I'm Going Bankrupt; Can I save myself?

[Sir William Claud Townson]

About six years ago I messaged my now partner the words "don't be rude to my suds" and ever since I have been waiting for the refresh. I know it ain't the monument to the concept of this game that my original airline of douglas 6bs and the next, more survivable Sud Aviation Caravelles airline was always mapped out to be in my head. Hell, the 7 day multi route airline proposal I found on these very forums was mind blowing - that's how daft I am when it comes to logistics. But even so, I chose to run a very slim, small aircraft regional operation from Beirut. Tumultuous out there, tumultuous in here. I have made some massive errors. Errors that are certainly well explained here in the forums, I am just very bad at searching for them - to be clear, I don't know how to get the search function to deliver DX flight DX001 and DX239 at the same time on the scheduling page (surely a comma between the two does the trick??).

I'm pretty impressed at the number of assets I have right now. I have never had this much before afaik. Normally it was lease, lease, lease. My problem is I have calculated that I need at least an $8,000 profit per aircraft to match overheads. Half my fleet is turning over less than this. The rest are doing relatively well but in order to stay afloat I have had to add on about one sixth or seventh of the fleet on lease on routes already being serviced. These add or equal the $8,000 mark but have adjusted down the top earners on my fleet by $2 to $3k each. I want to cut back on my 30% of expenses marketing budget but I know that keeps my longer haul flights in the air. I am running small aircraft over perhaps a much longer distance than they should be flying. I also can't run business class which might have sorted things.

If I had not erred in leaving staff unhired overnight after adding on about 7 aircraft worth of routes which tanked my reputation I would currently be losing around $10 to $50k a week. Instead I spent a month losing nearly $2m in revenue and in a silly egotistic move I sought a loan of $2.5m to pay for a global repair of my substantially harmed image. I most of all wanted to buy Sud Caravelles but at the time of starting the airline and given the confinement of Beirut I am reluctant to branch out in to jet aircraft when my (now mostly 12 seat standard, instead of 16 cattle haul) will have to cover the initial cost of the additional fleet commonality fees.

Is my issue pricing? I am hopelessly lost there. More likely I think it is my use of my 12 seater Heron 2s to fly pit stop to anywhere between 1000nm to 1700nm routes that they are very much not suited for that lands them in the range of $3k to $7k profit which falls just under my $8k minimum. Jets or even larger turbo props would be able to fill around 14 to 21 schedules worth of routes (ideally many more) but the outlay (after my very clever global radio and billboard campaign  ) will either make or break me. I am more than happy to scale back if it means keeping things going but rn I have like $5m debt and can barely break even (though have recovered from my earlier short staff blunder).

Sorry if this is covered in pinned posts or similar, lost control of my computer recently so it's in for repairs while I use my partners computer/my phone to try keep things in the air. No issue if the reply to this is just links to things I should have read and happy if it's ignored for my laziness.

Good flying.

Sir etc etc esq

[Sami]

Long message, but with a quick look towards your airline, I notice following:

- Beirut is a rather limited airport, difficult but not impossible.

- You fly Heron 2 planes only, which probably suits many routes, but generally the profit margins are quite thin for tiny planes.

- You spend 230k/week on marketing which is a huge amount, 23% of all your expenses(!!).

- Some routes are at 100% LF, meaning you could increase their prices.

- One route; Beirut to Helsinki, 13 hours, on a DH Heron .. Really?