I agree totally with Sami and Freshmore, here.
The idea is to be more clever than others, and to achieve success that way.
Look at the C919, for example. It's slightly inferior to the A320neo or the 737MAX8. And? If it fits your market, it's still an excellent plane. Natural price is slightly inferior, so all things being equal, if you don't need to fly it beyond 2500NM(i.e. your long haul international demand is negligible), it's really a similar airplane.
But this is "all things being equal". All things are not equal, as demand is dynamic. When opponents pile up on a shiny, popular fleet type, well, it's time to be more clever than them. When the C919 price falls down to 70M$; the MAX8 costs 150M$, and the 320neo 160M$, it's suddenly getting clever to go where others are not. To think contrarian.
I never BK'd. Never. Most players did, even those who are the best in current GWs. I did never. There is indeed a part of luck in it, but there also a part of contrarian thinking. Before I entered my first real GW(a GW3 a few years ago, beginning in Glasgow in 1995), I blindly followed advice of the elders : choose a medium starting point, go for old flying crap(jurassics in my case), be careful with pricing. And then I started to expand. Big bases were insane to go in, I was sure to be slaughtered against best players. So I went for smaller airports, Prestwick, Beauvais, Reus, etc.....
And I went regional. In those airports, there is only a handful of destinations worth flying a 737. CRJs were available, so I went the CRJ route. Everyone went the CRJ route. I then reached a point where my growth stalled. CRJ prices went insane, 25M$ for a CRJ100, 37M$ for a CRJ700. Long waiting times to get them. And suddenly, there was this message : "the production of Antonov A148 is about to end". Mmmmmh, let's have a look at this A148.
_10% more consuption than an equivalent CRJ700, even normalizing for speed. Annoying, but not a killer.
_double maintenance costs, nearly. Annoying, but in the 2010s, maintenance costs are not such a killer. Manageable
_15M$ to purchase new.
15M$ to purchase new. In those conditions, who cares about efficiency? I was doing 8-10M$ per week,
pretax. Just enough to buy A148s at their max rythm of 30 per year. I then began a looooong process of replacing my leased CRJs by owned A148s. And went down from 120k$ per week of leasing cash bleed, to 7k$ per week of depreciation - already uncashed, therefore painless. It was rather painful as a fleet transition, as it had not been planned before(pro-tip : always plan your transitions looong before you do them), but it did wonders. Even paying 5k$ more in maintenance and 10-15 k$ more in fuel was painless. I was still saving 80-100k$ per regional jet. Kickass. Absolute Kickass.
Of course, it worked only because I was the only one to do that. Hapless opponents in all my bases stuck to CRJs, or Ejets, or later MRJs, which were all very costly in those times. I think both Ejets & MRJs were up to 60M$ per airframe. Good machines, but no match for 15M$ A148s. Most opponents collapsed or stalled. I thrived.
Don't complain against the excessive cost of state-of-the-art machines. Use it against opposition.
(That being said, i shall make a tutorial about fleet choice, one day).
(and leasing planes is efficient when you need to grow fast - but don't stick to it for a long-term plan)
EDIT : just looked at current GW3 : 320neo costs around 160M$, 737MAX8 160M$, C919 72M$. I was nearly spot-on with my guesstimates. I don't know in BWs, but if you have similar differences, surf on them. Boycott is actually the right thing to do - but not go public and do that. When I switched to A148s, I didn't want to attract attention. I bought a few frames on the UM, mostly made a few purchases, but made no official publication. Generally, in this game, you want to keep a low profile, in terms of communications. there are only 3 situations where I can see communications be useful :
- You're looking for an alliance(or for alliance members) - not relevant to BW
- You're hunting for the "public relations" achievement - not relevant to BW either
- you're active on the used market, trying to sell or buy
in 4 years of gameplay, I've done exactly once number one(and it paid off only 18 months later, with ATeam & Elite fighting for having me in their alliance), and once number three(50 Q400 back from lease at once with their customer's BK - plus 20 additional in order I suddenly had to get rid of). Number two has to be done intelligently : with no real information given to your opposition. All the rest is distraction. Posts on the "I cleverly opened a route between Naha and Long Beach in SW3 with 7 tech stops" are just a way to paint a target on you. Airwaysim is a competitive game, and numerous are the players wanting to kill you for taking the place. Myself, I didn't reach position 3 in company valmue in current GW3 by sheer luck(well, I had some, but it's far from enough to explain my success) : I had to actively hunt and kill several companies in CDG, 2 in ALC, 2 in ORY, and 1 in WAW(never was able to kill the other one in WAW, that's why I'm not first).
So don't communicate anything that might have you look weak. Don't attract attention. Dont be the mouse that makes noise in front of the cat. I am the cat and I'll eat you. Unless another cat is quicker than me.