Unexplained collapse in CI

[jamestbailey]

I have been playing this for quite a while now, but have come across something new to me.
My CI has suddenly collapsed from 100 to 92 (due to a ramp check failure). Ok, that was to be expected. However for no obvious reason about 3 months later it collapsed further by about 3 per week until it reached a new equilibrium around 82.

I cannot work out why.

My fleet (982 aircraft; GW1; Espanair) is 14.3 years old. I do have a few aircraft between 28.0 and 28.9 years old in service. I have also had a number turn 29 in the last few weeks... but they are in storage.

Does the age of stored aircraft matter?
Is there some critical age, or average age, which causes this effect.

Any suggestions very gratefully received! Thanks.

[Yarnam]

What percentage of general marketing to sold tickets are you at? If your sold tickets is going up but your general marketing isn't I have read that this might happen.

[Curse]

Age of aircraft is irrelevant.

Had you some problems with delays/cancellations? Was there a World Event?

[jamestbailey]

Many thanks for the response Yarnam.

My total weekly sales have been very slowly nudging up from $825m per week a year ago (CI=100) and peaked a short while ago at $876m. My marketing spend is $16.9m per week.

It does appear that the collapse in CI does coincide with sales hitting a new peak. What is perhaps a little bizarre is that sales have now fallen back to under that critical level (or ratio of marketing:sales) without much improvement to CI.

Could that be it?

[jamestbailey]

Thanks Cur$e. Hmm.. will take a look now....


....no - nothing out of the ordinary there. At least, nothing I can see. This is bizarre.

[Yarnam]

I have read that your ratio of general marketing to sold tickets should be about 15%. Yours is is quite a bit lower. I am no expert however and perhaps Cur$e could offer his opinion on this.

[jamestbailey]

I have had the same marketing campaigns in place since my airline had about 150 aircraft. It is now nearly 1000 aircraft. The spend has gone up with inflation etc., but it does now work out as a really low percentage. What is surprising is the sudden shock impact, rather than a gradual drop off of CI.

[Infinity]

I have read that your ratio of general marketing to sold tickets should be about 15%. Yours is is quite a bit lower. I am no expert however and perhaps Cur$e could offer his opinion on this.

15% - never. 10% at the max; and it very much depends on your airline. I am spending less than 1% of ticket income on marketing in GW#3 for Image 90, despite having heavy intercontinental traffic and not just short haul.

[Yarnam]

15% - never. 10% at the max; and it very much depends on your airline. I am spending less than 1% of ticket income on marketing in GW#3 for Image 90, despite having heavy intercontinental traffic and not just short haul.

Thanks for stepping in and correcting me. I'd hate to suggest that someone spend a whole bunch of money. As I stated I am no expert, just repeating what i had read.

[jamestbailey]

Well, I have juggled around my marketing, combining 2 of my 5 campaigns together, giving me the same spend over 4 campaigns.
I have then added new 5th campaign for 3 months to take my spend from $17m to $30m to boost CI back up. I am interested to see when it expires whether things remain stable (suggesting some one-off event that perhaps I missed), or whether there is going to be a need to maintain a high spend. If it is the latter, I am completely lost as to what has triggered this so suddenly.

[schro]

Well, I have juggled around my marketing, combining 2 of my 5 campaigns together, giving me the same spend over 4 campaigns.

This can also cause CI to drop.... It isn't 100% about spend, but to what extent we believe it is sami-random.

[jamestbailey]

I only combined the 4 into 5 to allow me add the extra 5th one.
I appreciate that the return back to 4 spending $17m may give me a lesser impact than the same spend over 5 campaigns

[Curse]

AWS Rule #1: Never delete old marketing campaigns.

Bad things are going to happen if you do so.

[fxtorres]

Curse: do you mean never cancel a campaign in progress before the ending date? 

[Luperco]

CUR$E I've often rearrange my campaign (deleting old and creating new) without any apparent problems. The only requirement is that you keep spending the same amount of money.

What I've found is that, give the same amount of money, one campaign with three media, is better than 3 with only one media each.

Don't takes my words as pure gold. They are just observations on limited set of data (only my airlines, in 4 different worlds at the moment).