This might be a 'tricky' question – it's a matter of game tactics – but do you 'replace' an aircraft that's taken out of service for maintenance for, say, 80 days, to make up for the loss of income?
Do you do the same for shorter periods?
As a major player, it's obviously easy to make up for such a huge loss of income, but for a smaller player, it's an immediate and serious blow to turnover.
Afterwards, you could simply put it back into service on new routes ;)
no, life's too short. Been asked a million times on these fora. If you dominate a route then your other daily flights will pick up the hole left by the plane in maint, so it all evens out. For a small airline it's not worth having a spare airframe lying around, and for a large airline (3000ac) it's too much effort to sort out, especially if seats and ranges/engines are different within the fleet. Nightmare.
I agree generally, but I'm a born micro-manager so I do sometimes. Really only in the special situation when I have a stream of brand new widebody cargo a/c arriving and some of the same type coming up for D-Checks. With a big fleet where you have a constant stream of both, it effectively gives you 5 or 6 totally "free" aircraft in service at any one time. I find it's only worth it for cargo because I will usually 'dominate' the route by having it entirely to myself so I'm guaranteed 100% LF (often at +30% price!) and it just seems wasteful to leave that revenue on the table. Does it make a noticeable difference to my bottom line? Not really (but it might improve the stats slightly). Is it satisfying to know you did everything "properly"? I guess, yes.
Generally, if my airline is small enough, and I have the time, I try to sub aircraft with a similar aircraft if available. As my airline gets bigger, I try to sub the aircraft especially if i have need of such an aircraft after its maintenance substitution days pass.
On the other hand, I am amazed that taking aircraft out of service with no substitution is even available in this sim. No real world airline would do such a thing unless it was required by an accident taking aircraft off the line, etc.
I wonder how big an airline could get if every player had to sub MX aircraft or lose money? Putting MX on auto pilot is a way for players to build and forget! This sometimes does not seem like an acceptable "strategy" - in my opinion.