Passenger Demand

[FORSBERC]

Hello everyone,

I have played AWS a few years ago, but I am now getting back into it. (For some reason, my old account didn't work, so I created another one.) I have searched the forums for a decent amount of time, and I have reread the manual, but I have been unable to find the complete list of how route demand works.

Can someone either link me to the post that has the complete info, or please help me by listing it here?

I know CI, RI, flight times, departure times (and small amount of arrival times), frequency, seating comfort, and aircraft condition do make a difference. Am I missing any? Additionally, how much does each factor into the overall passenger decision to fly on my flight versus someone else's.

I have read from multiple posts that over supplying a route that has competition on it, will allow you to have more passengers, and higher LFs, than without competition. Can anyone explain how and why this works? Furthermore, if I drop my prices on a route that I overserve, will more people decide to fly? And if they do, will that increase be reflected on the route planning page?

Finally, if I were to operate one flight a week (with 50 seats) into a market that only has 50 passengers a week, will some passengers from other days of the week fly on my flight? Or should I expect only the passengers who want to fly on the day of the flight to fly?

Thanks in advance,
Zoom

[Sanabas]

Hello everyone,

I have played AWS a few years ago, but I am now getting back into it. (For some reason, my old account didn't work, so I created another one.) I have searched the forums for a decent amount of time, and I have reread the manual, but I have been unable to find the complete list of how route demand works.

Can someone either link me to the post that has the complete info, or please help me by listing it here?

I know CI, RI, flight times, departure times (and small amount of arrival times), frequency, seating comfort, and aircraft condition do make a difference. Am I missing any? Additionally, how much does each factor into the overall passenger decision to fly on my flight versus someone else's.

I have read from multiple posts that over supplying a route that has competition on it, will allow you to have more passengers, and higher LFs, than without competition. Can anyone explain how and why this works?

Not oversupplying itself, but running more flights. You won't get more yourself than without competition, but there might be more overall pax on the route, split between all the competing airlines.

Furthermore, if I drop my prices on a route that I overserve, will more people decide to fly?

Probably, yes.

And if they do, will that increase be reflected on the route planning page?

No. Think of the route planning page as showing the default demand. If you offer half-price tickets, then people who wouldn't normally fly might decide to take up the offer, giving you some more pax. But the default demand hasn't changed, if you go back to normal prices, your tickets sold will go back to normal as well.

Finally, if I were to operate one flight a week (with 50 seats) into a market that only has 50 passengers a week, will some passengers from other days of the week fly on my flight? Or should I expect only the passengers who want to fly on the day of the flight to fly?

Pax will only fly on that day of the week. Someone who wants to fly on Thursday will never fly any other time. If that could get added to the demand model, it'd be awesome, smaller airports/routes become workable, for example you could run an airline out of Kenya flying once or twice/week to lots of LH destinations, whereas if you did it now, you'd have a lot of routes that are unflyable because they don't support 1 flight/day.

[exchlbg]

You already understood most of what is to be known on passenger demand system. There is no topic where the correct formula of the demand system is explained and Sami will never give it out.
Finding your way through all these circumstances you mentioned stays your work by try and error.
Demands are named by 95% correctness if you are some way into the game and staff is 100% content. Daily demand can´t be transferred onto other days.
Flying a 50-seater (without seat reduction) on a 10- pax- per- day- route would trigger an oversupply warning, as you are not allowed to supply more than 200% with own seats on any flight at any day .
Oversupplying a route in combination with competition is always possible and often seen, and under perfect conditions more PAX than posted will use your service, but that stays to be found out by try and error again.You don´t need competition to make more people fly than expected, but your offer must be very good and cheap to make that happen.
There are many requests for enhancing the demand system pending and maybe will be incorporated when the new planned demand system is ready to be unvailed.

[FORSBERC]

Thank you for the responses. They are quite helpful.

Zoom

[FORSBERC]

Are very small aircraft profitable now? I know before they were terrible. For example <15 seats.

Thanks!

[exchlbg]

There are tests that proved small aircraft lines being profitable, but you will have to run run it with optimal care and knowledge and you won´t create a major carrier.I just do it and it´s a lot of fine tuning and micromangement to stay alive. Additionally new slot distribution system was introduced that might make things worse for small enterprizes, but that stays to be seen in the long run.
Running a very small AC business IMO is not something a newcomer should try for first attempt.

[Maarten Otto]

Indeed. First timers should stick with the proven tactics to start learning how to play this game. Running a 30 seater airliner (what I currently do) does take skill, knowledge and a lot of fine tuning.

[brique]

just to be contrarian : I've run 30-seaters under old rules, fine : under new rules even easier : 15/19-seaters worked okay too. currently running 8-seaters and no complaints, I'm buying and leasing out 19-seaters to handle tax issues. I've got a replacement fleet almost all ordered and paid for due in a year or so.

the bugbear for small bird operators is, and will remain : keeping the small plane lines open long enough to fleet, then re-fleet as and when to game-end : frankly, one-off slot costs are as nothing compared to the Mx cost, and headaches, of keeping ageing birds flying as there is no replacement left in production.

That said, small-bird operations are doable, but not in a major airport : stay cat4 or less and you'll be fine.

[Alberto]

Before the changes introduced earlier today it was totally doable: the landing and handling fees scale down when you use smaller planes. Personnel costs (and number of people employed) are still huge compared to both real life or airlines with much bigger operations but notwithstanding this you can definitely run this kind of airline.

We will see if today's changes will make the slots' price rise too much... when you run a small airline, you most likely do that from a small airport with little or no competition, so I think quite likely you will be the guy with >50% of the slots at that airport, hence the price of slots for you will be pretty high.

Other than that, I recommend you optimise your operations as much as possible, for example by flying 100% of the time in which it's possible to fly. Example: in an airport with 22-06 curfew, take off for the first flight at 0600 and make the last flight land at 2155 until all 0600 slots are taken; then take off at 0605 and so on... You might want to look into multi-knapsack optimisation problems to find optimal routes allocation that allow you to do this with all (or almost all) of your aircraft.

[brique]

the new additional anti-monopoly penalty change applies to major airports which are slot-locked : thats probably the top 20-40 or so worldwide and ones which no small-bird operation is ever going to be successfully run from anyway.

There is no new penalty for other classes of airport ; just the same one that was in place before:

there is a dynamic pricing system on slot purchases now which will penalise mass slot-buying over a short period of time, but that can be avoided by spacing out your scheduling : few small bird operators will be doing that kind of mass-scheduling anyway.

so, the changes dont really affect small-bird operators that much really :

I'd say, if the new dynamic pricing throws up any off-the-wall instances, use the Bug Report forum, include any relevant data and I'm sure Sami will be on the case : it may well be it needs a tweak here and there : so give Sami hard data to work with and any tweaks made will be the better for it.

[Alberto]

I'm a bit puzzled by the massive change of slot price by moving the departure date by 5 minutes in the attached pictures, but maybe it has some other (legit) cause that I don't know. What do you think?

[brique]

I'd say thats damn odd ; and schedule the flight for 06.05

I do think we have to now factor in our recent history of slot buys to get a feel for how 'true' the next one is priced to be, also consider our potential monopoly position (for the existing clauses for them, if applicable) : already we know the fewer slots are left in the pool for a given time-band, the higher they get priced : also, its always been the case that you pay more for each additional slot as you grow yourself : one could imagine a perfect storm of circumstance where you hit the upper limits on each factor and the price gets extremely silly : My feeling is that the examples we have seen quoted, the 30mil, 40mil per set were never going to be that cheap to start with, the new penalties just push them over the edge into silly country, is all.

[Sami]

I'm a bit puzzled by the massive change of slot price by moving the departure date by 5 minutes in the attached pictures, but maybe it has some other (legit) cause that I don't know. What do you think?

That's definitely not correct, if you are still seeing it post a bug report of it. Since 0600 and 0605 are effectively the same slot and price should not vary more than 10% max there.