Why, Why & Why... ???

[elitemedia]

Ok, please dont take this post on the first degree.... but...

I really don't understand strategy of some players ? why to open already established lines from a city which is not your hub when there are still so many lines to open from their own hubs ?

Whats the point ? for the fun ? For loose money ? I would understand that people open new lines from other cities than their hubs if there is not yet established lines but when the offer/request is already equilibrated i really dont get the point, as for me when someone comes to "steal" an already established line which is not point to point, i establish twice more lines from the hub of the concerned airline...

What about you ? whats your reaction against such strategies ?

[Mahon]

If they're thinking strategically, they're probably doing it to try to bite off a manageable piece of your "empire" while at the same time diversifying their network.

Then again, some folks are pretty random.

[elitemedia]

Well as a manager i dont see why i would assign an aircraft which will make at most 50% of its possible revenue doing a line which is already occupied when there are so much lines empty and new markets to take...

[Mahon]

Because it isn't always "at most 50%", and in any case that's just one particular flight (which might've been just the right length to fill up some unutilized time block in for a particular plane). In my current game I've found all too many cases where even with the competitor flying, I nudged onto a route and found I got rather more pax than I figured I ought to at most. When that happens, it tells you something about your competitor, and one can examine the worth of doing a bit more nudging here and there. And sometimes if you do that enough, the other guy folds.

[elitemedia]

Ok, lets figure out real exemple....

Route request is 13'000 pax month

competitor have now 6,8% share = 880 pax month
He operates route 3 times a week with the same 763(not filling gaps) (lets assume medium configuration 240 pax) = 2880 pax offered monthly

So i assume he is getting 30% real LF on this route, so for me its a real bad exemple of management, even more when he operates this with a leased aircraft  ... if you add to this the fact that in response to this i come to nudge on his own profitable routes twice as more... than the lost start to be big...

[pharmy]

If you operate from a smaller airport (like Milano-Linate in my case), its the only way to expand (there is no demand at all after 2500 miles), although I usually chose routes with no competitors. After that comes the nudging out part. The strategy worked great until oil hit 200. Now the only way I could have survived would be to do this with my own aircraft. And modern aircraft, the MD83s I have eat way too much gas. Lesson learned, in game 2 and 3 I am getting Embraers and Bombardiers.

[elitemedia]

I can understand this when you're based on a medium airport, but not in Miami  with dozens of lines without competition to be opened....

[pharmy]

Well the only reason I can think of is C class, thats why I started muscling in on LHR routes. Oh well, my strategy didn't work out either, flying planes 200 miles empty cannot be done with the oil prices in game one. In game two I'm scrambling to replace my MD 83, with 90ERs. Thank god Abu Dhabi was quite empty, unlike Italy and didn't force me to fly empty to Dubai to pick up passengers.

[jagalubnan]

A lot of larger airlines do these "continuation routes" to stop the smaller airline from expanding. For example, let's say the largest airline in base A wants to stop another airline from expanding for whatever reason. They would fly to the other airline's base B, and then continue to another city C. So it would be A->B->C->B->A.

I don't know why some airlines do it really, it varies. But the point is, that it is done.
I only do that type of route when either there isn't an airline based at "B" or the route for B->C has no airline flying it.

[Talentz]

I don't know why some airlines do it really, it varies

Mmm.. wouldnt know... 

[Seattle]

They make a lot of money.

[elitemedia]

Well in this case its the small airline that wants to eat the big airline... 

[jagalubnan]

In that case, the bigger airline's bigger friend will come along and feast on the smaller airline.   

[Monk Xion]

If you operate from a smaller airport (like Milano-Linate in my case), its the only way to expand (there is no demand at all after 2500 miles), although I usually chose routes with no competitors. After that comes the nudging out part. The strategy worked great until oil hit 200. Now the only way I could have survived would be to do this with my own aircraft. And modern aircraft, the MD83s I have eat way too much gas. Lesson learned, in game 2 and 3 I am getting Embraers and Bombardiers.

I highly recommend CRJ700s and 900s, along with Dash-8-400s.

Are you using B757s on domestic routes? If you config them in to about 210 pax and all economy, I think it is more efficient than using smaller aircraft on routes with huge demand.

I'm learning the same thing in Florence. The F100/70s are a lot more efficient to use than the Dash 8-300s I had. I'm now the number 1 carrier at Florence.

Sorry, a little side track.

If anybody needs help, feel free to message me at anytime.

Rk
CEO BlueStar Xpress

[Monk Xion]

Well in this case its the small airline that wants to eat the big airline... 

It's true, I'm doing it right now.

[pharmy]

If I survived a bit more I had about 20 a310s coming in to replace these domestic routes (slots were running out as well). Plus this would have helped since not only would this be great for Italian domestic routes, they could have gone on 5500miles from Rome and Venice to far medium routes. 50 seat Embraers and Bombardiers are safe bets, and earn more then ATRs, but 737/a319s/Md90/717s are I think the real short high demand route money makers (my Bombardiers and Embraers make about 100k a month, but I have some 110-150pax a/c making 500k a week). 

[Stormy86]

Well, it's quite easy, I'm doing this to the airline who competes with me.

If you are bigger and you have a more economic fleet you can manage to lower prices further than your competitors do without generating losses. Your competitor will exit the unprofitable route and you'll get the 100% demand for you.

In fact, the question is: would it be better to wait for him to grow and then do this stuff to me? No, better kill it while it is still young, don't you think so?

[pharmy]

I backed off it Venice, because the player asked me. Shouldn't have, because this is not a sandbox game, but a lot of players think it. The Venice-Rome route would have done it in for him, but I didn't take that from him

[elitemedia]

Well, it's quite easy, I'm doing this to the airline who competes with me.

If you are bigger and you have a more economic fleet you can manage to lower prices further than your competitors do without generating losses. Your competitor will exit the unprofitable route and you'll get the 100% demand for you.

In fact, the question is: would it be better to wait for him to grow and then do this stuff to me? No, better kill it while it is still young, don't you think so?

I can understand your point of view if we talk about direct routes from hub to hub, but if you're doing this with cabotage flights from your hub into your competitor hub and than fly to the concerned destination.... and if your competitor his financially much more strong than you are, i really dont think that its a good investment, add to this that your competitor fly that route with its own aircrafts and you do it with leased aircraft it becomes even more risky and there is no way that you can generate profits...

And once again, my initial post concerns more the fact that there is still a lot of interesting routes without competition to open from its own hub...

So what is the point to make lets say 100K benefits monthly by adding such already established routes, when you could just open a new route from your hub which would bring you 600K benefits monthly with the same aircraft... 

[Stormy86]

You're right, it definitely doesn't make sense, but well, real airlines make mistakes, so here in the game they make even more mistakes of course. We all make mistakes in fact. I could be wrong with my aproach also!

In any case, you never know. There's one thing to take into account. Players who have 300 aircraft have a lot of trouble controlling all their routes and they don't really care a lot if one route is not performing, neither they have time to deal with it. So in my case, for example, I'm competing for a high demand route against a really big competitor. Together we make up for 200% of the route demand, but all my planes on that route are on a 95% load factor and I'm still making a nice profit, so probably his planes are on the 10-20% load factor. Apart, it is a good way to access the high demand airport he is based in and access the possibility of planning A-B-C-B-A routes, because the routes from my airport are already all dominated by me.

But definitely it is not something worth it if the competing route is the C point as you won't be able to use this airport high demand routes, so I get your point.