Ticket Pricing

[Cornishman]

On the subject much discussed recently about creating some improvements for the more standard frustrations and issues  that folk mention, one of the most fundamental things about either being successful or not is getting your ticket prices set at correct levels.  When the airline grows past even (by AWS standards) a fairly big size of say 300 planes, keeping an individual route-by-route modification of your ticket prices becomes another one of these un-manageably big tasks to do properly and regularly.

What if, in the PRICING tab we had a section with say 10 "categories" - lets call them A to J.  Then we could allocate as many or all of our routes into any one of the 10 categories. (and at any time swap the category of any route to a different one). Then at the touch of a few buttons, we could increase prices of cat.A by 10 %, cat.B by 7% cat.c by x% ...etc.   It would turn what is for me with about 1300 planes right now - something I can't even dream of doing well through lack of time, into something really rather doable on a regular basis.

Just a thought.

[Infinity]

Check manage route tab, click destination view, sort by load factor, open another tab with mangage pricing, blanket raise prices by 10% on all routes doing > 90% loads. Works a charm and takes no more than 10-15 minutes a day even for a large airline.

[groundbum2]

it would quite easy to code,

manage routes, destination view (or not), tick specific routes, at bottom on drop down box that has close route etc, add an option "raise prices 5%" "raise prices 10%" etc. 90% of the code and UI is there already, just adding a few options to the drop down menu for ticked boxes..

or have an option "modify prices for ticked routes" then dialogue pops up that allows % up/down for F,C,Y, HL,HS and HL, as in some other dialogues..

Simon

[MikeS]

Check manage route tab, click destination view, sort by load factor, open another tab with mangage pricing, blanket raise prices by 10% on all routes doing > 90% loads. Works a charm and takes no more than 10-15 minutes a day even for a large airline.

For a moment there I though I had overlooked a major tool. It would be cool if the feature existed. One does need to enter each destination and raise prices per destination separately.
But thanks, I never tried this work flow and will check it out
Cheers!
Mike

[knobbygb]

Check manage route tab, click destination view, sort by load factor, open another tab with mangage pricing, blanket raise prices by 10% on all routes doing > 90% loads. Works a charm and takes no more than 10-15 minutes a day even for a large airline.

Yeah I also thought I'd missed something but that's what I already do. I'm not sure what the poster's idea of a 'large' airline is, but to do it properly, with 6 or 8 hubs, different levels of competition at each and different flying types that need to be treated differently (long/short) and properly checking cargo too can take a whole day to do even half-properly!

Certainly it would be better if the tick-box/'select all' option that's available in the regular Manage Route page were also there while in Destination View so they could at least be grouped.

Another thing that really annoys me is the "Update also the return sector's prices" tick box. (For those who don't know what I mean, clearing that tick box means changes ONLY apply to the outbound leg and not the return).  I use this a lot actually - either on routes where one leg is flown at stupid-O'clock or when there is unbalanced demand. With the introduction of cargo there are many more situations of the latter.  It's a real pain if you only want to change the prices for the RETURN sector and not the outbound - you have to increase/decrease ALL prices and then make a second change to bring the outbound back to where it was. A second option is required to do the opposite of this box.  Surely someone has already requested that?

Those two changes, along with a drop-down for >95%, >90% <70& <50% etc. would be a HUGE help and would be quite easy to implement.

[Cornishman]

As my colleagues say here, (and BTW my idea of a "large" airline is definitely what I currently operate - 7 bases and near 1300 planes)   it is ridiculously time consuming to performs tasks around price changes in a manner that would best serve the airline.  I think Infinity misses my point completely, I too already know how to do what he suggests but that nowhere near gives the flexibility the system could do with having.  I have 27 full pages of "destinations" which is 945 routes. Any suggestion one could manipulate 945 route price changes in 10 to 15 minutes ... you don't get through 1 page of them in that time!

[schro]

Any suggestion one could manipulate 945 route price changes in 10 to 15 minutes ... you don't get through 1 page of them in that time!

I'll give it a shot.

Step 1. Reset prices to default.
Step 2. Increase all prices by 7-10%.
Step 3. ...
Step 4. Profit

[Cornishman]

but schro... I dont want to increase ALL 945 route prices by any one degree.  My whole point is that I can identify at least 10 different categories of potential price changes which could be implimented.  What we need is to be able to select - for example ... routes 1, 2 11, 36, 45, 78, 79, 92, 106.....etc. and declare them in group A, Then group B might be a selection of another 30 or 40 out of the 945, similarly C, D ...

Then I might want to change group A by +7% , group B gets +4%, group E gets -2%... etc.   

[schro]

I get it. I'm saying that the amount of effort spent on such optimizations in a mature game world with a "small regional airline" sized operation (greater than 1000) planes is more or less immaterial (ok, the time spent vs benefit is not worth pursuing in my opinion, especially when I usually have 3-4 small regional airlines running at any given time).

[gazzz0x2z]

I get it. I'm saying that the amount of effort spent on such optimizations in a mature game world with a "small regional airline" sized operation (greater than 1000) planes is more or less immaterial (ok, the time spent vs benefit is not worth pursuing in my opinion, especially when I usually have 3-4 small regional airlines running at any given time).

Or it has to be targetted. My current GW3 line has 838*S2000s, and I'm not touching specific prices on it. OTOH, my few dozens of 767s (and even 321Fs) make really a difference on the bottom line when micromanaged.

[Viscount Bailey]

I get it too, and from my experience we could certainly do with better basic operational tools. Like the opening suggestion says, we need some better filtering tools that allow us to create  short-cuts to better manage the time-consuming >>Input / Confirm / Repeat Process / Confirm / ad infinitum<< aspects of the game

[Cornishman]

I see now another case for providing essentially , the same sort of functionality tool, just like VB said above, to help cut down on the time wasting monotonous reapeating tasks:

I want to sell 30 of the same aircraft type. I have to list each one of them tediously 1 by 1. I want them all up for sale at Alliance minimum price. Surely an easy collating tool could do that?  Tick the little box next to each plane on the fleet listing, then in the drop-down at the bottom - be able to select: sell all at Min Alliance price on the open UM

Easy!

[Mort]

I see now another case for providing essentially , the same sort of functionality tool, just like VB said above, to help cut down on the time wasting monotonous reapeating tasks:

I want to sell 30 of the same aircraft type. I have to list each one of them tediously 1 by 1. I want them all up for sale at Alliance minimum price. Surely an easy collating tool could do that?  Tick the little box next to each plane on the fleet listing, then in the drop-down at the bottom - be able to select: sell all at Min Alliance price on the open UM

Easy!

Which sparks a further idea on collation.

If I am editing a bunch of aircraft orders, say I want to apply a config to all of them, or change the base airport on all of them, I have to do it line by line - editing often 50 or more at a time is very tedious.

Being able to apply the updates en-masse would be incredible!

[knobbygb]

Ha, yes, and one thing that REALLY bugs me with that... if you change subtype, say from L1011-1 to L1011-200, you still have to re-select things like "engine variant" and "weight variant" for EACH ONE, even if there is NO OPTION, just a single 'choice'.

[Cornishman]

All solved with a multi purpose piece of programming which would fix these things. But there seems to be zero response to these calls.