Hi everyone!
Just joined this game on referral from a friend! Looking forward to joining in the game soon!
What can I expect?
Easier to answer if you are telling us what you expect....
You should expect fun if you like spending some time reading, learning and dedicating some of your "head" time, because it´s not one of the easy games.
You will loose interest if not.
I am expecting to have some fun, and a challenge. I am expecting some competition and I am already starting to get a feel for the game. I based my airline out of Savannah, which may not have been the best of choices, but no one was there so it gives me some room to move around you could say.
I am operating an Airbus A320-200 to Chicago and an Embrarer 145 to Houston. I couldn't find anything higher than a mediocre route, probably because Atlanta is not too far away (189nm). So you never know, I may have to move.
I am hoping to just make enough profit to lease a 3rd aircraft. But I may have to relocate to a better airport with a better choice of routes before I do that.
Hello,
feel free to ask if you have any questions.
I made a quick check and found San Diego has a relatively big and unoccupied airport, however, you might look for yourself what suits you.
As long as you stay away from London Heathrow everything is fine. :P
Quote from: Curse on October 07, 2012, 10:23:32 AM
Hello,
feel free to ask if you have any questions.
I made a quick check and found San Diego has a relatively big and unoccupied airport, however, you might look for yourself what suits you.
As long as you stay away from London Heathrow everything is fine. :P
Haha, the game I am in is in North America only I think. I was looking at Seattle and Denver but they are PACKED! And at almost $1 Million to relocate right now, I am not too sure I can do it right now. I just started a TV campaign so I hope it makes people more away of the routes I am offering right now.
Does anyone know of possibly another good destination to fly to out of Savannah?
You posted in the Beginner's World forum, so I expected you to participate in Beginner's World #18. :P
I have no idea about North America Challenge as I have no access to this gameworld. Sorry. But they have an own sub-forum here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/board,573.0.html
So, you already started, and your expectations seem very well match the spirit of the game.
Sorry that I start advising, but one of the biggest mistakes of all new members is not obeying the subject of fleet commonality.
You should not start with two aircraft families right away, because you face much more costs with every new family you introduce.
For every startover it is essential to make up a kind of strategy, what kind of traffic you want to serve first.
As long you already fly two families, try to max out their fitting use, before you order a new one.
Greetings
Christian
Quote from: exchlbg on October 07, 2012, 10:46:01 AM
So, you already started, and your expectations seem very well match the spirit of the game.
Sorry that I start advising, but one of the biggest mistakes of all new members is not obeying the subject of fleet commonality.
You should not start with two aircraft families right away, because you face much more costs with every new family you introduce.
For every startover it is essential to make up a kind of strategy, what kind of traffic you want to serve first.
As long you already fly two families, try to max out their fitting use, before you order a new one.
Greetings
Christian
By maxing out their fitting use, do you mean take advantage of the range that each aircraft has to offer? Because I tried to find a heavier route out of Savannah for the A320, being that route has 790 a day I believe. To New York/Boston..the numbers were pathetic, and absolutely nothing was going out for the Caribbean.
I really wanna take advantage of the 2600nm range of the Airbus..but I couldnt find an airport that would benefit in terms of profit and passenger flow.
I think he means you should use one or two specific fleetgroups (for example: A320 and EMB 145) on all routes possible before you go for a third fleetgroup.
That doesn't necessary mean you must fly them to the limit. In other words: Make sure you have 15-20 or more aircraft of each group before you expand to another group.
Oh, when I said earlier that I would go for a 3rd aircraft, it was going to be either an A320 or another EMB-series. I was also thinking about giving my two aircraft 2 different destinations, alternating. Like one route on 1,3,5...another on 2,4,6. That way I could hit 2 cities per aircraft spreading my service out a little more and maybe bringing in more profit since I am only restricting myself to Chicago and Houston.
Quote from: AJfromLA on October 07, 2012, 11:25:39 AM
I was also thinking about giving my two aircraft 2 different destinations, alternating. Like one route on 1,3,5...another on 2,4,6. That way I could hit 2 cities per aircraft spreading my service out a little more and maybe bringing in more profit since I am only restricting myself to Chicago and Houston.
1. You should fly to one destination at least 4-5 days a week to get pax awareness
2. It's better to fully serve a route before moving to the next one, as there's are extra cost for flights to new airports
3. Be patient, you seem to be hasty. It takes time (up to several real days) for a route to get decent load factor (LF). This applies to the new game world. So, expect money bleeding when opening new routes.
4. You can try relocate, but that cost pretty much money and time. Or you can try declaring bankrupt and select another HQ right a way. You're in DEMO game, so I think it's better if you restart. And since it's DEMO world, I'm not sure if (3) above works
Cheers
HP
Mr.HP is right, another very important virtue of this game is patience.
Don´t ever spend all your money and available loans on aircrafts at beginning. Every new route takes time to develop and until then generates losses.
Maxing out the use of aircraft means you have to find fitting routes for your aircraft, not aircrafts for your routes.It means you should use them on routes they are designed for. Don´t use the Embraers on long routes, they don´t pay off your overhead costs. They may serve you well on short routes, having them start 4-5 times a day, the Boeings may work with 2, but 3-4 is better.
On the other hand turboprops are much better on short routes, where they don´t loose on flight time and consume much less fuel.
Always click yourself through all available demand from your home airport, make notes about the flight times and optimize your flight plan.Keep the birds flying.
I can´t look into your world, but generally I don´t see any special advantage of alternating routes for different aircraft.
There´s much more to advise. For that I have to insist you make yourself acquainted to the manual and the very useful FAQ´s and Beginner´s Guides. Please ask for anything you don´t understand after that.
Don't get too many fleet groups like this dude.
Hell you have to have money to get that many fleetgroups, lol.
I have the A320 flying dedicated to Chicago, while I have the EMB145 flying roundtrip from Savannah to Houston and back, then a short hop to Atlanta and back, then one final roundtrip flight to Houston to round out the day. I need to put the Airbus back on 5-6 duty, where its only flying 3 days now.
Well I know this may be a little hurried, but here's an update.
I started realizing that the short hop to Atlanta is always full on the roundtrip flights. So I pulled the trigger on another EMB-145EU. Couldn't afford anything bigger to lease. Its going to run multiple trips daily to ATL.
So my fleet is now 1 A320-200, and 2 EMB-145EUs
Honestly I don't think that was a good move. Patience in AirwaySim is important and waiting some hours longer to get a bigger aircraft mostly pays off later.
The goal in AirwaySim is not to dominate the next real day, it is to dominate when the gameworld ends some month later. :)
Anyway I wish you good luck and good profits with your second EMB but you should really focus on getting something bigger - like A320, A321 - soon.
And yes, that's me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQqiuynMwCQ
I completely understand and respect your opinion! I know I should have waited for something bigger, but with the demand there I decided to get an aircraft that had a quick turnaround and not burn a lot of fuel on a short distance. With that being said, the plan isnt to dominate immediately, but I wanted to get a steady flow of income in (All birds are in the green now) And just let the money roll in now.
The next move will be to get an A320 or equivalent to put on that route to meet the demand fully, then assigning the 145 to another regional route with good demand. I started off quick, but now I am going into "Tortoise" mode, slow and steady.
Actually, this is DEMO so I guess you should try things out. It's alright if you messed up. Money is easy to earn as there's always huge unserved demand
Try flying red eye, that means overnight flight. You have A320 flying twice a day to ORD? That doesn't sound you've utilized your 320 to its max capacity. Why don't you put an late afternoon (1700-1900 time)flight to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle or something, and have a morning flight (0800-1000)to Chicago. That will improve the flying time of the bird
Cheers
HP
Quote from: Mr.HP on October 08, 2012, 12:50:02 PM
Actually, this is DEMO so I guess you should try things out. It's alright if you messed up. Money is easy to earn as there's always huge unserved demand
Try flying red eye, that means overnight flight. You have A320 flying twice a day to ORD? That doesn't sound you've utilized your 320 to its max capacity. Why don't you put an late afternoon (1700-1900 time)flight to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle or something, and have a morning flight (0800-1000)to Chicago. That will improve the flying time of the bird
Cheers
HP
Actually, me flying the A320 to ORD twice a day
isn't meeting the capacity of flights per day to Chicago from Savannah. 2 flights a day are only covering 312 of the 820 passengers a day that want to go to Chicago. I have been suggested to get another A320, which I plan on getting soon. In order to cover the 820 flights a day to Chicago, I would have to run both 320s on 5 flights. That could be worked into your suggestion as well. Run a red-eye out to the west coast, and have the west coast bird turned around for 2 early day flights to ORD, while adding a 3rd flight to the original A320.
My 145s are keeping an Average LF% of 91% (Houston) and 88%(Atlanta), so I plan on keeping their routes the same.
What I need to do though, is change all the days the aircraft have their A and B checks, so I am going to have to move the schedule around a bit...
Quote from: AJfromLA on October 08, 2012, 11:10:45 AM
...(All birds are in the green now)...
Hello AJfromLA,
I finally noticed you are in the Demo game. I thought you were in a full gameworld.
So please let me apologize first for my short and maybe rude comments before, I will start to explain things now a bit more like I would wish to be treated when a starter myself. :) And feel free to send me further PM, I'd be happy if I could help you (more) in this fantastic game.
The quoted part of your message is a small thing in AirwaySim that lead many people, including me when I was new, into a false direction.
An aircraft turning in profit does exactly this. It makes profit and covers the cost for its own fuel, the crew and pilots that are dedicated to this special aircraft, the navigation fees for this one aircraft and the leasing costs.
But, and there's the problem, your airline creates costs that are not pinned down to a single aircraft. Your marketing campaigns, your office costs, your security and baggage staff and the slots you have to purchase for big money are not in this statistics.
This means:
Your aircraft must not only be slightly in the green to cover its own costs, it must be a good money maker to cover up the overhead.
Experience in AirwaySim showed several things:
1) Small aircraft with less than 25 pax can't make enough profit to achieve this under normal circumstances.
2) Jet aircraft with few seats like EMB 145 or CRJ 200 can barely make enough profit. Mostly when the fuel costs are low as competition - that's why you might face in Demo World, but not in a full gameworld.
I don't know exactly the situation of your airline but I could imagine your single A320 makes enough profit to cover your overhead and the two EMB actually make profit. So your decision isn't this bad, but it could been optimized. In Demo world trying things out is nice and ok and fun, but in full gameworlds it would be sad to see your airline bust because of this.
I didn't take your comments as rude at all! As a matter of fact I found it very helpful , and the party pooper hilarious!
I did take your advice though on another A320...and I tweaked another idea from Mr. HP. He suggested I put the 320 on a red eye to LA or somewhere on the West Coast to maximize the aircraft. Where when I looked into destinations out of Savannah, DFW presented the most demand heading West. So I have the 2nd A320 on 2 flights to DFW earlier in the day BUT I also added a late night flight to Chicago and added a 3rd flight to ORD onto the existing A320. That way I can get as close to the demand as possible.
Everyday except Wednesday and Sunday I am moving 650 of the projected 850 people a day, so I think I am doing pretty good on the flow so far. My 145s are keeping a high LF% with one doing 4 flights a day between KSAV and KATL, with the second flying 2 flights to KIAH with a quick hop to KATL in between to help EMB145#1 with the load. And as for profit, all my aircraft are pulling 6 figures(EMBs 200K+ and the one A320 in service is pulling 500K+ in a week, the 2nd A320 goes into service on the "8th of November")
I didn't take any offense to what anyone has said and I find it quit helpful. So maybe in a few days when I join a real game, you guys wont mop the floor with me! I will be looking forward to joining the real world game in a few days and please keep the advice coming!
Just make sure you read the manual and the 3 guides for newcomers in the General forum. Then, you can learn more by experiment. Pushing too many advice to you here just only make you confused
If you are concerned about anything, give us a shout. Plenty of members here are very friendly
Cheers
HP
Why would you move around your checks?
Concerning your tiny Embraers: may be you should send them to very near destinations with small demand, Houston at least seems to be too far away for such a small bird.Have them serve at least 4 circles a day. Don´t be mislead by high LF or green route numbers, there are a lot more costs involved that these birds otherwise don´t fly in...(oops, mentioned before)