AirwaySim

I have pretty much given up on this "game".
This so-called airline simulation is nothing more than a glorified monopoly game.
My plans to have some fun and fly some planes around hasn't happened now for weeks (since the beginning of game 3).

My latest reset, which has become a weekly ritual:
- 2 basically brand new 737-700's (1 & 1.5 yrs at time of purchase)
- same planes, same engines, fresh C-checks
- 4 routes, all over 90% (90.1 - 97.2 as of this post)
- rates adjusted to the "sweet spot" (right at the point where passengers will fly without a drop off)
- US general marketing newspaper campaign
- staff levels 100 - 105% (where they need to be)
- CEO salary - down to last notch before zero

Again, same as before... the first couple days, making money - paying back loans... all is well.
Suddenly overnight last night, went from 210,000.00 to -1,420,000.00 this morning.
Routes are good, no maintenance issues... just down - again.

So I have been looking around at other simulations.
It is apparent that the developers here are more interested in screwing with the finances and running things so tight, that any small thing will kill you... even if they won't tell you what it is.
And we're all taking THEIR word for it that this BS is setup like the real airlines. How do we know that? We don't.
Ya, that's a pile of fun I like paying money for.

I cannot find anything in my stats that is showing the problem... and good luck finding an indepth manual here, airwaysim is too busy trying to key in more difficulty like 9/11.
Does it sound like I'm frustrated? You bet!
As I said before, as an airliner enthusiast I want to buy some planes and fly some routes... I could care less how big a hero the next guy is attempting to be, I'm not competing.
If the developers would put half as much time into the flight side as they do the commerce side... things would be better.

As for now, I am just going to let my planes torpedo into the ground.
I have no interest at this point in fixing things again, only to have the same thing happen.
I guess I will decide whether I want to waste more money attempting another game at a later date.

And for you macho tycoons that think everyone else is stupid and whining for nothing because your airline is tremendous... save your comments, I am not interested.

I really feel for you! I was in game 3 I had $100 Million in the bank and overnight my airline nosedived into the ground!  For me I think it was not factoring the increase in fuel costs.  Its a pity the servers here dont give the developers the opportunity to look at why your airline had nosedived into the ground after you have gone bankrupt, so the developers can advise you where you went wrong!

I'm sure if you PM sami, if your airline is still up and running he will take a look for you and tell you what your problem is.  Hopefully, the 'financial' system will be sorted out for the next game update so at least people will know whats causing them the lose money!

Constructive criticism usually sounds less upset :o However the problems you have been having do sound odd.

Steve

If you find a multiplayer online airline simulation with better or equal playability which is also actively developed, I'd say go for it but before you leave please drop me a PM because I want to play it too! If your definition of having fun with pretend airlines excludes competing with "macho tycoons", there are single-player games out there as well. If you want to attempt another game here on AirwaySim, you will find that the community is very helpful and you should have no trouble finding hints or even move-by-move mentoring.

Well what can I say. Can't please 'em all. I'm actually even quite surprised of these comments as AWS has always been more an "airplane game" than a proper financial simulation (a thing that will be changed however).

And I have to disagree with most of the points you make about us, the developers... But please keep in mind that we are actively developing the system all the time and you can even request new features / improvements in the forum which in my mind is quite exceptional.

It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to create a game like this, and although it could use some new features, I can honestly say that I'm addicted to this game as it is.

That being said, I'm sorry you feel that way, but because you, one player, is having a hard time running his airline, does not render the game worth giving up on. I suggest next time, like ukatlantic said, you should PM Sami to have him take a look if you're that frustrated, or post to the forum asking for help. There are already many threads to help new players get started, and even for the veteran players, it's not a sandbox- it's still challenging.

If you would have posted this asking for help, I would have tried to help you understand what is going wrong to the best that I can. I'm still willing to help if you're still willing to play.

If you want my humble opinion you haven't got everything ok in your airline. You have to check the KPI's.

Here's one:

LandAir International      8.6 h ; this is your utilization stats. How can an airiline be profitable when it's aircrafts spend more time on ground than in air?!?

For comparison here's my stats (and I'm not a macho tycoon.  ;) )
Short hop            17.1 h

I'm running small planes and actually proving a point to myself that small can be fun.

/BE

Looking at the airline:

* some routes are very underpriced, you're selling them for $100 when you could charge $150-160 in Y class on one route for example. The planes are full but I suppose they would be full too with higher prices. Getting >95% load factors looks nice but you can earn much better by filling the plane to 75-90% with decent prices.

* you fly to some destinations (domestic) less than 7x week. This on the other hand means that you must keep the prices low if you want people to fly with your airline ... as giving a proper flight frequency does matter too.

* aircraft utilization is poor (like already noted).

* delays/cancellations - very good stats. Even too good, you can easily make the turnarounds much shorter (20-30 mins at least!) to increase utilization. There is no need in trying to aim to 0% cancellations and 0 min delays companywide as that is waste of time (but of course not letting them get too big is the task here).

* aircraft are new and in good cond, but they are expensive on the other hand. Takes some work to make it work with brand new leased planes of which you pay 0.7mil each per month as leases only.

* looking at the income statement the small ticket incomes is the main problem added with the big recurring lease costs. Everything else seems to be fine. Staffing and marketing and all others are running on very tight budget like they should but the big issues are not properly managed (= incomes are too small).


--> so making the turnarounds smaller on existing routes, raising their prices closer to what the system suggests, and packing the schedules full with more routes. It's not anything very hard or magical what that airline would need to make it.

Based on that, I'd have to guess that your margins were pretty low.  Airlines that charge cheap rates make up for it with incredible aircraft utilization and cheaper aircraft.  You're charging cheap rates AND have poor utilization AND have new aircraft.  Seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

Yeah, you might make money for a while, but when you're operating at such a low profit margin any change whatsoever can take you from the black to the red in a hurry.  Relative small changes in load factors can mean the difference between waking up to a few mil in the bank and waking up to owing someone a few mil.  If your seats are priced (in relation to your expenses) so that it takes a 92% load factor to make money, you'll make a profit at 95%, but if you drop to just 90% you'll start losing money fast, despite the fact that your load factor looks high.

The time he was making a profit was the 4 first months. The leases were paid up front for that time. The most common mirage in this game.  ;D

/BE

I fully agree with SIGMA, last night I went back into the red (prob due to leasing a further 4 newish aircraft) so I increased my charges by approx 5% and woke up this morning to find I had $25Mil in the bank, so it is easy to turn your fortunes around, if your not afraid to drop a few % load factor and increase your prices!

Also This may bore some of you, but I remebr watching a documentary on Sky TV about airlines, and they had the CFO of Virgin Atlantic on there, and in the interview he said if you have an aircraft on the ground its going to lose money every hour its stuck there and the example he cited was one of Virgins 747-400's when its on the ground it makes them a loss, in the air that one aircraft brings Virgin a nice hefty profit if I remeber correctly he cited something in the region of $100,000 every hour bearing in mind the freight airlines also carry, so definately use your aircraft as much as possible in a 24 hour period. 

This game financial side in AWS is like in any classic tycoon game: At the start there is very small profit marigins and growth is slow, but after a certain point money becomes a no-issue.

AWS suffers from uncomplete manual and in-game help combined to poor statistics. I've calculated by hand real profit marigins of routes, but to do that you have to know some game mechanics that are not explained in manual or in-game. Also to make good profits one needs experience and knowledge of the pax-distribution algorithm, that works little different what one might expect (/ what happens in real life?).

I think that the above mentioned reasons are basicly behind the fustration of charger27 and others who fail to run a succesfull airline in the game.

ps. What this game does brilliantly is modelling real aircraft in the game. I don't think that any aircraft enthuaist can find a game that does that aspect better!

edit:

There should be at least good statistics (graphs) for each route and/or city pair that show following things in the same graph with on-off tick boxes:
-Pax demand
-My available seats (planed and what was actually flown)
-All available seats (planed and what was actually flown)
-My ticket price
-Direct operating costs (=costs that would not occur if the route would not be flown)
-Ticket income
-Company image
-Route image
-Average delay
-Cancellations
-...
Scale should be selectable daily/weekly/monthly

This should help players to look what affects where.

There should also be similar company wide graphs.

There could be also an adviser that would automatically give same type of advice as Sami gave in this thread.

Quote from: sami on March 28, 2009, 12:24:45 PM
Looking at the airline:
* some routes are very underpriced, you're selling them for $100 when you could charge $150-160 in Y class on one route for example. The planes are full but I suppose they would be full too with higher prices. Getting >95% load factors looks nice but you can earn much better by filling the plane to 75-90% with decent prices.
* you fly to some destinations (domestic) less than 7x week. This on the other hand means that you must keep the prices low if you want people to fly with your airline ... as giving a proper flight frequency does matter too.
* aircraft utilization is poor (like already noted).
* delays/cancellations - very good stats. Even too good, you can easily make the turnarounds much shorter (20-30 mins at least!) to increase utilization. There is no need in trying to aim to 0% cancellations and 0 min delays companywide as that is waste of time (but of course not letting them get too big is the task here).
* aircraft are new and in good cond, but they are expensive on the other hand. Takes some work to make it work with brand new leased planes of which you pay 0.7mil each per month as leases only.
* looking at the income statement the small ticket incomes is the main problem added with the big recurring lease costs. Everything else seems to be fine. Staffing and marketing and all others are running on very tight budget like they should but the big issues are not properly managed (= incomes are too small).
--> so making the turnarounds smaller on existing routes, raising their prices closer to what the system suggests, and packing the schedules full with more routes. It's not anything very hard or magical what that airline would need to make it.

Thanks for the input.
Now, at first glance it may appear that the planes aren't flying 7 days a week... they are - both on 2 different routes, picked on the best pax availability days.
I agree the income is too small... but believe me, where the prices are currently is where they needed to be to get out of the yellow low 60's percent for passengers.
The routes are earning more at the moment than they were with higher prices... yes, they certainly should be higher - but what do you do?
That was my earlier point in another thread about starting an airline later in the game... I am not sure you can be successful.

Where I am frustrated is, I am using the same deployment strategy that I did at the beginning of game 3.
At that time - I could barely keep up with the growth!
I spent many hours researching the routes at the start of game 3... which still net the pax, but at a much lower pricing tolerance.

As for the plane age, I agree - they are too new for a longterm lease program.
However, at this stage of the game, your startup choices are basically new from bankrupt airlines, or recycled aircraft that are far too old that would kill in maintenance.
I would prefer to be in the 8 or 9 year old range (which I was in the past).

QuoteNow, at first glance it may appear that the planes aren't flying 7 days a week... they are - both on 2 different routes, picked on the best pax availability days.
I agree the income is too small... but believe me, where the prices are currently is where they needed to be to get out of the yellow low 60's percent for passengers.
The routes are earning more at the moment than they were with higher prices... yes, they certainly should be higher - but what do you do?

Is each route being flown 7 x days a week or are you just utilising the aircraft for 2 routes on the best days for each of them?  If this is the case you are going to struggle, a route should ideally be flown 7 days a week to keep the customers flying your airline.  Also just by how much in % were you discounting your seats by?  The most you should need to discount is around 20% to get a decent load factor you also have to take into account fuel price increases as well and adjust price accordingly esp if the fule price has doubled! Also remeber route image also has a part to play too; the higher your route image the more poeple will recognise your airline as the one to fly with for that route.

Quote from: charger27 on March 29, 2009, 04:43:05 PM
Now, at first glance it may appear that the planes aren't flying 7 days a week... they are - both on 2 different routes, picked on the best pax availability days.

I meant that you should fly at least 7x week to every DESTINATION (if we talk about shorthaul / domestics).

Quote
I would prefer to be in the 8 or 9 year old range (which I was in the past).

Agree, some that are in good cond and fresh D check. Here the maintenance costs are still OK enough (not so old that the costs skyrocket) and the planes are modern enough for the pax'es to fly them.

I started a week ago, so 1-year ago in Game 3 time.  Plenty late in the game.  And I'm not trying to be some "macho-tycoon" with this post either, I just started, I'm just relaying my experience.

I fly all A32x that are 12 years old.  And the market is FULL of them.  And each of my planes makes $250-750,000 profit per week.  And I'm not even doing all that great because I'm learning as I go since I just started.  The #1 lesson I learned after just a couple days is to fly red-eyes.  That's one major thing this game doesn't seem to do properly.  I tend to make at last as much, and often more, on red-eyes than I do on flights during the day.  I try to keep my planes on the ground no more than 6 hours of the day, and only that much because I use 60m turn-arounds.

I fly routes that have minimal, or even no, competition.  And trust me, there's no shortage of those routes even this late in the game.   Just don't fly to the 'obvious' airports.  You want to go to SFO or LAX fly to San Jose or John Wayne instead.  You want to go to DC, fly to BWI instead of Dulles or Reagan.  I discount my seats no more than 10% to start and buy Route Marketing (minus TV ads) on all new routes.  I have zero problem getting load factors of 90-95% and often raise my rates right away because I'm sitting at 100% to start.

But they key thing is that with my route pricing I make money as long as my load factors are over about 50-60%.  Every passenger above that is gravy.

Don't try to compete with the big boys on big routes.  You can't do it.  Even if you could hope to beat their well-established route image and customer loyalty, they've got the money to waste on chasing you out of the market just like in real life.  You can't afford a fare war in the beginning of the game.  Even if you can still make a profit fighting with them it'll undoubtedly be a much smaller one than you could if you went off and did your own thing.

I've started just fine this late in the game, in a major airport nonetheless (SEA), and still am managing to do just fine for myself.   With each plane making $250-750,000 in profit a week, each plane makes enough net income to pay the lease cost for another one every 8-24 hours or so.  That's each plane contributing that much.  My fleet is growing exponentially.

If anything's unrealistic, it's that a single plane can pay for a new one in about a game-month or less.  But it wouldn't be too much fun if the game had realistic margins that made it realistically slow to expand.   But, as it is today, it's probably an acceptable way of doing it without having to model a realistic means of raising capital.  You just have higher margins in lieu of realistic capital markets.  Which works okay until later in the game when companies are making more money than they literally know what to do with.

Quote from: ukatlantic on March 29, 2009, 04:57:41 PM
Is each route being flown 7 x days a week or are you just utilising the aircraft for 2 routes on the best days for each of them?  If this is the case you are going to struggle, a route should ideally be flown 7 days a week to keep the customers flying your airline.  Also just by how much in % were you discounting your seats by?  The most you should need to discount is around 20% to get a decent load factor you also have to take into account fuel price increases as well and adjust price accordingly esp if the fule price has doubled! Also remeber route image also has a part to play too; the higher your route image the more poeple will recognise your airline as the one to fly with for that route.

LOL - well I restarted again.
What I was doing: each plane on 2 routes, yet the same lanes.
For example - I picked the best 4 passenger availability days from Kansas City > Boston > Orlando... and the best 3 days from Kansas City > Orlando > Boston.
My routes were all in the 92 - 96% range.

Now, what I found (for whatever reason) is it was feast or famine.
If I raised the prices even $10 more... inside of 2 days my route pax dropped from 90% to the yellow low 60%!
Yes, I was careful to avoid other airline's schedules... it was all about the pricing.
The prices definitely should have been higher - and maybe I am more impatient now, trying to get back to the "glory days" from the beginning of game 3.
Plus - I found out (the hard way as usual), that too new leased aircraft are as fatal as too old... and bigger planes would not have hurt on these routes either.

I am on my final restart of these credits... I am going to be patient and see if I can nurse this thing with the biggest discount being around 15 - 20%.
I have found some 8 and 9 year old planes, which is what I prefer... and the type I want (which weren't available on my last restart).

At this point I guess I'm just killing time until a new game.
Thanks for all the advice though, it is appreciated.

Well Good Luck!!!

What I would say is make sure you fly each route every day of the week, dont 'cherry pick' the best days with the highest pax demand, if you do your going to fail and you will have to have lower prices to get the pax to fly with you, and any increase you make will cause the l/f to drop simply as you dont service that route daily.  I make sure all my routes regardless of demand are flown every day; so this route Kansas City > Boston > Orlando must be flown every day not say 3 x weekly.  Hope this helps!

Quote from: charger27 on March 29, 2009, 06:13:31 PM
LOL - well I restarted again.
What I was doing: each plane on 2 routes, yet the same lanes.
For example - I picked the best 4 passenger availability days from Kansas City > Boston > Orlando... and the best 3 days from Kansas City > Orlando > Boston.
My routes were all in the 92 - 96% range.

Now, what I found (for whatever reason) is it was feast or famine.
If I raised the prices even $10 more... inside of 2 days my route pax dropped from 90% to the yellow low 60%!
Yes, I was careful to avoid other airline's schedules... it was all about the pricing.
The prices definitely should have been higher - and maybe I am more impatient now, trying to get back to the "glory days" from the beginning of game 3.---

Do you have 7 return flights a week to each leg? That's minimum to have good LF.

Other airlines schedules does matter to LF only in daily basis - it doesn't matter if you fly same time or differnet time on the same day as competitors.

I'm sorry if I didn't understood somthing right - just trying to help.

I know the feeling, I really do...  I started late, and had no idea what I was doing.  Didn't realize the very first plane I leased needed a D check.   ::)  And my first few posts on here were about "problems" I was seeing in the scheduling and financials and such.

But, after 3 BKs (Bankruptcies, not Burger Kings ;) ), on the 4th try, I found my "sweet spot." 

I'm flying from a non-traditional airport (St. Pete/Clearwater, FL), with 757s and 767s, running at a decent profit, managing my own staffing, and it's been a blast.  But it helped that I took the info that was HERE in the forums, and put it to use in the sim. 

Keep at it...  You'll be right!   ;D

Quote from: bigdogshark62 on March 31, 2009, 06:13:48 PM
I know the feeling, I really do...  I started late, and had no idea what I was doing.  Didn't realize the very first plane I leased needed a D check.   ::)  And my first few posts on here were about "problems" I was seeing in the scheduling and financials and such.
But, after 3 BKs (Bankruptcies, not Burger Kings ;) ), on the 4th try, I found my "sweet spot." 
I'm flying from a non-traditional airport (St. Pete/Clearwater, FL), with 757s and 767s, running at a decent profit, managing my own staffing, and it's been a blast.  But it helped that I took the info that was HERE in the forums, and put it to use in the sim. 
Keep at it...  You'll be right!   ;D

Yep, I hear ya!
My biggest frustration is that I had some big success at the beginning of game 3... and really want to get back there.

About starting later in a game, then I disagree.

I started my airline in 2000, today 4 years later I am nr. 15 on the list of income the last 4 weeks.
There were 2 airlines in the same airport as me, but both started from the beginning. Today, I am the biggest airline in my airport, with 31%+ of all the passengers and still growing.

I am having 500mil in my bank, I never took a loan, I never had any troubles and I had income from day one.

I started out competing the bigger airlines, and slowly offered better prices and took over most of the market on the same routes as them.

What I notice many new players are doing, is that they invest in all new planes, (which are really expensive), and that most people start out with really huge planes, which they will never be able to fill up or have income on because of too high lease and too few reputation/pax demand.

I started with a small plane, and when I growed bigger I sold it and invested in smaller domestic planes and then when I had a stable income, then I opened up for routes overseas.

Note: I am placed in Malpensa Airport in Milano in game 2.


________________________________________________________________

// Milano Airways \\

I've yet to succeed in running an airline to the ground, I've operated an all propeller fleet on short haul routes out of Edinburough, operated an all 737 fleet out of Edinburough to short and medium haul European markets, both these airlines ran with little competition and were very successful, I've dabbed at more challenging scenarios, starting a Toronto based airline late in a game where there was heavy competition and did the same with a US domestic airline. I have some real life airline management experience, but if you cover all your bases, making money in Airwaysim is really not that difficult.

Trust me on this, you will not find a more detailed and realisitic simulation on the market, Airwaysim is completely unmatched. The next best aviation management simulation would be Airline 6 but it does not play online and it is much less enjoyable than Airwaysim in many aspects; lack of competition, challenge, realism (in both the financial and operational aspects) and interface to name a few. Take it from someone who has spent countless hours on every aviation management sim out there, if you are going to be playing a game of this genre, I guarantee AirwaySim is the highest quality simulation you will find.

that' why are we all here!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)