How to get economic with regional

[matte629]

I just got 4 new planes. Two Dornier 328JET and two Embraer 145ER

I had early one MD-90ER. With this single plane, i was 400 000 in profit

With this planes (and the passengers are at least 90%), i'm now going backwards with - 9000 in profit.

I don't get. If i have good passengers (and not some kind of concorde), why i'm i going backwards.

I also think that the crew should be decreased. I had maybe 50 staff before my regional planes came. When they came, the crew got increased to 250. Thats 50 staff per plane, and they are much smaller than the MD-90?

Is it a bug or could someone explain please.

edit: and even if i should remove my whole staff, i'm still going minus. And i don't have a clue about whats causing it.  Weird.

[Sigma]

You're now flying three different planes.  The maintenance costs on flying a fleet of 3 different aircraft when you're so small, is something you'll never be able to overcome.  You have incredible expenses due to the need to maintain 3 seperate pools of maintenance parts, train your staff on 3 different planes, etc, etc, etc.  Take a look at your fleet commonality page and you'll see that the overhead there is killing you.

Every plane type you utilize has a very high fixed cost to operate.  So operating just 1 will cost you, say, $1M/month to operate in overhead.  Simply because you have so much fixed/sunken costs on it.  Every one after that will cost you a tiny fraction of that more since there's only a need for slightly more parts; there's no more need for training all your employees, etc.  Having more types ALSO increases the costs of the OTHER types.  So, if you have 1 type then go to 2, you not only have a big increase in maintenance because of the high fixed costs on the 2nd type, you also get a pretty big increase in the costs of the first type as well.  Don't ask me to explain that one, it doesn't make sense to me why that happens, it's just the way it is in the game.

As for the staffing -- depends if you're referring to all your personnel or just your Pilots/Attendants.  Your staff will grow as you add routes.  Each additional route requires customer service, ground handling, etc.  This number will grow very very quickly when you start out.  You went from 1 plane to 5, therefore your staffing went up from 50 to 250 -- it's somewhat a linear relationship.  Your plane choices can affect it, but your total staffing figure is more in line with the number of routes you're flying then the types of planes you use.  This is why playing as a regional airline is difficult -- the costs of staffing will strangle you.  You're paying almost as much in staffing costs to fly out to pick up 50 people as a big airline is paying to go to a destination with 300.

For example, in my airline in Jet Age #1, I just got some L1011-500s.  I got 5 of them.  I actually am LOSING money on these 5 planes.  They cost so much in maintenance (and that unexplainable increase in maintenance to all my other types) that even with 5 of them I don't make anything.  They just cover their costs to operate give or take a little.  Now I've got 15 more coming shortly.  When those get here I'll start making money on that fleet pretty quick, because each one of those will cost relatively little to maintain because the 5 I've got are covering the fixed maintenance costs.

[matte629]

Thank you for the reply. I'm guess you're right. I'm not going to increase the fleet more, this is the only 3 types i hoping to operate.

One question. Soon, i will get one MD-90 and one MD-90ER. Will these aircraft counts as two different aircrafts, or not?

[KAH]

Thank you for the reply. I'm guess you're right. I'm not going to increase the fleet more, this is the only 3 types i hoping to operate.

One question. Soon, i will get one MD-90 and one MD-90ER. Will these aircraft counts as two different aircrafts, or not?

You can see what group an aircraft type is in on it's (or that of any a/c of that type) info page, under "fleet group".