Looking for Advice/Feedback

[oswegobag]

So I started out with some great profitable routes flying 737's and decided to take a risk and leased 9 747-400's for long haul routes. I started flying these routes about 2 weeks ago and am currently hemorrhaging money as my load factors on these flights are only about 25%. There is plenty of demand on these routes but for some reason I am not getting the pax. If I do not get these load factors up quickly, I will be bankrupt in a matter of weeks!

How long does it usually take to get load factors up after initiating a route? Is there a way to quicken this up? Any marketing or pricing tips you can share? Should I lower my ticket prices to a very low amount to increase the LF and then raise it again? Would my LF's maintain? Would lower prices actually increase demand? I was thinking about cutting my losses and terminating my leases on these planes (for a penalty) but it looks like that option is not available.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

Brad 

[Sami]

Without looking at the airline/routes:

It takes even up to 6+  months to reach Route Image 100%. This means that before this the sales are less than the total possible demand - people don't know about the service.

You can use Route Marketing (for that particular route pair) to enhance the growth rate. But in any case just make sure you have a good budget balance when opening to a new destination.

Lowering prices will stimulate the demand a bit but if the route is very new, then the RI is the issue.