Flight usage based on surrounding pop. density

BigQ · Post by **BigQ** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 7:30 pm

I've been noticing that all of my flights in my current theater of operation are never more than 80% sold. Yet I guarantee a prompt service and the cost of these flights are even less than the standard fare! My guess is that the database works with the number of people in the city the airport is based in. Any way it could actually be changed to the population density of a 50nm radius? That way we actually use the correct amount of people in the area, not the amount of people in the city.

For example, there are two airports, an intl one and a smaller one. the intl has the name of the city, the smaller one, while very close to the other, has the name of a smaller town. True, there will be less passengers at the smaller, but the population density of the area is great, so technically there should be some demand.

I'm probably mistaken as well as to how the airport's users are calculated, and my proposition might require enormeous amounts of work, but i'd like to see a full flight from Sydney (pop. 5 million ish (?)) to Canberra (the capital of Australia) one day...

tsb · Post by **tsb** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:36 pm

Well I'm based @ EGKB which doesn't seem to be a highly populated airport but I always get at least 90% sold seats, very strange in my opinion with what you're experiencing

Post by **cmdrnmartin** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:48 pm

From what I understand, your reputation gets you more seats. I fly from BIG cities, 500 000+ and Ive had some flights at 95% although most of mine are at 100%. I believe this has to do with the fact that I cahrge the standard fare, but that the reputation of Wardair is 120, so they flock to me. When I started off, there were 70% cap flights most of the time. Trust me, the more you fly, and the less you crash, the more people will fly on your planes.

That being said, If i took a 747 from Nunavut to Alert, would I get 100% capacity, even if the pop of those two towns is about the same as the load of a 747?

Now as for population density, that really doesnt mean much when it comes to airports. Hong Kong Intl is extremely busy, but is built far outside of town, same with KATL and KDEN. The number of flights to and from an airport, now that should influence pax load, since people want convenince. I think the solution to codesharing that we came up with adequately increases the passenger numbers to a high level. Really, to be realistice, not very many airlines can enjoy 80% full aircraft on average, we should be happy we even get full planes!

Post by **Safari Air** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 9:58 pm

my flights are normally around 90-95% full, which is good, but yeah it's worked on popularity

BigQ · Post by **BigQ** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 12:44 am

All good point.

I'm gonna go fly a bit more and shut my mouth

Post by **Konny** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:12 am

Yep, currently the number of passengers only depends on the ticket price and your reputation.
A dependency on the departure airport would be great, but it's a lot of work adding the population to all the about 7000 airports in the database

Maybe I calculate it from the runway lengths, but that wouldn't be very precise.

Post by **cmdrnmartin** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:04 am

Konny wrote:Yep, currently the number of passengers only depends on the ticket price and your reputation.
A dependency on the departure airport would be great, but it's a lot of work adding the population to all the about 7000 airports in the database
Maybe I calculate it from the runway lengths, but that wouldn't be very precise.

Not really... heh, Denver (5x12000 and 1x 160000) would have quite the population!

I think the situation right now is fine, you're still in Beta. I can work out a few ideas for passenger load beyond ticket price and reputation if you want me to. Just maybe small 2% bumps in total load for certain criteria.

Airport served by Widebodies +1
Airport has 5+ Airlines +2%
Airport has 10+ airlines +4%
Airport has 50+ Flights Inbound +2%

Things like that. But again, Beta, so not a presing issue. Would like the scrap airplane system though