Would it be possible to reduce cargo revenues by about 30 to 50%? Would make things a bit more even in my opinion.
reduce your cargo price by 30%-50%, then you will get cargo revenues reduced by 30%-50% :laugh:
If you ask me, the problem is not that cargo pays well. The problem is lack of competition in the cargo market.
I agree. Cargo isn't like PAX where a plane should be expected to get 70% or better LF's all of the time. Because of that and the less clear demand being available, many people avoid it all together. If you consider the amount of Cargo focused Airlines compared to PAX focused airlines in AWS, that is where the big profits are coming from. Not cargo's pricing, but just simply that it is a wide open market that most airlines ignore.
maybe cargo aricraft should be banned or heavily penalised from landing at major hubs. No way in normal times Heathrow lets cargo planes land, the slots are too precious and they want the duty free sorry passengers. Cargo gets sent to Stansted and other tier2 airports.
Simon
That's an interesting idea. It would introduce a new dynamic that would force interesting choices.
However, I have some questions.
1. How would the list of prohibited airports be defined if it's based on an in-game metric (infrastructure, etc.) - how would airports that are added or come off this list be handled?
2. What about combo aircraft? Would they be allowed? Part of me says they are carrying pax, so it's okay, but you could set them to zero pax and then carry all cargo which subverts the game mechanism - and the even with all the seats, combis can carry a good amount of cargo - so it seems like you would have to ban them too...
3. Perhaps instead of a ban, we have "national airports" on a list where the preference for PAX causes cargo related fees to be much higher than a normal airport.
Just a few thoughts as I start to noodle on this idea!
How can you diferentiate LHR from the likes of JFK, SIN, HND or FRA? They belong to the same tier 1 airports, and there are buckets of cargo flights operating to those airports. It seems like LHR is the exception, rather than the norm.
EDIT: I mean IRL.
On the other hand, cargo being a CBD-based system, it is already limited by the competition between major airports (especially in the London area).
To me, the main problem with cargo revenue, is not that numbers are over-tuned (although they are and should be reduced), but its the fact that cargo numbers are tuned around extremely high cargo handling fees.
In my cargo only companies, cargo handling makes up ~20% of my total expenses. This doesn't seem like an issue, but since the amount or cargo you carry scales this expense, it skews cargo's profitability to be very biased towards long haul, and makes low load factor routes extremely viable. Because such a large portion of cargo's expenses are on a variable cost, which scales with how much cargo you are moving, it makes it possible to fly cargo routes with tiny load factors, since the "cargo handing" cost is also so low for these routes. This also makes it exceptionally hard to compete with a cargo user, since if you compete are reduce their cargo, a huge amount of the losses are mitigated on the fact their expenses are being lowered too (20% of your competition goes to waste just reducing their costs) making a decently run cargo player virtually invisible to competition and bankruptcy. Handling costs also makes short haul cargo have significantly worse margins compared to long haul. (short haul cargo is relatively balanced, but long haul print money like nothing else)
What would be a good change IMO is if cargo revenue was cut say 20%, and cargo handling fees were cut to like 1/3 of what it is now. That would overall reduce cargo profit margins by around 6-7% and put it inline with pax, and make extremely low LF routes, like flying 22% LF 777f's still netting over 1m/week impossible. Solutions like getting more people to play cargo seems impossible to the difficult in acquiring cargo planes models, and the higher complexity of CBD, meaning for now most players will still focus on pax, despite lucrativeness of cargo.
Quote from: tungstennedge on June 02, 2021, 12:45:48 AM
and the higher complexity of CBD, meaning for now most players will still focus on pax, despite lucrativeness of cargo.
...until CBD for pax comes in, at which point there'll be no reason not to I guess. Cargo might see a big jump then because it's actually simpler in many ways - no restrictions on slot times, proximity of flights or numbers of tech-stops.
Quotemaybe cargo aricraft should be banned or heavily penalised from landing at major hubs. No way in normal times Heathrow lets cargo planes land, the slots are too precious and they want the duty free sorry passengers. Cargo gets sent to Stansted and other tier2 airports.
The large number of pax flights at places like LHR pretty much makes cargo-only a waste of time. Not only are you sharing the potential with other nearby airports but also with the belly capacity of several 777/A340/whatever. I suppose it's profitable, especially if you're based there but, for anybody else, there's more money to be made flying your dedicated freighters elsewhere. I'm always against any artificial bans that don't mirror real life. Properly tuned game mechanics should make that unnecessary, which they pretty much do in most cases. Yeah, I'd like to build a massive cargo hub at STN or EMA etc. so a little more tuning is needed, I agree. Again, CBD for pax will help as LHR will be relegated to a second-tier airport anyway!
Quote from: DanDan on June 01, 2021, 10:27:01 AM
Would it be possible to reduce cargo revenues by about 30 to 50%? Would make things a bit more even in my opinion.
Just removing the "Empty Capacity Cargo Steering exploit" would go a long way to to fix the imbalance.
The worst approach would be to cut revenue for players who don't abuse the exploit and still leave the exploit in place.
That would just completely destroy cargo and CBD...
My concern is how easy it is for a new cargo airline to enter an oversold pax market and destroy the cargo load factor, cargo market share and cargo profit of a pax airline that carries cargo and has been serving the market for a long time.
sssshh the lot of you and leave cargo alone, it's a useful hidden secret!
Quote from: groundbum2 on June 02, 2021, 06:49:48 PM
sssshh the lot of you and leave cargo alone, it's a useful hidden secret!
It's great without the exploit, but I stopped playing cargo airports for now, because I know how to exploit the system, and I don't want to play that way.
Quote from: JumboShrimp on June 02, 2021, 07:31:44 PM
It's great without the exploit, but I stopped playing cargo airports for now, because I know how to exploit the system, and I don't want to play that way.
I don't see how cargo steering with capacity is an exploit. Just because flying the most tiny freighter 1000 times is no longer the best strategy is not an exploit in my mind (think about how weird it would be if IRL airline flew 5 daily 737'sf instead of one md11f). Cargo has to steer of something, and Id hate it to be another frequency based affair. Pax, and same cargo based operations are already dominated by frequency, so if cargo just became another thing that benefits only from frequency, well we can enjoy every cargo airline trying to fight for 757's until 2017. In real life, cargo steering would obviously be highly motivated by prices, but that has always been a non factor in this game so that cant be chosen.
What can be done, imo is lower far cargo is willing to go away from the actual landing spot, eg it should be much harder to pull cargo in a square at the edge of a 200km radius, so cargo would much prefer to fly to the closest airport to its destination. My understanding is that this is already an intended effect, but it is far to weak to ever be considered when making decisions in-game, (or maybe im just ignorant and never noticed it)
easy solution is:
cargo fleets should be count as separate fleet in commonality calculations
so - if you are flying DC8 pax and started to use DC8CF or DC8F - it should be counted as 2 fleets.
Quote from: MuzhikRB on June 07, 2021, 04:42:23 PM
easy solution is:
cargo fleets should be count as separate fleet in commonality calculations
so - if you are flying DC8 pax and started to use DC8CF or DC8F - it should be counted as 2 fleets.
That would give cargo airlines an even more exclusive edge. No competition for cargo players.
but they will not compete with pax companies
Having read through all the above suggestions and trying to weigh up the summary of what 1 thing might satisfy the most people, would it be best to ask for all major airport which are in cities where other substantial airports are also located, to have the cargo fees increased say 10-fold. That would substantially encourage airline to utilise the secondary airports for cargo flights (including Combi). So for example: LHR & LGW get 10x costs, so cargo + combi encouraged to use LUT or STN and similar concepts all around the world ?
...what is 'cargo steering'?
Quote from: groundbum2 on June 01, 2021, 08:58:47 PM
maybe cargo aricraft should be banned or heavily penalised from landing at major hubs. No way in normal times Heathrow lets cargo planes land, the slots are too precious and they want the duty free sorry passengers. Cargo gets sent to Stansted and other tier2 airports.
Simon
I wouldn't want cargo profitability changed (sorry Dani - I know we agree on most things but not so much this one :laugh: :-[ ) but I do agree with you Simon - ridiculous to think that airports like LHR would be swamped with cargo flights.
Quote from: Cornishman on August 12, 2021, 02:04:35 PM
I wouldn't want cargo profitability changed (sorry Dani - I know we agree on most things but not so much this one :laugh: :-[ ) but I do agree with you Simon - ridiculous to think that airports like LHR would be swamped with cargo flights.
Underneath the static model and way of thinking, sure. But part of the concept of city based demand is that it allows atypical airports to become the major hubs. When pax CBD does get added, I'm sure it won't take long before a concerted effort in one GW is made to debase LHR as the King of Intl LH.
Quote from: Mort on August 13, 2021, 08:45:57 AM
it won't take long before a concerted effort in one GW is made to debase LHR as the King of Intl LH.
Northolt Intl? North Weald Worldwide Port? White Waltham Global? lol
Quote from: Mort on August 13, 2021, 08:45:57 AM
When pax CBD does get added, I'm sure it won't take long before a concerted effort in one GW is made to debase LHR as the King of Intl LH.
I don't think there'll be any effort needed at all. Initially LHR will probably start off with a bigger catchment area so will do OK, but the curfew is the killer. Anyone who bases at LGW or even STN will slaughter a competitor at LHR. This is the current end-of-game coverage map for the UK: Basically anywhere south of LBA will eat into LHR traffic. I actually think a proper concerted effort could make somewhere like BHX the 'king' of the UK. When it's level 10, it will take traffic from the south coast all the way up to the Scottish borders. It would cover 70% to 80% of both LHR and MAN!
Quote from: Mort on August 13, 2021, 08:45:57 AM
Underneath the static model and way of thinking, sure. But part of the concept of city based demand is that it allows atypical airports to become the major hubs. When pax CBD does get added, I'm sure it won't take long before a concerted effort in one GW is made to debase LHR as the King of Intl LH.
It'll be the death of this game for me. I won't be muddling though all sorts of fiddley systems to try to work out what might work. Hope it never happens.
Regarding tthe proposed "BAN" of cargo flights to slot restricted airports like Heathrow... Who are you to ban me? If I make the business decition to pay 7 million for a slot then it is my decition. Any airline has the same rights of buying and using the slot as they want. Hell, I even flew EMB120's into heathrow just to annoy the competition. And yes... it works big time as long as you know what your doing. For cargo flights into the London area I would however opt to use any other airport as cargo is regio based demand and not calculated the same as passengers.
Quote from: Mort on August 13, 2021, 08:45:57 AM
Underneath the static model and way of thinking, sure. But part of the concept of city based demand is that it allows atypical airports to become the major hubs. When pax CBD does get added, I'm sure it won't take long before a concerted effort in one GW is made to debase LHR as the King of Intl LH.
If the same exploit that exists in cargo is left for pax CBD, you can just fly A380s from one tiny airport in middle of England and suck all the passengers from the entire England.
Say you set up shop in Coventry airport, and soon enough, you can make it big enough to fly A380s and suck all the pax demand from England like you can do with cargo, exploiting the Empty Capacity demand steering...
So, hopefully, no CBD for pax, because cargo was ruined with this exploit.
Incidentally, exploit that would take just a couple of hours of programming to fix.
to ensure fairness across players, it may be helpful to expand how cargo steering works in detail. I'm not sure if anyone has performed tests in detail - I can see the "effects" of it but in terms of fairness, perhaps a detailed guide of how it works would be helpful...
Imagine you have 100 demand, and it is being supplied by 10 route pairs with 10 supply each. The system will allocate the demand equally between the 10 route pairs.
10/100 * 100 = 10 for each route.
All cargo demand is being fully served.
Now, suppose one of the route switches to 100 supply aircraft. The new demand will be split
100/190 * 100 = 52.6 (+42.6)
So after adding 90 tons of empty capacity to perfectly balanced and served environment, the empty capacity sucks the cargo demand from all the other route pairs.
Each of the other 9 routes will have
10/190 * 100 = 5.2 tons
Those who played with cargo know that carrying 50 tons of cargo is insanely profitable, and 5 tons of cargo in dedicated freighter is bankruptcy - as a result of the exploit.
The fix is very simple; If the proportion distribution of demand assigns 10 tons and the proportional demand is fully supplied, adding extra 90 tons of empty capacity would not change the allocation between route pairs, it would not steer the demand from fully server portion of proportional demand. I have a spreadsheet somewhere with the formula (algorithm).