Driving Out Competitors - Education Version

[Pilot Jeb]

I found this sim because one of my classes started using the education version for the semester. I've been trying my hand on the beginner and speed world with a personal account, and I'm already addicted. However, I'm a try-hard. And I want to beat out the other airlines in my classroom sim. Is there anyway to do this?

For context, we have a few groups stationed at the largest airports in the USA. My airline is stationed with another airline at the same airport. We are already making enough profit to consistently expand every few IRL hours, but the other airline is starting to grab good demand from other airports we can't get to before them. Is there a way we can hurt their routes to cause them to go bankrupt and steal up all the demand in our airport?

The idea I had was to acquire some cheaper/smaller jets, like CRJs, and then create an overflow of routes to airports the other airline is going to (they are using only 737s). The idea being the CRJs won't take as much of a loss if they only fill up halfway, vs. the loss the other airline will feel with 737s not filling up all the way?

I know this doesn't seem very friendly in nature, but they did say to be as "cut-throat" as the airlines are in real life.

[dmoose42]

Glad you joined. Having played this game off and on for 12 years, I can say that it was WAY more cutthroat in the early days. In 2023, the best strategy you can follow is to focus on optimizing your growth as it is extremely difficult to force your competitors into bankruptcy unless they have made a serious mistake. Mistakes you can capitalize on (lesson on this are available in an advanced course), but for someone starting out, if you worry about your competition, you will only injure yourself.

Without knowing the specifics of the game world and level of competition, it's hard to give specific advice, but your thought process of undercutting them on frequency is generally a sound one - particularly on short haul (<2000NM). Though be warned that medium fleets (such as CRJ's) can't carry medium cargo (unless they are a combi version) whereas large fleets (737) can carry medium, so depending on where you base, that may or may not matter. note that as base size increases in infrastructure the profitability of short-haul cargo declines significantly due to the costs of processing it at large airports (think JFK, ATL, LAX, etc.).

PS: I'm sure Sami would not approve, but if you truly wanted to be cut-throat, the way to do that is to "leverage" the experience of some of the super experienced folks on the forums as I'm sure your entire class is new to the game and more "detailed" instruction could help. There's a lot of knowledge that isn't in the manual that only people who have played for years have amassed. So take advantage of it! Good luck!

Hope that helps and happy to answer more detailed questions here or via PM.

Cheers.

[groundbum2]

generally the way to do well is to grow your airline, spending time on that as a positive rather than and kill the other guys as a negative. Also as a class exercise how will the "winner" be judged? Airline score? Revenue? number of planes? So whatever the metric used at the end, that's what you need to concentrate on.

I always found with routes where lots of people are looking at the same route it definitely helps to put a few planes on the route to scare off other people looking at the route. If I see KFJK-KSTL with 2 CRjs on vs KJFK-KIAH with just 1 A300 on it then I'll go for KIAH. So splatter some CRJs around just so people can see you're ahead of them and that route will be hard pushed to make money.

You've already grasped the #1 rule of AWS - get under the other players. Whether this means cheaper/more capital, cheaper/more plane purchases as bigger discount or most importantly of all, frequency kill where you simply get under their big planes with a small plane. I love seeing  744F from another player, 2 of my 757PFs and the 744F is flying fresh air at great expense.

We also have a discord channel for more chat.

Simon

[gazzz0x2z]

The usual way is indeed to have a better margin thatn your opponent. Games usually have happy time to begin with, and everyone makes money. The idea is to capitalize on this money to optimize even more your margin. When sour times arrive - and they do arrive, the weaker margins are wiped out. That's it.