I was wondering: in what timeframe is demand calculated for an airport pair? Is it only per day, or is it calculated per three days, or per week etc.?
Because let's say it's calculated per day, then it makes no sense to have less-than-daily flights, does it? If demand is too low to sustain a daily flight then it won't have any use to offer weekly or three times per week service. While if it is calculated per week, then very thin routes could for example be served twice weekly or something (which I do a lot myself and I see some of my competitors do as well). However when I cut back some flailing routes from say daily to 3 times a week, I am not noticing an increase in demand (no competition on these routes).
I am running an airline from a small hub (4 bars) and within the vicinity there is only a very small amount of cities that generate enough demand, only the 3 largest domestic routes and a couple of nearby largest cities. So my instinct was to serve the faltering routes maybe twice weekly and in some cases even only one flight per week.
So does this strategy have any use whatsoever? Or should one only fly to destinations that can be served at least daily?
It’s calculated daily and you could technically get away with 2 or 3 weekly flights, as each flight will get 3 demand calculations. The demand calculation every day is distributed among the available flights based on ORS rating and other criteria. A less than daily flight can technically capture the whole week’s worth of demand with 2 or 3 weekly flights, if there is no competition for the connections on that route (including via a third party hub).
It's calculated daily and you could technically get away with 2 or 3 weekly flights, as each flight will get 3 demand calculations. The demand calculation every day is distributed among the available flights based on ORS rating and other criteria. A less than daily flight can technically capture the whole week's worth of demand with 2 or 3 weekly flights, if there is no competition for the connections on that route (including via a third party hub).
What happens if i change the seatconfig on a plane? I changed the the seats on my 738bg, comfort plus from confort, and lowered the overall seat number with ~15.
This will be recalculated on the daily demand recalculation , or? And i just hope this wont cancel my flight.
Any changes you make to price, seating, service, etc. only take effect for new flights, i.e after 72 hours. Any flights already showing in the ORS will keep the previous settings.
After reading this post, I was trying to make some low demand route from daily become 2/3x weekly. But the demand or booking procedure seems different from what I think, so I would appreciate if anyone can explain more to me.
For example, I fly Cairo - Larnaca, when it was a daily flight, it has 3 round of booking, each time 3 passengers, making each daily flight after full round of booking 9 passengers.
If now I make a 3x weekly flight (even distribution throughout the week):
Today is Monday, there is a flight on Wednesday, time is after demand calculation, then will the flight receive a booking of 3 passengers (daily demand), or the flight will receive Monday booking (3pax), Tuesday booking (3pax) and Wednesday booking (3pax), and tomorrow I will have Tuesday booking (3pax), Wednesday booking (3pax), and on Wednesday (the day of flight), receive Wednesday booking (3pax), making a total 18 pax on the flights?
It seems to me the weekly flights will only receive the same number of pax as daily flights though, is it the pax will try to make the fastest connection on that day instead of waiting to travel on another day? Thanks in advance.
My experience shows clearly that a less than daily flight does not serve any purpose.
If you don't operate a flight on a given day, then the passengers who want to travel that day (e.g. the demand calculation on that day) will simply travel via other airlines/routings. You don't have a benefit of more passengers the next day, just because there was no flight the day before.
Example:
Demand for A>B is 3 passengers a day.
Day 1, you operate your flight (no competitors), you get the 3 passengers on your flight.
Day 2, no flight on the route, passengers do "travel" on other means or not travel at all.
Day 3, you operate your flight (as above), you get 3 passengers on your flight. You don't get more than 3, e.g. the passengers from day 2 do not "wait" for the next flight.
I’ve had some success my cutting my less well doing daily flights to 4x per week. But I haven’t gone the obvious way. What I have is departures every 42 hours (week/4). This means the minimal waiting time, maximum number of demand calculations, but another advantage is that each flight connects to different flights so I can see if I go back to daily, which time is most successful
My experience shows clearly that a less than daily flight does not serve any purpose.
If you don't operate a flight on a given day, then the passengers who want to travel that day (e.g. the demand calculation on that day) will simply travel via other airlines/routings. You don't have a benefit of more passengers the next day, just because there was no flight the day before.
Example:
Demand for A>B is 3 passengers a day.
Day 1, you operate your flight (no competitors), you get the 3 passengers on your flight.
Day 2, no flight on the route, passengers do "travel" on other means or not travel at all.
Day 3, you operate your flight (as above), you get 3 passengers on your flight. You don't get more than 3, e.g. the passengers from day 2 do not "wait" for the next flight.
Of course passengers will use other connections - but only if they are available! So if you operate flights to airports with low demand and no competition, less-than-daily flights can be useful. I believe the demand is distributed over available connections three days ahead.
There is always other connections. In meigs there are no direct flight between CAI and LCA but 469 opportunities to do so per 24 hour period
You're still looking at rather large airports. Say you want to serve Akulivik (AKV) and even your daily DH2 from YUL - which is the only flight to AKV - doesn't fill up. Then you might consider flying less-than-daily.
I agree that there is little to be gained from serving airports less than daily airports when there is any competition at all.
