economy model

[Tomb]

I was thinking, flynet in common with airline type games has the bigger plane is better school of economics. A model that falls down as soon as you look at the low fare carriers who made lots of money while the big boys got into trouble with their bigger planes

Basically the bigger the plane the better the economics

Would it be not be more reasonable to have a “potential” passenger/cargo load that your airline rating is applied to.

For example a 100 passengers are available and your 80% airline rating means 80 passengers get on your plane be it a B737-300 Or a B747-400 Jumbo jet

If you plane can only take 8 pax say a small biz jet then only 8 pax get on

Currently something like 80 pax would get on a B737 and 320 pax on a B747 in the current system ,This in my view does not reflect an economic reality.

The method I suggest only 80 would get on B737 or B747, much closer to reality

One of those aircraft is the better choice aircraft to use in this circumstance

I would also make it more interesting to choose the right plane for the job other than simply the biggest

Make the pax/cargo “growable” in that at the end of the week say 15 flights from this airport, add it next weeks potential as 115

If no flights that week then drop by 10 or something like that down to a minimum of 30

I would suggest a purely arbitary (to start) base pax/cargo level as a function of runway length say for example a 10,000ft runway = a base level of 100 Pax /1000kg cargo

More than one runway, add em together

I would suggest flights from a destination count (unless you want a really large database for individual routes) and ignore arrivals for the purpose of “growing”

I could expand on this much more but not worth it unless the basic concept of calculating PAX/Cargo load is based on airport size and activity rather than aircraft size

Thoughts ?

[vknierim]

Hi,

I like your idea to make the pax/cargo numbers a bit more realistic.

They system you suggested would make it very hard for small airlines (only 1 or two pilots) to survive, though. Some people can only afford to fly once or twice a week and would not be able to make money, because they do not fly to every airport on their flightplan. If the passenger/cargo numbers drop quickly, they would not make profit anymore.... And just flying a couple of routes would be boring after a while.

Maybe the numbers should be based on the popularity and size of the start and the destination airport. This would mean that flying between two small regional airports would not make sense (i.e. profit) using a 737 (or the like).

Just my thoughts

Greetings

Volker

[CAPFlyer]

Volker, in all honesty, reducing and/or eliminating all 1 or 2 man VAs is not necessarily a bad thing on FlyNET. They take up a lot of resources on the server for very little use, and by making it harder to survive small, it gives additional incentive for a CEO to continually grow his airline and keep bringing in more pilots, thus preventing a lot of people who are new to FlyNET just opening their 1-man VA and not doing anything with it.

I know a lot of us are hoping that by this summer we'll see some previously previewed features going into effect to get back to this idea that pilots joining FlyNET should be discouraged from starting a VA from the outset unless they run an already established VA outside of FlyNET and are simply bringing their VA onto FlyNET for added realism to what they're already doing. Very rarely do you see people start an airline who haven't worked for an airline in the past, so the idea is that we need to make sure that there is positive incentive for the same thing to happen here and people join a VA and learn FlyNET from the pilot side before jumping into owning a VA and not knowing what to do.

[FsNovice]

Capflyer, whilst i understand the reasoning behind removing 1 and 2 man airlines, i would take issue with removing JetDirect who only have 2 pilots but have recently lost some due to them moving on to bigger and better things within flynet. i personally fly a lot, when i can(currently on my way to hong kong and austrilia) and the other guy doesnt fly often, but i am trying to get in contact with him. I am for removing 1 and 2 man airlines that do not operate very often, but ones like mine that fly regularly with only one person should be allowed surely?

[atleiker]

FsNovice,

I don't think CAP or anyone else at flynet would be in favor of eliminating any airline that flies regularly even if it is a one man show. Heck, CAP's own GMC is a one man show.

Personally, I'd like to see all of us 1 and 2 man operations join in a cooperative "employee owned" operation where the CEO was really only a facilitator fulfilled requests from pilots for routes and planes. There is no real competition on routes here so it would basically be like having your own airline still since you would fly what you want, where you want, when you want. Anyone interested in forming a Co-op airline with me?

Ted

[jds4191]

the only VA's to me that should be deleted are the ones that have absolutely no activity. even now, they have no a/c and no miles or hours. i say send out a warning to the airlines that would be on that list to mstart flying instead of taking up space.

[IslandBum]

Personally, I'd like to see all of us 1 and 2 man operations join in a cooperative "employee owned" operation where the CEO was really only a facilitator fulfilled requests from pilots for routes and planes. There is no real competition on routes here so it would basically be like having your own airline still since you would fly what you want, where you want, when you want. Anyone interested in forming a Co-op airline with me?

Ted

There already is one -- Venture Hawaii(or Venture Holdings International) We operate several independent areas with managers who build their own routes and manage aircraft - Aircraft are moved around within the entire system to fill
the current needs - for instance at the moment the Venture Alaska operation is very quite therefore we have moved 1-11s and HS780s to the South American Operation which is currently being set up - For a long time VHA has been built so any division could be broken off and formed into a seperate airline (oh dear WHERE could I have gotten that idea?? Virg...Virgi..the name slips me at the moment ) So if you are a single airline operator and feeling the pinch AND like flying old equipment on interesting routes and DONT like flying legs over 90 minutes the VHI could be the place for you

mahalo

Leif

Oh yes BTW - two things - YES Im the CEO of VHI bt it doesnt mean a thing - there are at least 5 managers in the company who are fully qualified and capable of filling that postion - and its very definitly a Democratic operation everyone from the newest new hire to the silver backs have a vote in what the company does or doesnt do. Secondly WITHOUT being so engrosssed in rolling up obscene amounts of virtual $$$s or getting into "Mines Bigger" contests we do very well - both economically and statistically - Im not really worried about making the "who flew most" or farthest or carried the most people (Hard to do when the average seating capacity in our fleet is 60) - HOWEVER our pilots do feature almost monthly in the "perfect record" category meaning they fly within the rules set down by Flynet - but ask them they will tell you they fly that way because its the most realistic way to fly.

[atleiker]

I'm not one to reinvent the wheel, Leif, so I'll take our conversation to PM since I'd like to discuss things further with you.

[CAPFlyer]

I am not for eliminating them, I am for minimizing them to the point of being people who have already established themselves on the system and are moving "up" in the world of FlyNET and VAs. The idea is that they open a VA to build it and make it bigger, not open it and have it stagnate. Very few one-man airlines last very long unless they're flying a very specific (and extremely limited) business model. The costs just outweigh the income by too much to keep them in business very long. The economy model that Konny is trying to build does that - create incentive for VAs to grow and be multi-pilot affairs instead of having hundreds of "one-man shows" that aren't very active. If under the more realistic economic model you can survive, then great. But it'll give a foundation for failure, something that doesn't really exist now since inactivity has zero penalty to the airline's CEO thus giving them no real enticement to grow/stay active or close.

[vknierim]

I am not for eliminating them, I am for minimizing them to the point of being people who have already established themselves on the system and are moving "up" in the world of FlyNET and VAs. [...] If under the more realistic economic model you can survive, then great. But it'll give a foundation for failure, something that doesn't really exist now since inactivity has zero penalty to the airline's CEO thus giving them no real enticement to grow/stay active or close.

I totally agree with you on that point CAPFlyer. Inactive VA's should have it hard to survive on flyNet by implementing a more realistic economic system. But care has to be taken here that it is not TOO hard to survive in the future, which could mean that founding a new airline would get nearly impossible... Introducing fixed costs per week/month (i.e. for operating at an airport, maintaining the aircraft) would be a good thing to implement. Just like in real life it would prevent the airlines to open too many routes and have a large fleet doing nothing. The income multiplier should also be set to a fixed value (i.e. 50 or 100) in my opinion.

Volker

[UKD192]

Hmmm, good ideas in the original post.
I agree, It does look rather silly, a bit like 747's doing ATR42 runs with full Pax

My idea would be to put a Fixed LARGE operating cost on the Aircraft. The bigger the aircraft the higher the cost. You would be forced to fly long distance to get the profit margin back. As to the virtual passenger availability, I'm not sure how one would go about that, runway length is, well, ermm, a different way of adding a control factor to passengers. I think that to limit pax numbers, perhaps the following factors should be taken into account.
Jet Aircraft:-
- Ticket price - any price above standard sees a sharp reduction in Pax. unless Reputation is 120% AND the aircraft Status is 99.8% or more.
- Reputation of less than 100% see a LARGE reduction in PAX
- Status of Aircraft - Anything less that 99.8% see a large reduction in Pax.

The reason for only having these constraints on Jet aircraft, is to enable the smaller VA's to grow and compete effectively against the big boys. Limiting Pax numbers is the way to go I think. Just ideas going round in my head atm.

Cheers now
Rob

[MMattyK]

As an basic thought, if you was to have a passenger modifier (passengers don't know about aircraft seviceabillity generally) but you could do something with the reputation and aircraft status if you wished with a simple calculation of airline reputation x aircraft status as a percentage, and use this as a modifier for passenger load... eg possible full load of 100 x (reputation = 80% x aircraft status = 90%) would equal 72 passemgers, or you could modify it further with the pilot rating as well in a similar fashion...
Having said that, I'm quite happy with the way things are