I just started on the N.A.-Europe scenario. I make the most profit on a popular route that is shared between 3 airlines.
25% uses my airline, and I have a rating of 53, and my plane runs it 3 times a day at 80%.
One competitor is running it often, and he has 38% or so of the market share on that route.
I am awaiting a new plane, should I make it run that route, to serve it 6 times a day? (right now the supply is 125% of the demand)
Or should I make my plane run somewhere else where I have 0 Route Image, but no competition?
This early, go elsewhere. The normal train of thought is to fill up a route before you move on, but there is a LOT of open demand now and fighting for your sole route will just bring you lower LF's and decrease profits.
Open a new route and come back to fight for this first route later on.
Don
Jetwest is correct, normally one should fill up demand before moving on, but if the route is already running at capacity, leave it be and move on. Making profit early on is imperative, and if you lower your margins in order to take a fight to a competitor, you'll leave yourself wide open for later on. Keep your margins high so you can borrow money sooner and use your money to make even more money.
It is exceptionally difficult to "choke" the competition in AWS if you're not a very experienced player. Since margins are generally quite high one can often turn a profit even a competitive route where you each supply 100% of the demand and since one cannot compete on price in any appreciable way, you really just keep hammering on one another and just do nothing but greatly slow each other's growth by lowering your margins considerably. It's generally a wasted effort and only works if the other guy makes some blatant error like leasing many more different fleet types destroying his commonality while also flying all the routes you already fly on (lower margins and higher commonality costs don't mix well, particularly early on).
Sigma is absolutely correct. I leared my lesson in a previous game and got the a real dose of reality.
Thanks all for the advice,
Since I am based in Chicago, I am starting to understand what it means to be in a big airport, it is getting harder and harder to find destinations that are not already overfilled with supply. I am making money on my existing routes, but I will have to be more creative in the future.