How much of a penalty do you get if you schedule routes like Ryanair do. So you would fly to a destination maybe once or twice a week? No 7 days a week.
I'm guessing you couldn't schedule like dub-lanzarote 1-3-5. Dub-Tenerife 2-4. Dub- Majorca 4-6-7
Because you would get a penalty
Didn't measure it precisely, but it's not enormous if you're all alone on the route. However, as soon as competition comes in, you'll find yourself with around 1/4 of the demand and he'll take around 3/4.
Anyway, while flying some routes 6 days out of 7 is understandable if you don't use 7-day scheduling, flying 2 or 3 times a week is a complete nonsense in this game because you want to suck out the max out of a route. Flying 2 or 3 times a week would be interesting only if demand was low and if there were a report (for, say, monday and wednesday to tuesday), but there no such thing.
So either the route is too thin and you don't fly it, or the demand is large enough and you fly it every day.
It only happens when I don't have yet the 7 planes needed for a batch (hence the possibility for the initial estimate).
Demand on Tuesday will ONLY fly on Tuesday. It will not shift to Monday or Wednesday. So if you only fly a route Mon-Wed-Fri, you are leaving demand on the table for someone else to supply.
There's not a penalty in the literal sense. Route image does grow a little more slowly if the route's not daily. But it's an invitation for competition.
The other disadvantage to less-than-daily service is staffing overhead. More airports served requires more employees.