airwaysim is better (than airlinesim)?

And one last question, what is the bulk of time you seasoned players spend most time on when playing airwaysim? In airline empires, it's clicking and deploying planes (I can get $4/hour unskilled labor to do that, haha). Do you spend most time on things that make your brain sore (thinking/analyzing), or your wrist sore (clicking)?

I don't know about the other games, but as a noob I find that AWS has incredible depth to it, and, hence, is a great challenge.

To give you a taste, here are some of the decisions you will be faced with.  There is a LOT MORE to be sure.  

Strategic Choices in AWS:

Goals

You have to decide what kind of airline you want.  Do you want to be a small airline, the top 10 in revenue, the largest international flyer, the most passengers, etc.??

Most beginners probably want to have some vague mix of the above, but mostly just want to learn how to survive in a truly competitive game world.  

Successive games (or bankruptcies and restarts) bring greater focus on this question.  And it affects all your strategic choices.

Base Location

• Which country?  Potential for future base expansion (includes impact of EU market, transition to independence from colonies, etc)?  Number, size and success of existing airlines in the country (if starting midway on an existing game)?
• Which airport?  Number, size and success of existing airlines there?  How many HQ'd there?
• Overall size of airport?  Sufficient number of routes with demand for the aircraft you want to fly now and in future?
• Slot capacity? Number of slots available for growth?  Impacts/opportunity with future changes to the airport (e.g. as airports are closed and traffic is migrated to new one)?
• Percent of long haul demand, international demand, etc?

It is a challenge rich environment.  You can be a big domestic airline in USA or China, for example.  Or, you could dominate a city state like Singapore or Hong Kong.  Or, you could fly puddle jumpers in the Caribbean (and try to survive).

Aircraft

• Which model?  Size/Capacity – matches route demand?  Range – matches your target demand area? Speed/Turn Time – more speed = more utilization and higher demand?  Fuel Burn Rate – major cost driver related to aircraft model era and type:  prop or jet ?
• Maintenance costs?  Fleet Group – additional costs related to number of FG in use?  New(er) vs Used – older cost more maintenance, but price less to lease/own?
• Price?  Lease – less initial investment vs Own – lower long term op cost, but ties up cash?
• Availability?  Used market – if going used, will there be enough to fill your needs?  Production lines operational – with sufficient demand to keep it open long term?  Production line backlog – how long will you have to wait for delivery?
• Configuration?  What is the optimal mix of seat types for your routes?
• Acquisition Plan?  What is your strategy - mix of purchase/lease, prepayment, quantity discounts?  Now vs wait for future technological improvements?

Routes

• Demand?  Is there enough to at least break even?  Future growth potential?
• Competition?  Is it empty or over subscribed and how many?  Can the market share you carve out be enough to at least break even?  What are they flying – new/used, fuel efficient, fast?  What is their company image?  What is your competitive advantage?
• Slots?  Are there slots available that fit your aircraft's flying times?  Are they at desirable times vs red eye?  How much are the slots going to cost – the more slots used, the more they cost?
• Scheduling?  Can you string enough routes together to increase your aircraft utilization – lowers relative operating cost?  If you plan on switching aircraft, will you be able to schedule it to avoid paying for additional slots?  What day of week should you schedule regular maintenance?
• Price?  What is the optimal price to max profit or max passengers flown?

Other Fun Stuff

• Marketing?  How much should you spend - how high do you want your Company Image to be?  Should you spend heavy early or preserve cash now for growth - but later suffer the consequences of paying for higher CI but waiting until it catches up to that point
• Fuel?  Should you hedge - fuel prices vary significantly over time?  At what price?  Should you contract a supplier - what is your breakeven?
• Borrow?  Should you?  If so, should you pledge assets (aircraft you own) or stick with unsecured loans?  How long a term?  Liquidity/cash flow considerations?
• Buy for Resale?  Is the aircraft popular enough you can make a profit selling or becoming a lease-lord?  Using cash for this vs growing your airline?

It may sound complicated looking at this list, but it's really not once you play for a bit.  There are many ways to define "success" for yourself and find a challenge.  Even the veterans are not bored, as they can find ways to give themselves more difficulty.  

So, to answer your question, a LOT of thinking and analysing is what AWS calls for.  There is lots of clicking, but that is related mostly to doing your research on the above questions, and initial set up.

Oh, and one of the most important things...AWS has a great community of friendly players who seem to be quite willing to help noobs out (check out the mentor program when you join)!  

[rubioh]

Thank you BD for your thorough reply.

I do have a question: is the demand static or does it change over time (basically, question is how realistically does the sim reflect real life in this area).

In real life, a new airline enters the market, and reduced pricing (if LCC) usually increases demand even to destination before unheard of. Also promotion (marketing) MAY shift demand (if and when people realize there are low cost options, for example). So how does the demand work in the sim? Is it static or does it change?

And one more question, I reviewed the forums and it was said back in 2009-2010 that connecting px may be implemented. has this been implemented? If I fly A to X, B to X, C to X, do I get somehow a portion of those passengers as connecting pax on X to D?

[swiftus27]

Thank you BD for your thorough reply.

I do have a question: is the demand static or does it change over time (basically, question is how realistically does the sim reflect real life in this area).

In real life, a new airline enters the market, and reduced pricing (if LCC) usually increases demand even to destination before unheard of. Also promotion (marketing) MAY shift demand (if and when people realize there are low cost options, for example). So how does the demand work in the sim? Is it static or does it change?

And one more question, I reviewed the forums and it was said back in 2009-2010 that connecting px may be implemented. has this been implemented? If I fly A to X, B to X, C to X, do I get somehow a portion of those passengers as connecting pax on X to D?

Demand increases over time.    In fact the sim currently uses some year (around 2000) and has the demand to and from the airfields across the world.     Before 2000 then it is a fraction of that amount, after and it is above. ..    this explains demand to an airport like Orlando (before Disney was built).

Connecting pax still not implemented and ABCBA routes are disabled in favor of the hub system. 

[Infinity]

Thank you BD for your thorough reply.

I do have a question: is the demand static or does it change over time (basically, question is how realistically does the sim reflect real life in this area).

In real life, a new airline enters the market, and reduced pricing (if LCC) usually increases demand even to destination before unheard of. Also promotion (marketing) MAY shift demand (if and when people realize there are low cost options, for example). So how does the demand work in the sim? Is it static or does it change?

And one more question, I reviewed the forums and it was said back in 2009-2010 that connecting px may be implemented. has this been implemented? If I fly A to X, B to X, C to X, do I get somehow a portion of those passengers as connecting pax on X to D?

Connecting pax are still not modeled.

Demand is growing over time, and yes you can create demand by offering rock bottom prices. That does work.

[schro]

Demand also changes in response to world events - i.e. middle east shenanigans that happen over time, September 11th, Sars, etc are generally modeled throughout time and have a significant impact to demand (either globally or to a specific airport/country). There are also country relationships that are now modeled that can impact traffic flow between two places.

If you wander over to the feature request forum, you can take a look at the City Based Demand thread, you can see the upcoming changes to the demand system that will make it possible to dynamically grow secondary airports that are geographically close to each other (i.e. LHR will get owned by LGW/STN/LTN, whereas now, LHR rules supreme).

For fairly recent information about how the demand of each location works in competition, read this thread - https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,49280.0.html

So, did you create a second account to try another test world out?

[rubioh]

@schro - yes a second test account, because I want to join Modern Times starting today, and my previous account expired without actually getting to do anything. I intend to join the full game as it starts later today.

About demand - there are some unrealistic numbers (low) on some routes. For example,

MEX - SJO
There are at present time two daily flights (Aeromexico and Lacsa/TACA), 737/319 jet combination. So available seats: let's suppose 140 x 2 = 280 (Y)

The sim says that the demand for this route is ~75 seats/day (demo world), average about ~72 Y/day.

In reality, a 72 y passengers would mean a 25% load factor on both Aeromexico and Lacsa, or 50% load factor on Aeromexico an 0% LF on LACSA, or any combination thereof.

This means that the stated demand (in SIM) is not correct.

There are some more examples, I will not detail them here, but all go the same way. real life numbers are "more" than the sim numbers. Why, ?

[Sami]

It is impossible to mimic every route and their demand in real life, and we are not even trying to do that, so those comparisons are not worth it.

[exchlbg]

Demand model is theoretic and not based on RL demand figures, it´s tied to RL airport traffic numbers and combined and tweaked to reflect history timeline. It´s absolutely impossible to reflect any RL routings over a timespan of 70 years for 23.000 airports.And then again, if this game would do it, there would be no point in playing your game .All you would have to do is research and replay reality over and over. Same goes with economy and fuel prizes .They are randomized here, too, with the exception of some major real life crisis and political turn-overs.
I once tried airline sim for a short period of time and found their demand model very unrealistic (e.g. very busy traffic at 3 am), although I liked the possibilities of connecting flights. But you have RL game days in that system which makes it much too slow to keep it interesting.
So this one  is a game close to real life, but not simulating it 100%. It´s more about economic strategies.

[schro]

@schro - yes a second test account, because I want to join Modern Times starting today, and my previous account expired without actually getting to do anything. I intend to join the full game as it starts later today.

About demand - there are some unrealistic numbers (low) on some routes. For example,

MEX - SJO
There are at present time two daily flights (Aeromexico and Lacsa/TACA), 737/319 jet combination. So available seats: let's suppose 140 x 2 = 280 (Y)

The sim says that the demand for this route is ~75 seats/day (demo world), average about ~72 Y/day.

In reality, a 72 y passengers would mean a 25% load factor on both Aeromexico and Lacsa, or 50% load factor on Aeromexico an 0% LF on LACSA, or any combination thereof.

This means that the stated demand (in SIM) is not correct.

There are some more examples, I will not detail them here, but all go the same way. real life numbers are "more" than the sim numbers. Why, ?

There's a few things in play with that number - first of all, of course, is the obvious answer that it is impossible to replicate reality for every single route flown by an airline nor is it desirable in the context of a simulation.

However, if you want to get technical about the numbers, the demand estimation that you see is for O/D passenger demand (meaning passengers that have an origin of MEX and a destination of SJO and vice versa). It is entirely possible that the current O/D demand is the ~75 stated by the game and the rest of the seats that are being sold by real world airlines are to connecting passengers. Thus, in the simulation, those other "missing" passengers have been distributed across other destinations in the game world (i.e. pick a route not currently served by any airline and you will see demand for that city-pair). I'm not sure what time period BW is in (and I've got to run to a client so I'm not going to check right now), but if Mexico grows faster than the world does over the time from BW to our present, then that 75 can go up fairly quickly.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that a lot of the route-pair demand calculations are automagically done by many of the variables already mentioned in the thread along with the airport's size and passenger mix (as seen on the airport information screen) - i.e. the mix between domestic, short haul intl and long haul intl. Overall, for most airports in the game, the sum total flyable demand will be far higher than the current number of passengers that actually use the airport.

[forex]

... and yes you can create demand by offering rock bottom prices. That does work.

Hi,
I'm new at this but have been playing AirlineSim so far. The faster time makes it much more exciting.
By saying "create demand" do you mean, if a connection has a demand for say 50 pax/day, I can increase that if I offer low enough prices?

[Sami]

Yes, let's say a route of 100 pax / day can grow to around 150/day at least if good service is provided (= for example, low prices, but not JUST that alone). And also the other way around...

[forex]

Thanks for your quick reply. Another question just came up for me (didn't want to start an extra topic):
I've seen airlines doing this:

A to B

1------    2250    0230*    B721   
--3----    2250    0230*    B721   
---4---    2250    0230*    B721   
----5--    2250    0230*    B721       
------7    2250    0230*    B721   

Whats the benefit of 1 flight number per day? Can't figure it out besides more work...

[exchlbg]

It´s called 7-day scheduling.You create a week flightplan for one aircraft and then change the flight days for the six others accordingly. It means an optimal usage of your planes/routes where weekly A-check doesn´t mean you have to cancel that route for the day.
Please make a forum search to find further information. This technique was developed by players, not intended by system, that´s why all flights get their own flight number.

[LemonButt]

Also for long flights that are >24 hours, they are impossible to fly consecutive days, so you're forced to use separate flights   This was the genesis of 7-day scheduling.