First attempts in normal game world and encountered some difficulties..

[qunow]

So i have started playing in GW#2 as my first game in normal difficulty game... the game world is close to its end which mean many competition everywhere but i figured it seems to be a nice place to try out things there so i joined it and have set my home base in a relatively small airport in France that still have some hunmet demand. Once started, I leased a few used E195, and then some new SSJ to fly into various routes that are shown to be able to support the route. Initially, things seems to be going nicely, but as more SSJs started joining my fleet, I found that the RI of some of those previous routes I have setup are still low and thus causing those routes to be losing money, which as a result caused my fund jumped into negative, which drag me into the situation of paying leased new aircraft without having them flying, as I cannot pay for the slot fee of opening new routes and that further pushed the company into losses-making. Despite the profitability and load factor of those routes picked up after some in game months, those SSJs resting around now caused me too much in rent and thus my weekly profits still stay as negative....Other than restaring what are some other things that can be done? Last week the company income is 2.565M, and operating expense is 2.9147M, with 0.723M of them being leases. More than half of those lease fee are paying for aircrafts that I am currently storing them due to my inability to put new route on them due to my fund negativity...and my fund is now close to -2M with inability to take new loan unless backed by securtiy assests that I don't have

[gazzz0x2z]

route by route analysis :

Amman : 80 demand, 105 hi-density seats. You can't overprice there. Not such a bad route, but not either a line that will make your company rich
Beirut : 210 demand, 105 hi-density seats. Hi-density seatings on a 1477 NM route is damaging you. I'm pretty sure your plane is full, or will be soon. But raise a little bit your prices, and it will be empty. You'll make more money with standard seating and excessive prices, on such big unopposed routes. You're half-wasting a kickass route
Brandenburg : 95 demand, 105 normal seats. A good line, no more.
Brussels : 170 demand, 2 opponents Q400 flights. You're getting destroyed there. As you have only 33% of flights, you are basically entitled to 33% of the seats. Which is not enough to fill your airplane.
Dublin : 95 demand, 105 normal seats. A good line, no more.
Hurghada : 95 demand, 105 normal seats. A good line, no more.
Atatürk: 80 demand, 105 hi-density seats. Tough to fill the seats, and impossible to overprice.
Oslo : the same
Orly : 245 Demand, 4 opponents, you'll never fill your Ejet. OTOH, as it's the end of the game, opponents are probably fat and overpricing, which means you'll be able to increase prices as soon as your RI reaches 90/100. Even if LF is 60%. Better 50% at 300$ than 60% at 200$... On such a short route, it's enough to make OK money.
Tehran : 95 demand, 105 normal seats. A good line, no more.
Warsaw : 95 demand, and one opponent in a small(and outdated) ERJ145. You can hope for 60/70% of market share here, no more.

High-density seating is cool for those small planes flying 5 destinations a day. Not for your longer range routes. Beirut could be your milk cow, but you're short on cash to reconfigure seating to normal, or to buy slots. So let's have a look at your fleet profile.

3 E195, 19 years old in average. Excellent for a start. My uneducated guess is that lease costs are ridiculously low. You should have sticked to them. There are probably plenty on the used market. SU95 are excellent machines, and cheaper to build than Ejets, but still expensive while new. As a new company, you can't really afford those. They happen to fly roughly in the same category than Ejets, so you don't need both fleet groups.

The simple fact of having both instead of one probably costs you around 600k$ per month. A big expense for a company of your size. As I'm only a mentor in this game, I cannot check the Used Market, but my bet is that you'd find plenty of Ejets of various sizes, including old ones at low price. The standard wisdom is to stick to one single fleet group for at least the first 10 or 12 first birds. I do agree with it.

But the real mistake here was to lease 16 brand new planes at once. That's killing you. This killed countless players. I don't think you can salvage your company where it is. You can try to play on pricing, but that's your only lever, and I guess it's not enough - especially on your SU95 routes with hi-density seating. The rule of a thumb is "lease old, buy new". And when you lease old, be sure to take a lease that stops just before the D-Check. If the next D-Check is in 3.7 years, take a 3.5 years lease, and you'll replace the bird in 3.5 years. When you begin a company, purchasing new birds is not possible, which means you ought to only lease old crap for a few years. You don't care about maintenance costs, they are trinkets compared to fuel or leasing, especially in the end game, with kickass planes as the Ejets. And another advantage of leasong old crap : time to market is much better, you can have 3 of them within 15 days. And stop taking them if things go sour. While with an order of 16 aircraft at once, you are blocked, and did surrender all flexibility.

Note also that while your very first routes have a bonus on RI(only if you begin the game later), others will begin at 0RI, and will need 14 months or so to be at 100RI. A minor mistake from you was to expect immediate income from those long routes. The longer the route, the better the RI needs to be to break even. That's why another wisdom is to begin by the shortest routes possible. You've got a lot of opposition on the Orly and Brussel Routes, but I'm pretty sure they don't lose as much money at 0RI as those long routes to the East. One of your difficulties also is that all short routes are taken, preventing you from immediate profit, and therefore growth. There is a lot of money to be made on those longer routes, but they require patience to build RI. You overgrew yourself by excessive purchases you could not afford with the profile of lines you could afford to fill.

So, play with pricing to learn a few things for the next time. I don't think it will save you, but take notes, you don't have a lot of lines, and check what works. And next time, stick to one single fleet group, begin with a great number of old leased airplanes, and switch to brand new airplanes only when you've got a few millions in weekly profit. If there are nearly no good short-range destinations(as it is for you right now), then be more patient, and wait for lines to make money, before building up your fleet. A safe, standard way to do things, and to feel the game better. In GW, which begins in the last 90s, most of the best players lease old crap(737classics, MD80s, or even DC9s) for a beginning, and ignore the shiny birds for a few years. It's everything but random. You had began like that. You should have sticked to that strategy.

[qunow]

I see, thanks.
Actually for the Beirut route it also have a warning against aircraft being too small, no matter ERJ or SSJ...
For leasing cost, those E195 are 150k/month, while those SSJs are up to 344k/month

Commonality cost is now 1.3M/month with 3 ERJ and 2 SSJ flying plus their respective engine. I guess might be I can move all my ERJ flying lines to my delivered stored SSJ since they have same turnaround time and that can cut the commonality cost, however that would mean turning all the routes into HD seating....

[schro]

Summary: you tried to start off too fast and didn't account for initial route losses or slot expenses. You're probably hosed unless you want to wait 6 months for ri to improve enough to make you profitable.

The high amount of starting cash causes this issue... You'd be in far better shape if you got a lower starting amount which would prevent you from going too big too fast....

[gazzz0x2z]

(.../...)Actually for the Beirut route it also have a warning against aircraft being too small, no matter ERJ or SSJ...(.../...)

Ah, I had forgotten that Ejets were smaller than 737s. I'm no more flying regional jets right now. It's probably just beyond the limit, so probably not too harsh, but you really can't set up a second flight there.

For the leasing prices, I'd say that your Ejets are costly for 20yo birds. but still better than your SSJs. Especially as Ejets are slightly superior to SSJs. I don't know for how long you leased the ejets. If it's for one year, they might near their end date, so don't renew them, and be careful when transferring lines to SSJs not to lose the slots. It probably won't be enough, but it's a good training for the next time. The deal is, though, I'm not sure you can finish off early a lease when you're in negative cash(never happens to me).

Had an additional look at your company. Your night "red eyes" flight to Tehran is the way to go, makes more income from your airplanes. One of your problems is that it's the only place where you could do that. You don't use enough your planes. Ejets or SSJ100/95LR can easily reach destinations like Jeddah or Kuwait that allow a night flight, and therefore better airframe use. 11.6 hours of average in flight is good for a smaller company with smaller airframes that cannot fly by night. As you fly longer routes, you need to make more night flights and have a better use of your fleet.

But Mr Schro is right : the main reason of your problems is a too quick growth. Ideally, you'd order one single lone purchased aircraft, just to have some self-financing capability, but also to prevent a too quick, deadly start.

[qunow]

Those ejets are leased from another players with a listed price of about 13M, and was leased till the end of game world...
I have considered setting up more night flight too at the beginnning, but then that would mean arranging multi-plane multi-day schedule instead of the single-plane single-day schedule that I am currently setting up, in order to fit in the maintenance timeslot. While I have already tried to arrange multi-plane multi-day schedult in my LH challenge company, my initial assessment was that these regional flights might be too short to easily arrange them as for example the Tehran flight is a 22h departure with 06h arrival and that have already factored in Irran's timezone which mean most middle east destination would require a departure time at or after 23h in order to arrive after 5, and thus that make me consider it might not be a good idea to do that here.
However, come to think of it, if this approach is used, then the initial losses when RI are low will probably be lower as there're fewer flight per week, in addition to the advantage of increased utilization

[Cardinal]

If you want to do overnight flights w/o 7-day scheduling, you can always do 6x weekly on the overnighter. Keep your daytime flights daily, but omit Saturday on the overnight and do the A-check there.

[qunow]

humm seems like now i have some cash despite still losing money thanks to that "aircraft lease prepayment" thing...

[gazzz0x2z]

humm seems like now i have some cash despite still losing money thanks to that "aircraft lease prepayment" thing...

The idea is that the first few weeks are prepaid at order. It won't last long. You might try to open new routes now. IT's double-edged, as those routes will be long(you're short on short destinations), and your accounting losses will be even bigger in the beginning - but if it passes throguh, you'll have more planes making money. Both choices are risky, at this point.

[qunow]

humm... seems like I have turned around and become profitable with something like 16M cash too...

[schro]

humm... seems like I have turned around and become profitable with something like 16M cash too...

Sounds about right for 6-12 game months later....

[qunow]

...wanted to serve some destination from PPT with about 40 demand and a rather faraway distance, for example NAN being 1900nm away with 44 demand, however ERJ130/140s have just stopped production and their availability on used market seems to be limited too... is there any other small aircrafts that are capable of flying this distance...?

[qunow]

.... SSJ75 for the sake of commonality? but that fuel burn at that expected market size...
and there are also runway issue....

[Amelie090904]

Just don't do that kind of routes. It won't get you any big money (if at all). The ERJ145 and ER135 are just too small to make good money, even worse at such distances. I am not saying it's impossible but there are just way better business models.

For demands below 70 I am usually going for prop aircraft. They are mostly cheaper to get, have the perfect capacity, much less fuel consumption and on short routes they can even be faster (due to less turnaround time) than jets. Does not really matter if you go for ATR or Q400. Even the Russian birds will do. Damn, I used 1960's Viscounts in in the 90's and it worked just fine (and I even got competitors bankrupt who used jets).

Just think about it. Flying a several hours flight with some 40 passengers...how high would the ticket price need to be to make any money out of that? Such flights are even troublesome with bigger birds like EMB170, SSJ etc. Not impossible, but not ideal.

Focus on much shorter routes. Just because there is demand does not mean you have to fulfill it. It's not (or hardly) profitable. For routes around 2000NM you should have at least a demand of 100 (and that is already critical). Anything else is just waste of money.

[gazzz0x2z]

I totally agree with Andre. There is a small time, 1995-2007, roughly, in which 50-seater jets(CRJ100s & ERJ145s) are profitable. But when fuel prices do rise, You have to replace them by bigger beasts, or forget about them. Ideally, demand has rised, and you now need 70 seaters(that are countless on the market, bigger CRJs, Ejets, J728s, ARJ21s, A148s, or even TU33s4). ERJ145XR is a perfect trap. It seems so good in making lines no other airplane can do. But your profit will be ridiculously low.

I know, I tried. There was the happy times in the begining. Later, I had to hurry a fleet change. You're 15/20 years after ERJ's happy times. For a small company, the A140(when available) is an excellent choice. Price is very low, so leasing cost is negligible. Of course you pay more petrol, but you can grow fast with those. If you've got more money, S2000 are just kickass, and will make money even when half empty. For even smaller lines, E120 are an excellent choice. Not many players flying E120 do BK. That's not random.

Of course, the potential is limited, but you're very tough to kill.

For very long range, I made tries with A148s, planes way bigger than ERJ145s. Above 1800NM, they just lose money. And above 1500NM, it's worth only with a night flight, to fill the schedule. Never take the E variant, it pushes you to inefficient choices. I don't know with SSJs, but I would not be surprised to see them suffering at their maximum range, too. Even Ejets are not impressive above 2000NM, though they remain marginally profitable. For those distances, single aisle aircraft rock. I would not fly a 1900NM route with anything smaller than a Ejet, and not with less than 80 demand. But I'd choose a 736 over an Ejet, if possible, despite the massively higher personal costs. OTOH, on a short line, I'd go Ejet.

Single-aisle aircraft have the same problem at longer distances, by the way. I'm flying a respectable fleet of 737-700ER, yet those are making only marginal profit, with 120 capacity on 170 demand, 4000NM routes. Later, demand will go over 220, and I'll have to put widebodies instead.

[JumboShrimp]

Here is another idea - which may not apply to you, it applies more to airlines that are already printing money:

It also depends on the year, how many years are left in the game.

So I had 100-150 of routes from one of my airports with demand of 40-70 pax.  This was back in late 1970s, early 1980s.  Projecting forward to 2020s, the demand of these routes is going to grow to 100-200+.  Instead of looking for perfect aircraft, perfect fleet type (additional fleet type), I used the fleet I already had - A320, and planed on keeping to the end of the game world.  I blocked seats to 90-120 range.

Doing it this way may not start out as the most lucrativee approach, but it will turn out to be the most lucrative approach in the long run.

Major downside is that you have to keep re-adjusting the number of seats blocked constantly, to keep under the oversupply warning, but it is still less work that replacing aircraft, changing fleet types re-scheduling over and over.

[schro]

40 demand over ~2000nm is NOT going to be profitable in this era, period. Heck, I could probably say the same for 1000nm+ with 40 demand.

In general, revenue generated from longer distance flights goes up at a lower rate than costs for operating the longer flight.

Hypothetical Example:

1000nm Route = $150 ticket price, $125 total cost per passenger
2000nm Route = $250 ticket price, $250 total cost per passenger

[JumboShrimp]

40 pax over 2000nm is an extreme case, so yeah, you may have a point on that one.

But if you take a US airport that is on one of the coasts, and which has maybe 5-15% of the routes that are in 2000 nm range, the mix of all of the routes from that airport would give you an average length of the flight of say 750-1250nm, so you take the excellent, the good with not so good, and wait for the demand to catch up.

If you take the average of the demand range I mentioned (40-70 = 55), Would you fly the route?  Maybe you would say no.
Would you fly route with 110 pax?  Obviously you would, and so would another guy, and you are back to 55 pax.

[qunow]

Thanks for opinion of all of you..
Unfortunately Antonovs have already completely disappeared from market here...
saab 2000... the capacity at 58 seems overkill for most routes and the fuel burn is also higher than sone other props but i guess that speed make up sone of them and i can just give more space each seat....
Noted about the point of traffic growth in earlier game world...and also the point about the unprofitablity without growth...
In this case nost of the unfilled short distance demand near PPT only have demand of 40-ish...And many of them are near that distance too... although in this case competitor is alnost zero although that also reflected how unprofitable it is to setup a hub there...

[gazzz0x2z]

(.../...)saab 2000... the capacity at 58 seems overkill for most routes and the fuel burn is also higher than sone other props but i guess that speed make up sone of them and i can just give more space each seat....(.../...)

Ah, the very harsh question, what seating to choose? I never totally solved the question below 60 seats. At 70 seats and above, all my experiments are pointing me towards normal seating instead of high-density. Below, it's a much more complicated beast. Better seating allow better pricing, and hence more income per potential passenger. But also more costs.

I toyed extensively with CRJ100s, especially. With 52 high-density seatings, 60 route image, the limit is at 20k$ of daily profit per route. Period. Whatever the distance. With normal seating, you can charge more, especially in long distance, and make more money on longer distance routes.... but less on shorter routes. And that's far from clear, what was true for one route was not true for the next one. Only sure thing : high-density is useful only if you fly several times per day.