you can look at me in BSL.
I landed 15 CV240s, then 7 constellations. IT's not always the best order to do things, but in this case, it was. Connie lines are sketchy at best, while CV240 are strong. Starting in a bigger airport would mean otehr priorities.
Those 22 planes are enough to fill all of BSL's demand. The deal is : how to grow as quick as possible, even in such a small starting place? Sanabas gave you some pointers. Let me expand.
(1) I didn't do red eyes with my CV240s. they can't. But I filled the schedules as much as I could, flying them from 0520 to 2355, or from 0500 to 2335, leaving the bare minimum 25 minutes plus the A-check.
(2) I began to fill the best destinations from BSL, which are ORY and ALG. I even did pu Route marketing on them. RI quickly becomes irrelevant, especially on such small planes, but for the first destinations, it's cheap enough to work.
(3) My first planes are in fact a mix of one and two. During the 24 hours slow begin phase, I do map all the demand from my HQ. My very first planes, for example, flies to MAN, ORY, and ALG. Why MAN? Because it has enough demand to be flown once from BSL, and because it completes perfectly the schedule. That bird flies 15.3 hours a day. Your average plane use is 12.3 hours. It should be bigger than 15 hours, because your birds actually can fly red eyes.
(4) I'm milking prices. Standard +4% is the bare minimum. On lines you don't expect opposition, you can price even more.
(5) My connies I did with a 7 days 7 planes schedule (see my signature if you don't know what's that). It's far from perfect, because Connie destinations in BSL are scarce. I still fly them 16.9 hours a day, and could add a 12 hours flight (if there was demand at all), which would push it around 17.7 hours.
(6) I did set my company marketing rather low. For a long time, I was not far from the pack. It was more than enough, and I probably gained a few points of margin there for the decisive first months. Note that route marketing somewhat supports company image, even though it's not 1 on 1.
(7) I did order 2 more planes on day 2, and 1 on day 3, and staffed them only on day 15 - to make more profit ASAP, and also to spare 2 weeks of staff. I also grew CV240s as fast as I could, getting enough money for the slots just 2 weeks later.
( 8 ) biggest expenses of the week are sunday night and monday noon. Said another way, the worse part of the week is monday afternoon. You need to be in the green on sunday monrning, and in the red on monday afternoon. If you're not, you're not growing fast enough.
I had filled all demand there within 4 months and a half (yes, 22 planes in 4 months and a half), and opened another base as soon as the game allowed me. I'm not giving advanced techniques, those give you very small advantage compared to the 4 biggies : schedule optimization, destinations optimizations, price milking, reckless growth. (fleet choice is the biggie number 5, but in a 1955 start, it's not yet that strategic. It will soon be, though)