I'm fairly new to airwaysim and I have set out to produce a truely regional airline that uses low maintence low capacity planes to service routes that no one else will service in order to avoid head on competition. In doing so I soon realized first that there is a lower limit to the size of plane that can be effectively profitable, and second that no one else seems to employ this strategy. so far I have four aircraft (I use dash 7's)and am starting to turn the corner into real profitability.
Has anyone else tried this strategy/what do people with a litle more experience think about it?
Aircraft with less than 30 seats are hardly to use. And to run a regional airline is difficult in AWS.
If nobody else has said more about, I'll explain it later with some strategy hints in ~12 hours when I'm back at home.
Swiftus conducted a Small Airline Test (https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,27374.0.html) a while ago, you should check it out!
thanks for the link to the small airline test log. both of these are a litle different then what I am trying to do. my airline is based out of ottawa (canada) and there are a whole pile of short routes with 70-150 PAX, I have set up a couple of aircraft to run 1-3 flights per day with a capacity of 50 PAX each. I have about 8 routes like this (all less then 300nm). This is reflective of what a bunch of regional carries in the area actually do (eg porter which is based out of toronto island airport) with some success. The idea is small route = small aircraft, thats not quiet like what Swiftus did running a very small aircraft many many times on reasonably sized routes.
having said that the general wisdom both on these forums and with the airlines i have observed in game seems to be to pick routes that have at least 350pax of demand per day and to run aircraft that have 75+ PAX capacity as it makes covering the fixed costs (staff ect) easier. I was just wondering whether people thought this could be successfull.
for those interested, I am now clearing 300,000 a week dispite a number of newbie mistakes along the way. Clearly there is money to be made in low demand routes with a cost model thats appriopriate (ie dont overspend on marketing, freqent flights with smallish aircraft (~50PAX), slow expansion). maybye this isnt true in harder worlds
Its working OK for me at the moment - though I also have a fleet of BAe 146s on longer routes
I am pretty much serving every airport in the UK and Ireland with embraer 30 seaters and BAE ATP aircraft and i have now branched out in to most of europe and a few select long haul routes but none of these could have happened if it wasnt for the regional flights
sounds very cool. It's the same idea that i had for my airline, but running out of canada the regional routes are farther, fewer and have less demand. So I guess thats why I havent seen others attempt it
you might be best serving the shortest routes into the US i think you might notice a turn around in your performance