Sharks are dropping like flies

[AeroJet]

I have to disagree on that..

Sorry Sami but I have to aggree with Kastor on this one, as an industry insider I can garantee you there is not a single airline in the world that has 150 FAs per A332. Break down the numbers and you will see the number is at least 1.5X too high.

[Kastor]

AeroJet, it is 123 total INCLUDING 90 F/A for a single new A332 according to my latest actions described in my last post, but this is anyway too much.

[Sami]

Sami, its fact. I had to hire 90 F/A and plenty of management, ground service, customer service, pilots and others just after I received A330-200 and assigned a WAW-SIN route for it 3 times a week.

At one point someone was talking of 150 CA's per plane... 150 as all total sounds accurate as there are the pilots, mechanics, handling, cust. service etc etc. It does need a pretty big support organization. And people do need holidays, are sick sometimes, and so forth. And also you yourself are mixing the terms are you're speaking that you needed to hire "xxx crew's more", although there are others than just the flight crew in that figure. Anyways.. Just saying that something is "too much" doesn't really help if one doesn't have any facts/figures or at least rough estimates (based on real data) on what it should be.

And again you should keep in mind that the staff is there just to make a lump sum of costs. There are dozens of cost items that aren't yet modeled into the game too so that's why some item may seem to be high.

Plus, if one flies short-haul on B747 for example you'd naturally need less flight crew due to rest requirements. But if would be way too complicated to calculate, so the flight crew staff requirements are based on calculations with the assumption that larger planes fly longer routes (unless someone can come up with a math formula to calculate that without looking into flight times/other detailed data of all 150 000 routes every game week). But the numbers should be roughly based on real data, pilot number is at least rather accurate. The other staff groups on the other hand are quite invented by me as there's really no data available on that and the number of office people always comes down to the type of organization you are running, hard to say if that organization structure could be easily done here too.


Also a note about leasing. For leased planes you are required to take the full insurance that costs quite much. The leasing cost is ALWAYS higher than if you had bought it. The leasing companies are to make money too. Other specs are the same if you own or lease. But in long term it is much more economical to own the aircraft, if you are able to purchase it in the first place and are able to bear the risk of perhaps not being able to sell it when you want to get rid of it.

[Kastor]

Ok, Sami, I understand that personnel cost make for other costs that are not modelled.
By the way, even in my first post I said 150 INCLUDING 90 of F/A, but somebody has probably read it quickly as 150 F/A.
And in the last post on first page of this thread, I made pretty exact list how many people on which position I hired.

I can understand the point of making not modelled cost by personnel cost, but still, this is what I find to be the killer of large airlines next to the leasing cost of heavies. My best heavy right now (A332 making WAW-LAX and WAW-HRG - both 3xweek) is doing like this:

Sold tickets      1 131 144 USD
Line maintenance (A+B)    -15 556 USD
Aircraft insurance    -22 785 USD
Fuel cost    -211 338 USD
Route fees (1)    -155 187 USD
Weekly leasing cost    -352 805 USD
Total    373 473 USD

But WAW-HRG route is yet to establish and is doing poor now.
And this is including leasing cost, so I think that leasing cost is not much a problem here. 373K remains for marketing and salaries and this is not very much.

[Sami]

373k / week for a longhauler is actually not that good .. Usually the best shorthaulers even make that kind of money.

[colosteve]

I don't see how buying planes this late in the game cycle makes any sense? When I do the math its like paying double or more of the lease. Can anyone enlighten me about this? ( example less than 5 yrs left in game 1 to purchase a used 747-400 is around 160 million. the leae payments are around 1.8 mil per month.

Steve

[masoniclight]

So I guess this begs the question then.. how can this issue be solved? As Sami said, some stuff in game just can't be modeled.. too complicated..

however, training costs,once established routes not needed heavy marketing and things like probably can be.. lets give Sami and the devs time to see what can be tweaked before the next public game comes out in April.

Maybe by then we ill have a cargo option as well, that would really help revenue I bet!

[Athriaxo]

If you are in game 3 and want to join a alliance that has effective ways of preventing those problems let me know and ill send you a invite ... we found after much analysis why most big airlines fail after a while and how to avoid it but its not for everyone as it involves very slow growth measurable in years rather than weeks ... but in the end we are certain that only the ones that grow like a tree with deep roots in the ground will be able to withstand the wind high up!

[Seattle]

Buddy, sorry to ruin your "perfect plan"..... but most alliances and players know how to stay up with a fleet of 200+ (at least the beta players)......

Also.... the advertising place is in the PR forum not here. 

[TFC1]

Damn there are many big airlines that are loosing HUGE amounts of money if you look at the bottom of the "pre-tax income" list.

Zzz, MaxAir, Europe Connect, Lemon, C A Airways, SnowWay and UK international is all among the 10 most money loosing airlines right now!
That's over 4 Billion lost in the last 4 weeks just by the bottom 10 alone.

Well, the reason why SnowWay (my airline) is losing money, is not related to income, it's just related to fleet adjustment. I've picked up a large amount of newer planes on leases to replace older aircraft, and fleet renewal always costs a lot. I've also purchased several of my leased aircraft, and that brings down profits quite a bit. But on a normal week without more than 10 aircraft in maintenance, I still pull 35 + million $ in weekly profit.

However, I've arrived at the point where there are few new routes to put aircraft to work on, so I'm concentrating on keeping the fleet up to date, and reducing the number of different aircraft types to make the airline more efficient costwise. But as we all know from real life, restructuring costs a lot of cash...

[CX717]

I think Most of them declare bankrupt because getting too big,maintain the airlines running become annoying/boring..etc.
Making profit is very easy in this game,at least much easier than in reality.
and require staff are not too much too,but too less.
take a look at CX and my airlines.
Cathay pacific operate 120 aircrafts,hiring about 25000 staffs.which is 208 staffs per aircraft.
while I own 368 aircrafts ingames,hiring 60154 staffs.just 168 staffs per aircraft.

[Athriaxo]

Buddy, sorry to ruin your "perfect plan"..... but most alliances and players know how to stay up with a fleet of 200+ (at least the beta players)......

Also.... the advertising place is in the PR forum not here. 

Oh do they? Cause I think you have no idea what im going on about but dont worry you will find out soon enought ...

[Kontio]

Oh do they? Cause I think you have no idea what im going on about but dont worry you will find out soon enought ...

We are all holding our breath.

[Athriaxo]

We are all holding our breath.

Aha (evil laughter) im sure you do, im sure you do ...

[Seattle]

Well, considering that 5-6 airlines in the Star Alliance group have 250+ planes are financially sound, not to mention the airlines with 190+ planes (another 5-8)....

Speaking of which, I have 195 (soon to be 205) planes in the Beta game...... I am doing fine. I am buying back planes at a fast rate..... already over 90 are now onewd (so proud!)

[Talentz]

Now, now... I think he was talking about game 3 SEA 


But in anycase, just let them be. 


Talentz

[Athriaxo]

I dont see whats so inprobable about some guys finding a way to do things better than some of the bigger airlines ... im sure some allready do what we do but many dont so im just offering a place for those that dont to learn the tactics of the bigger airlines and improove theyr game and chances of success...

And im beeing secretive about it because otherwise how should we ever hope to fill our ranks? Our system works better and faster the more airlines we have but with all the big competition around we would never grow ... so dont go down all high and mighty on me because when I look at your airline im quite certain you realy dont know what im talking about.

[dazz81]

Seattle should learn to zip it once in a while. There should be no 'us vs them' mentality which Seattle seems to flog to death. (beta players vs non beta players). Someone (Athriaxo) politely makes a suggestion here and Seattle responded in a harsh and negative manner. I have little patience for this kind of attitude. It's an open game now.

[Monk Xion]

373k / week for a longhauler is actually not that good .. Usually the best shorthaulers even make that kind of money.

Thats true. I make 1.3 mil at the most right now operating out of LCY.

RK
CEO BlueStar Xpress

[Richard9741]

I think some of the big airlines declare bankruptcy because the player gets bored or finds it too hard to keep track of so many routes/aircraft (esp. when they reach C or D checks together). 

Also, I think some of the big ones have failed because they over-ordered new planes (I think this happened to Zzz) and I suspect that they arrived when the player hadn't logged on for a while.  Just from looking at the used aircraft market straight after there are many many new aircraft with zero hours flown.  If you have an owned fleet your value is usually good enough to borrow the money to get back on track, however if you don't log on for a week or so you don't get the opportunity to take advantage of it.