0 Profit, Please help me!

[Mantje]

Hello, I am playing a custom world with my school and I have no idea how to get a steady start.
We are only allowed to fly outside of Europe and everyone gets their own base in Europe.
I tried to search why my load factor was low because I thought this was the reason I made no profit at all, I found that you had to fly between 2300 and 0600 but this is quite hard when you are flying far away so I tried to fit some flights (pic of schedule) all these flights go from around 0800. Still a LF% from <50%.
I am clueless why I cannot manage to make any profit.
My supply is 40% of the demand. (picture)
Please help me to gain some profits please.

[Sami]

Check the Route Image, and the concept of it.

It takes a long time to establish a new route.

[Mantje]

Check the Route Image, and the concept of it.

It takes a long time to establish a new route.

How can I see the route image?

[Sami]

Office->Route Image.
Or are each routes details page (Manage routes -> click Route to view info).

[Mantje]

Alright thank you, how long does it usually take to get some image?
And what does raising and lowering my ticket price do? Does it have any effects on my LF?

[Continental Sky]

From my experience, RI increases roughly 10 for each game month.

Ticket prices are tied to company image; higher the CI, more you can increase ticket price without losing load factor. But it also depends on competition on each specific route - if there is no competition, you can increase the price a bit more than in case when there is a competititon, and type of seats on each specific aircraft. From what I saw, general consensus on the forum is that you can increase price 4%; beyond that, depends on these parameters.

Decrease in price does not yield a considerable increase in load factor.

The reason I got involved in this topic is actually the screenshot you posted; your long haul schedule is wrong. Whenever a route cannot fit into 24 hours, to be flown every day, you should do it with so-called 7-planes-7-days schedule; see here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,71633.0.html

I mean, it's not wrong in sense that it will not work, but it's inefficient the way you did it - your planes are underutilized, see that huge blank window in your schedule, and you don't fly every day, so you leave on a table a huge chunk of demand.

The free window, turn around time, between KLAX and KDTW flights seems too short to me - make sure you increase TAT beyond minimum time, to avoid delays or even cancellations. I usually go with default TAT where delay probability is 1% plus 5 minutes, and then if I miss 20-30-40 minutes to fit the schedule, I shorten that time in all routes, usually up to 10% delay probability, not more than that.

It's not only departure between 0000 and 0455 that hurts your load factor; arrivals affect it, too; not as much as departures, but still, your arrivals at 0040 and 0425 eat a bit of load factor.

Even medium haul could be done with that 7-7 method, and cargo can be done in short haul, too, as departures/arrivals 0000-0455 do not affect cargo at all, only pax flights.

Apart from that, there are many other useful tips and tricks both in forum and in Discord group; I'd recommend to take your time and read it. I bankrupted and started from the scratch a dozen of times untill I got it all more or less right.

[Mantje]

From my experience, RI increases roughly 10 for each game month.

Ticket prices are tied to company image; higher the CI, more you can increase ticket price without losing load factor. But it also depends on competition on each specific route - if there is no competition, you can increase the price a bit more than in case when there is a competititon, and type of seats on each specific aircraft. From what I saw, general consensus on the forum is that you can increase price 4%; beyond that, depends on these parameters.

Decrease in price does not yield a considerable increase in load factor.

The reason I got involved in this topic is actually the screenshot you posted; your long haul schedule is wrong. Whenever a route cannot fit into 24 hours, to be flown every day, you should do it with so-called 7-planes-7-days schedule; see here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,71633.0.html

I mean, it's not wrong in sense that it will not work, but it's inefficient the way you did it - your planes are underutilized, see that huge blank window in your schedule, and you don't fly every day, so you leave on a table a huge chunk of demand.

The free window, turn around time, between KLAX and KDTW flights seems too short to me - make sure you increase TAT beyond minimum time, to avoid delays or even cancellations. I usually go with default TAT where delay probability is 1% plus 5 minutes, and then if I miss 20-30-40 minutes to fit the schedule, I shorten that time in all routes, usually up to 10% delay probability, not more than that.

It's not only departure between 0000 and 0455 that hurts your load factor; arrivals affect it, too; not as much as departures, but still, your arrivals at 0040 and 0425 eat a bit of load factor.

Even medium haul could be done with that 7-7 method, and cargo can be done in short haul, too, as departures/arrivals 0000-0455 do not affect cargo at all, only pax flights.

Apart from that, there are many other useful tips and tricks both in forum and in Discord group; I'd recommend to take your time and read it. I bankrupted and started from the scratch a dozen of times untill I got it all more or less right.

Thank you for taking time to help me with my issue, I will take a look into the 7-7 method!