7-day scheduling: what am I doing wrong?

[Alberto]

Hello! I have a doubt about my 7-day scheduling workflow, because it's extremely tedious and I wonder what am I doing wrong.
It is, roughly, the following:

• 
  Find suitable routes in the route preview page.
  
  
  
  • Although I can filter by range and time-zone, I cannot find a way to filter by (rough) demand. Surely I am not supposed to click through all airports to find one with the right demand, right?
• Open all "New route" pages for the routes I want, and fiddle around with the routes to make all times fit.
• Be satisfied with the schedule and ready to open all routes.
• 
  Go through the "New route" pages, check the "Create each day as separate route" and twice the "Do not buy slots at this airport" checkboxes for each single page, and set the prices.
  
  
  
  • Surely there is some option that allows me to say that these checkboxes should be unticked by default? Like "Always create separate routes for different days" or "Never buy slots when creating a route"?
• 
  For every route I try to create (except the first one) I get an error message saying that the route number was already taken, so I have to save the route again.
  
  
  
  • Surely there must be an option along the lines of "I don't care about route numbers, just assign the next available one whenever I try to create a route and the number is already taken", right?
• 
  Once the aircraft start arriving, go to the route scheduling page and start adding the routes. This is quite error-prone, because you have to select the right days (and times, if your schedule involves more than one flight to the same destination) and you have to scroll through different pages. Also, because when adding new routes they get removed from the list, routes keep jumping from one page to the previous, and you are not sure at what page you are going to find the next route you need.
  
  
  
  • Surely there must be an option to increase the number of routes shown per page in the assign-route-to-aircraft pop-up, right?
  • Surely, once one goes through the painful process of creating a schedule for one aircraft, there must be some kind of "copy this schedule +1 day to another aircraft" button, which I am missing, right?
• I add the maintenance checks (these could also be copied +1 day, ideally).
• 
  Now my aircraft has all her routes added, but I need slots to fly them. So, I hover over the aircraft registration numbers and click on "Manage routes". Here I have the long list of routes assigned to that aircraft. I go through each of them one by one, click on the edit route button, go to the edit route page, and save the route again, which triggers slot purchase.
  
  
  
  • Surely, if I click the checkbox for all the routes in the Manage Routes page, there must be some action similar to "Manage prices..." which tries to buy slots for the selected routes (provided I have enough money and there are available slots at the relevant airports).

So, as you can imagine, my approach is very tedious and it takes some part of fun out of the game.
I am doing many things manually, spending a lot of time aiming and clicking small checkboxes, or waiting for multiple pages to load (which is painful if one has a slow internet connection), or sifting through long (but not long-enough-to-see-all-of-them) lists of routes, etc.

Now, I must be doing something extremely unusual without realising it. If this were the typical player's workflow, after these many years that the game exist surely someone else must have realised the UX problems, reported them, and gotten them fixed. Which leads me to think that the problem lies with me doing things in an extremely inefficient and time-consuming way. So: what am I doing wrong?

[sanabas]

Although I can filter by range and time-zone, I cannot find a way to filter by (rough) demand. Surely I am not supposed to click through all airports to find one with the right demand, right?

I do. I don't filter by timezone, but by distance. The default sort is by size of airport, and most of those with any demand will be nearer the top of the list. e.g. from Tokyo, I'll do range 4800-5000, get maybe 20 airports worth flying to. 5000-5200, same deal.

Go through the "New route" pages, check the "Create each day as separate route" and twice the "Do not buy slots at this airport" checkboxes for each single page, and set the prices.

Why aren't you buying slots? That means you'll have to buy them individually later, and that is tedious.

For every route I try to create (except the first one) I get an error message saying that the route number was already taken, so I have to save the route again.

A very quick way to fix that is to toggle the days on and off, and it'll change the route number automatically to the next one available.

Once the aircraft start arriving, go to the route scheduling page and start adding the routes. This is quite error-prone, because you have to select the right days (and times, if your schedule involves more than one flight to the same destination) and you have to scroll through different pages. Also, because when adding new routes they get removed from the list, routes keep jumping from one page to the previous, and you are not sure at what page you are going to find the next route you need.

That gets much quicker with practice, I think. Easier for me because I know the first batch of 7 is say #431, then the next batch are all #433, then #435, etc, so they appear in my list in order, and they're all on page 1 or 2 unless I'm using a bunch of shorter routes for a set of 7.

So, as you can imagine, my approach is very tedious and it takes some part of fun out of the game.
I am doing many things manually, spending a lot of time aiming and clicking small checkboxes, or waiting for multiple pages to load (which is painful if one has a slow internet connection), or sifting through long (but not long-enough-to-see-all-of-them) lists of routes, etc.

Now, I must be doing something extremely unusual without realising it. If this were the typical player's workflow, after these many years that the game exist surely someone else must have realised the UX problems, reported them, and gotten them fixed. Which leads me to think that the problem lies with me doing things in an extremely inefficient and time-consuming way. So: what am I doing wrong?

It may be different for others, but I almost never create a route without buying a slot. Only during the initial growth phase do I create part of a 7 day schedule, and if I do, I'll only create the days I'm about to use. e.g. if 2 planes, then route 1 is Mon-Tues, route 2 is Wed-Thur, route 3 is Thur-Fri, route 4 is Sat-Sun, or whatever. Then as new planes arrive, I'll go to one plane's schedule, open 'copy this route' in a new tab for each of the routes, set the new days for that, and manually use the existing route numbers.

Once I'm past that initial growth phase, I only create them in batches of 7. So it's 5 tabs open with the routes, flying every day of the week as a separate route, buy the slots for the first route, close the window. 2nd route, toggle 'fly every day' on & off, route number auto-changes, buy the slots and close that window. Do that for the 5th and final route, then go and assign them to planes. If I'm in a hurry and not too worried about extreme efficiency of scheduling, e.g. I already have 400 bristol freighters and I'm pulling more routes from my list, then I can do 28 planes in about 30 minutes, if not faster.

But yes, some of what you mention, e.g. copy an entire plane's schedule +1 day, has been asked for.

[Alberto]

I do. I don't filter by timezone, but by distance. The default sort is by size of airport, and most of those with any demand will be nearer the top of the list. e.g. from Tokyo, I'll do range 4800-5000, get maybe 20 airports worth flying to. 5000-5200, same deal.

That's true to a certain extent, but demand patterns play into this (e.g., strong links between two countries or large airports which don't accept any international traffic, etc.) - For example, many US airports appear up in the list but have low demand to some European airports, whereas airports with good demand are further down the list.
I was thinking there is some kind of dropbox with "10-50 demand", "50-100 demand", "100-300 demand", "300-1000 demand", ">1000 demand" or similar hidden somewhere?

Why aren't you buying slots? That means you'll have to buy them individually later, and that is tedious.

Because I would lose them anyway. If I recall correctly, if I am getting the aircraft to fly that route in more than one month, I start receiving messages about slots not being used and, finally, I lose the slots and I have to buy them again for the individual route in any case.

A very quick way to fix that is to toggle the days on and off, and it'll change the route number automatically to the next one available.

In my case that's as bad as getting the error message: I am on a spotty connection and sometimes refreshing that part of the page just hangs and I have to restart everything from the beginning. It's equally possible that it hangs on reloading after toggling the days on/off or at the point in which it displays the error.

That gets much quicker with practice, I think. Easier for me because I know the first batch of 7 is say #431, then the next batch are all #433, then #435, etc, so they appear in my list in order, and they're all on page 1 or 2 unless I'm using a bunch of shorter routes for a set of 7.

That's fine for very long routes, i.e., when you assign 6 or 7 to each aircraft. But if you want to mix longer (red-eye) routes with shorter day-time ones, you easily get 6 or 7 pages of routes you have to sift through. Maybe I am using 7-day scheduling wrong in the sense I should not use it with these short routes?

Then as new planes arrive, I'll go to one plane's schedule, open 'copy this route' in a new tab for each of the routes, set the new days for that, and manually use the existing route numbers.

For me all these steps in which I have to open new pages to do stuff are problematic, because my connection could hang at any point. That's why all my concerns are about doing things with single-clicks, to reduce the probability of something going wrong from 1 - (1 - p)ⁿ to p (if p is the probability that any given page won't load).

[sanabas]

That's true to a certain extent, but demand patterns play into this (e.g., strong links between two countries or large airports which don't accept any international traffic, etc.) - For example, many US airports appear up in the list but have low demand to some European airports, whereas airports with good demand are further down the list.

I'm curious about a specific example, because it's not something I've found. Yeah there's the odd bigger US airport with minimal LH demand, but if I filter from somewhere in Europe and a 200NM spread, almost everywhere worth flying will still appear on page 1 or high on page 2.

I was thinking there is some kind of dropbox with "10-50 demand", "50-100 demand", "100-300 demand", "300-1000 demand", ">1000 demand" or similar hidden somewhere?

There isn't. Nor should there be.

That's fine for very long routes, i.e., when you assign 6 or 7 to each aircraft. But if you want to mix longer (red-eye) routes with shorter day-time ones, you easily get 6 or 7 pages of routes you have to sift through. Maybe I am using 7-day scheduling wrong in the sense I should not use it with these short routes?

The default is 30? routes per page when assigning schedules. Even if you're using a lot of short routes, say 21 individual routes on a single 7-day, that's still just under 5 pages. I don't recall ever seeing more than 5 off the top of my head. And if I am doing a 7-day with that many routes, then I just fill plane #1 from page 1, plane #2 from page 1, plane #3 from page 1, ..., plane #7 from page 1, and then back to plane #1 from page 1 again. That again gets quicker with practice.

And yeah, the benefit to using it with short routes vs the time & effort involved to set it up means it's not that useful. If you can fit routes into 24 hour blocks, or 18-19 hour blocks without redeyes, that'll be quicker and easier than fitting many short routes into a 163 hour block.

For me all these steps in which I have to open new pages to do stuff are problematic, because my connection could hang at any point. That's why all my concerns are about doing things with single-clicks, to reduce the probability of something going wrong from 1 - (1 - p)ⁿ to p (if p is the probability that any given page won't load).

It's a browser based game. It's inevitable you're going to be loading a lot of pages, especially if you want to build a big airline, if you want to go to the effort of things like 7-day schedules. Most things in the game work better if you open multiple tabs, I don't think that is avoidable.

[stealy]

Hello! I have a doubt about my 7-day scheduling workflow, because it's extremely tedious and I wonder what am I doing wrong.
It is, roughly, the following:

• 
  Find suitable routes in the route preview page.
  
  
  
  • Although I can filter by range and time-zone, I cannot find a way to filter by (rough) demand. Surely I am not supposed to click through all airports to find one with the right demand, right?
• Open all "New route" pages for the routes I want, and fiddle around with the routes to make all times fit.
• Be satisfied with the schedule and ready to open all routes.
• 
  Go through the "New route" pages, check the "Create each day as separate route" and twice the "Do not buy slots at this airport" checkboxes for each single page, and set the prices.
  
  
  
  • Surely there is some option that allows me to say that these checkboxes should be unticked by default? Like "Always create separate routes for different days" or "Never buy slots when creating a route"?
• 
  For every route I try to create (except the first one) I get an error message saying that the route number was already taken, so I have to save the route again.
  
  
  
  • Surely there must be an option along the lines of "I don't care about route numbers, just assign the next available one whenever I try to create a route and the number is already taken", right?
• 
  Once the aircraft start arriving, go to the route scheduling page and start adding the routes. This is quite error-prone, because you have to select the right days (and times, if your schedule involves more than one flight to the same destination) and you have to scroll through different pages. Also, because when adding new routes they get removed from the list, routes keep jumping from one page to the previous, and you are not sure at what page you are going to find the next route you need.
  
  
  
  • Surely there must be an option to increase the number of routes shown per page in the assign-route-to-aircraft pop-up, right?
  • Surely, once one goes through the painful process of creating a schedule for one aircraft, there must be some kind of "copy this schedule +1 day to another aircraft" button, which I am missing, right?
• I add the maintenance checks (these could also be copied +1 day, ideally).
• 
  Now my aircraft has all her routes added, but I need slots to fly them. So, I hover over the aircraft registration numbers and click on "Manage routes". Here I have the long list of routes assigned to that aircraft. I go through each of them one by one, click on the edit route button, go to the edit route page, and save the route again, which triggers slot purchase.
  
  
  
  • Surely, if I click the checkbox for all the routes in the Manage Routes page, there must be some action similar to "Manage prices..." which tries to buy slots for the selected routes (provided I have enough money and there are available slots at the relevant airports).

So, as you can imagine, my approach is very tedious and it takes some part of fun out of the game.
I am doing many things manually, spending a lot of time aiming and clicking small checkboxes, or waiting for multiple pages to load (which is painful if one has a slow internet connection), or sifting through long (but not long-enough-to-see-all-of-them) lists of routes, etc.

Now, I must be doing something extremely unusual without realising it. If this were the typical player's workflow, after these many years that the game exist surely someone else must have realised the UX problems, reported them, and gotten them fixed. Which leads me to think that the problem lies with me doing things in an extremely inefficient and time-consuming way. So: what am I doing wrong?

1. Yes, you are supposed to click through all airports to find one with the right demand. The best way to do this is filter by distance and sort by airport size (which is the default setting) as sanabas said because most demand concentrates in the largest airports. Obviously there are some very large airports that have very little (or zero) long-haul traffic (like NY LaGuardia, Chicago Midway, and Tokyo Haneda), but you should realize that very quickly if you didn't already know. The good thing is -- it becomes easier to find demand with experience. And searching for demand is part of the game, much like how real world airlines have to do their own research and don't have a "sort by demand" button at their disposal.

2. Yes, that is called... I believe... scheduling?

3. Yep!

4. Yes to checking "Create each day as separate route," but I am not sure if I would bother with checking "Do not buy slots at this airport" because when I create a 7-day schedule, I tend to have all the planes I need on stand-by. I certainly don't have time to edit every single flight in the schedule just to purchase a slot. Depending on how many routes you have in the schedule, that can be clicking "edit route" 42 times for 6 routes or 49 times for 7 routes (or even more...) And when you have hundreds of planes, or 1000+ planes in my case, nope... no, thank you. Some people don't mind, but I would like to think my way is better. 

5. I just ignore that error message and click "create route" again. That really isn't that much work.

6. There is no short-cut. However, it's very easy to know which route goes to which plane. For my long-haul 7-day schedule, most are arranged in a way so that they follow a pattern. For instance, Plane 1 gets Route 1's Mon, Route 2's Tue, Route 3's Wed, etc... Again, pretty easy to tell once you get used to it.

7. Yes.

8. Again... why bother? Just purchase the slots when you schedule. Don't schedule until you have at least 6 planes ready so your unused slots won't expire before your last plane arrives. Doing this alone will save you so much time and headache.


I don't disagree that this game is time-consuming, but if everything is automated and every route is automatically sorted by demand, what do you even do as a player? That said, I do agree that there are some functions that could be added to make this game more convenient for players without making it "too easy." Perhaps there could be an option to select multiple planes and set the same maintenance schedule for all of them?

[Alberto]

Hi and thanks all for the replies.

Regarding airports with peculiar demand patterns, I recently opened a base at CPH and noticed that other Scandinavian countries get massive demand from CPH, even the smaller airports. Another more general example would be airports within the same country, which tend to have high demand even when they are small.

To reply to the second poster, I agree that each single action by itself is "just a click". The problem arises when you have to make hundreds of such clicks, and every one of them has a concrete probability of freezing the page and you need to refresh and start over. Unfortunately not everyone is on broadband. Some research suggests websites lose 7% conversions for every second of delay - multiply this for the myriad of actions that the game asks you to take which involve a page load (and, my point is, could be automated). You can see how the experience can become frustrating quite quickly if you don't have first-world internet.

On one hand, I agree that automating too much could take the fun out of some parts of the game (clearly, everyone's definition of "fun" varies). For example, finding suitable and unexploited routes - I can see how this can be fun. Trying to aim at small checkboxes or just getting the same "Route number taken" message every time - this I doubt there would be many people who consider it fun.

With respect to "just stockpile on airplane before 7-day scheduling, so you can buy slots directly" - it makes sense if you have an established airline with cash to burn. If your airline is brand new or operates on tiny margins, and considering that aircraft are delivered at around 1/month, you certainly don't want birds sitting on the ground for 7 months, right?

[stealy]

With respect to "just stockpile on airplane before 7-day scheduling, so you can buy slots directly" - it makes sense if you have an established airline with cash to burn. If your airline is brand new or operates on tiny margins, and considering that aircraft are delivered at around 1/month, you certainly don't want birds sitting on the ground for 7 months, right?

If your airline is brand new, I see little reason why you would need to use 7-day scheduling as starting with long-haul is usually a quick way to bankruptcy. Even if you do want to use 7-day scheduling from start, you should be leasing cheap used planes from the UM that would be delivered in two weeks. It should take about one game month to have at least 6 planes delivered from the UM — enough to create a 7-day schedule and purchase the slots at the same time.

Having an aircraft delivered once a month means you are ordering brand new from the factory, which is the worst decision a brand new airline could make. If you are established, having aircrafts sitting on the ground for a few months shouldn't be a problem. If it is, you probably have other things to worry about than the inconveniences of 7-day scheduling. And you can always seek help from alliance members and friends if you need help ordering new aircrafts in order to stockpile them quicker.

[LemonButt]

So there are a lot of solutions here.  Many players don't schedule aircraft until they have all 7 just so they can buy slots and be done.  In regards to identifying routes, Google sheets is your friend--you can do your research once, make a list of airport codes with approx demand, and then have a formula to automatically generate the links to view and/or open the route directly without ever looking at the open route airport finder ever again.  For example, the below links will view/open routes from KLAX to KJFK:

https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Routes/Planning/X/KLAX/KJFK/
https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Routes/Open/KLAX/KJFK/?go=1

If you want tech stops, plug them in to the url: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Routes/Open/KLAX/KJFK/KLAS,KORD/KORD,KLAS?go=1

I create 7 day schedules from day 1--I might schedule all 7 routes on my first plane, but at least I'm setup for 7 day immediately.  Once I get my second plane I peel off half the routes so I'm flying ABABABA on the schedule, then when the third plane shows up peel off again and do ABCABCA, etc. and when you have 7 planes you'll have a 7 day schedule with slots etc. already done.  Additionally, demand on Monday is higher than Wednesday, so you can increase your Monday prices since they are 7 different routes instead of being stuck with a static price for all 7 days when doing "every day".

In terms of adding routes, I do "reverse scheduling" where I'll create 1-4 routes in separate tabs, then go to the last page of routes on the add route modal and start adding them in reverse.  This makes it much easier since when you add them from the last page and go backwards, the routes shown on the page don't change--that is if you add 4 routes on page 1, the first 4 routes on page 2 will end up at the bottom of page 1 and you'll have to add 1 route on page 1 again before going to page 2, creating more clicks for you.

Also in terms of the flight number thing--I feel you on that.  What I do is setup the times for the flights in separate tabs without clicking any days, then when I'm ready I click the every day button which will automatically update the flight number and show you slot availability.  99% of the time slots won't be an issue, but if they are an issue you'll typically know ahead of time (i.e. flying in to LHR or similar).  If you pay attention to the curfews displayed at the top of the page, you'll also save yourself some grief.

At some point, you'll go in to tunnel vision mode where you'll just create schedules and then you'll shake yourself awake and ask yourself if you actually did it because it will be so second nature that you won't even remember doing it...

[Alberto]

These are good suggestions, thanks to everyone.

I am not very clear on the ABC thing... say that you have 7 routes, ABCDEFG.
If I understand correctly, you put ABCDEFG on the first plane (to rack up on route image, I presume?).
Then you put ABABABA on the second one? But then you will have gaps in your schedule, won't you?
If A takes off at 09:00 and arrives back to the base at 09:00 next day, but B takes off at 11:00 and arrives back at 11:00, you cannot schedule ABA, for example. What am I missing?

Regarding using excel, right now I am using a simple text file to save destinations, demand and flight times. I then feed this file to a small Integer Programming formulation of mine to maximise time-in-the-air.
This works when doing regular (non-7-day) scheduling. I normally manage to assign routes to aircraft such that they take off for the first flight at 05:00 and are back from the last flight in the evening at a time X such that X + minimum turn-around time = 00:00.
As far as I understand, that's the maximum an a/c can fly and still be able to squeeze in an A check, if you want to stick to a consistent schedule which repeats every day of the week.

So basically these are my two scheduling modes: either 7-day with a small gap for maintenance (ideally the smallest possible gap), or every-day-the-same with the tightest possible gap for maintenance. Hopefully it makes sense.

Re: to the person that was saying that starting with LH is a sure-way to bankrupt... I am trying it just for fun in Airline Generations at EZE, attempting to start with a fleet of used B767-300ER and - so far - it looks like you are right. There are so many routes which look juicy (enough demand to fill a 767 and no competition) but I guess I just don't have enough company image / route image to fill them to a profitable level. I will probably restart and go for medium-range routes first.

Re: to the person that said procuring a/c from the used market is faster than getting them from the production line: true, assuming you do find aircraft in the used market (and that you can log in frequently enough)! :-)

[LemonButt]

I am not very clear on the ABC thing... say that you have 7 routes, ABCDEFG.
If I understand correctly, you put ABCDEFG on the first plane (to rack up on route image, I presume?).
Then you put ABABABA on the second one? But then you will have gaps in your schedule, won't you?
If A takes off at 09:00 and arrives back to the base at 09:00 next day, but B takes off at 11:00 and arrives back at 11:00, you cannot schedule ABA, for example. What am I missing?

With one aircraft, you schedule a single route (A) that's 18 hours lets say (leaves you room for A check).  Your first aircraft will have the schedule AAAAAAA.

When the second aircraft shows up, you add another route (B), let's say it's 20 hours.  Then you have ABABABA and BABABAB (you might only fly one 6x/week).

When the third aircraft shows up, you add another route (C), let's say it's 22 hours. Then you have ABCABCA, BCABCAB, CABCABC (or similar).

You keep iterating your first aircraft and eventually each one will have ABCDEFG with 7 routes on it.  Alternatively, you can just fly ABCDEFG on day one to build RI since those routes are going to lose money for a period anyways--it's better to lose money on 7 aircraft flying to 30 airports versus losing money on 7 aircraft just flying to 5 airports.  It really depends on what those routes are though--if there is overwhelming demand you could turn a profit in a matter of weeks versus months.

[stealy]

Re: to the person that was saying that starting with LH is a sure-way to bankrupt... I am trying it just for fun in Airline Generations at EZE, attempting to start with a fleet of used B767-300ER and - so far - it looks like you are right. There are so many routes which look juicy (enough demand to fill a 767 and no competition) but I guess I just don't have enough company image / route image to fill them to a profitable level. I will probably restart and go for medium-range routes first.

Re: to the person that said procuring a/c from the used market is faster than getting them from the production line: true, assuming you do find aircraft in the used market (and that you can log in frequently enough)! :-)

Yep. Your company image and route image are way too low to attract enough passengers to make long-haul profitable. Long-haul routes typically lose money for months before breaking even — and eventually making decent profit. Long-haul from EZE also wouldn't be as profitable as long-haul from airports in Europe, NA, and parts of Asia due to the almost non-existent cargo demand in EZE. (Belly cargo is incredibly lucrative.) I also noticed that you are leasing your 767-300ER, which obviously cuts into your profit margin compared to owning them. This is also why I don't recommend starting with long-haul — you can't afford to buy long-haul widebodies when you are brand new and leasing them is very very expensive. You are also leasing very new (a few years old to less than a year old) and expensive 767 when there are tons of 17 year-old ones available for merely 34 million each — many of them are being sold by me. They also have 7 years until the next D-Check, so you have plenty of time to fly them and return them before having to pay for D-Check. I am not asking you to lease from me, but your goal should be to minimize your costs when you are brand new. I started my airline leasing used F28s and DC-8s that were almost 20 years old. Now I am ranked #1 in pretax profit in the entire game world and buying A380s just for fun with no intention of ever flying them.

[Alberto]

Yep. Your company image and route image are way too low to attract enough passengers to make long-haul profitable. Long-haul routes typically lose money for months before breaking even — and eventually making decent profit. Long-haul from EZE also wouldn't be as profitable as long-haul from airports in Europe, NA, and parts of Asia due to the almost non-existent cargo demand in EZE. (Belly cargo is incredibly lucrative.) I also noticed that you are leasing your 767-300ER, which obviously cuts into your profit margin compared to owning them. This is also why I don't recommend starting with long-haul — you can't afford to buy long-haul widebodies when you are brand new and leasing them is very very expensive. You are also leasing very new (a few years old to less than a year old) and expensive 767 when there are tons of 17 year-old ones available for merely 34 million each — many of them are being sold by me. They also have 7 years until the next D-Check, so you have plenty of time to fly them and return them before having to pay for D-Check. I am not asking you to lease from me, but your goal should be to minimize your costs when you are brand new. I started my airline leasing used F28s and DC-8s that were almost 20 years old. Now I am ranked #1 in pretax profit in the entire game world and buying A380s just for fun with no intention of ever flying them.

Ok, so let me report on the experiment at EZE.
I already scheduled my first 7 B767-300ER and I am now scheduling the next batch of 7, I am at number 4 right now.
I am posting profits and can keep leasing new a/c and buying more slots, so it looks like it's working.

My strategy was the following:

• There were enough routes to schedule at least 14 a/c (so two 7-day schedules) with low or no competition.
• I only lease aircraft with PW4062 engines, which have the best efficiency. Also, using one type of engine only, I keep my fleet commonality costs in check.
• I lease fairly new a/c to reduce maintenance costs and downtimes.
• I take advantage of the bump in route image for the first 4 routes a new company opens.
• I invest moderately in marketing. From other posts in the forum I understood that the game considers company image only to a certain extent.

Also, thanks to 7-day scheduling of long routes that have my a/c in the air most of the time I have the highest fleet utilisation in the gameworld, which I guess helps staying in the black.
Let's see if this strategy will lead somewhere (other than bankruptcy)!