I know some servers are currently slow, but this is a suggestion for when they get back to speed.
I find it frustrating that some flights only have 2 calculation demands in three days because the flight takes place during the calculation demand. Would it be possible for airports to have 2 calculation demands a day? That way if the flight takes place during one of the two moments, it would still calculate 5 out of 6 times.
Example:
Brussels (BRU), Belgium has a calculation demand at 18:32:24 LT in Brussels (17:32:24 UTC). If you have a flight from Brussels to Bangkok (BKK) which leaves at 07:05 LT (06:05 UTC), it will arrive at 17:42 LT in Brussels (16:42) and be ready for departure again at 19:27 LT in Brussels (18:27 UTC).
Let us assume it is Monday July 21 09:20 LT in Brussels (08:20 UTC). The Monday flight left approx. two hours ago, so the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday flights have been added to the schedule. The Thursday flight will calculate the demand for the first time Tuesday at 18:32:24 LT in Brussels (17:32:24 UTC). I believe that is because a flight is only added to ORS after the turn-around has been completed. In this case the plane will only have 2 calculation demands (Tuesday and Wednesday) because Thursday morning the flight already leaves. This means 2 times out of 3.
In case of 2 calculation demands a day, 12 hours apart, it would have 5 calculation demands out of 6, which is more interesting for plane filling.
Is this a realistic idea to implement after the servers return to their normal state?
Since this puts a certain strsin on the servers, doublinig the demand calculations seems very unlikely.
Personally, Inever quite got whatthebig fuzz is about having only two caculations. It’s only two for your hub, meaning less direct pax book that flight. That, in turn, leaves more seats to transfer pax - more pax paying for two flights rather than one.
Why don't you build a wave around "demand calculation" time, so that when calculation time comes, most of your planes at that hub are on the ground?
What difference will that make?
Back in the day when I used to spend hours on AS, I came up with a strategy on when 'NOT' to have your departure wave. It made sense at the time, but now I can't for the life of me remember.
It was somewhere along the lines of: don't have your departure wave straight after your demand calculation time. Has anyone else played around with this idea? Im sorry for being ultra vague.
Well, it could make sense from the point of view that those flights would be immediately booked by demand calculation, instead of being (partially) booked by connections.
Because my flight departure is after the demand calculation, my flight is likely to have more transfer passengers (internal and external).
If you have a direct competitor, that means that passengers boarding at Dubai will have more seat availability with the competitor.
So for various key routes (and I find this would apply to at least 50 of my routes that have significant point-to-point demand), you may be inadvertently helping your competitor.
Remember that transfer pax may end up at their destination via your competitor or another airline, splitting the profit available.
Scenario 2:
Demand Calculation: 1600 HT
Flight Departure: 1500 HT
Flight: Dubai - London Heathrow
Direct passengers have more seat availability as they book -23 hrs prior to the flight. Remaining seat capacity is available for transfer pax.
Your competitor now has excess capacity, but may or may not receive all the transfer pax, thus reducing his loads and profits.
I would consider the reverse to hold true. In the first case scenario pax originating in Dubai can book 3 times to London, while in the second case they can book only 2 times. Meaning, that the first case scenario would get more direct pax, and second case scenario would get more transfer pax. At least that is how I view it.
I would consider the reverse to hold true. In the first case scenario pax originating in Dubai can book 3 times to London, while in the second case they can book only 2 times. Meaning, that the first case scenario would get more direct pax, and second case scenario would get more transfer pax. At least that is how I view it.
No, the flight will still have 3 demand cycles, you could say it departs 22 hours later instead of 2 hours earlier.
I think I read here in the threads that the demand calculation only books pax on flights that arrive to their destination within 72 hours of the demand calculation time. If one flight is in the air at that time, it would only go through 2 rounds of demand calculation, and not 3 rounds. Maybe I am mistaken, but that is how I understand it. And if this holds true, than such flight will be more prone to have more connecting pax as opposed to more direct pax.
I think I read here in the threads that the demand calculation only books pax on flights that arrive to their destination within 72 hours of the demand calculation time. If one flight is in the air at that time, it would only go through 2 rounds of demand calculation, and not 3 rounds. Maybe I am mistaken, but that is how I understand it. And if this holds true, than such flight will be more prone to have more connecting pax as opposed to more direct pax.
I believe that is correct as my understanding is the demand calc is basically just the system running the ORS for every given route and this is how the ORS functions.
It doesn't really matter since most passengers are from connections and connection bookings can happen any second during the 72 hours from flight appearing in ORS until departure. For longer distance connections it is also fair since the same rules applies to all competitors.
IMO there are other more important and unbalanced things with demand going on, that can be solved without any extra calculation if AS team is smart about it.
The two most unbalanced if you ask me is:
Bookings are made per flight/connection and not per airline. The result is massivly favoring small airplanes since 10x CRJ700 departures will get 50 pax each while a single 747 with the same ORS rating will also only get 50 pax. Amount of departures is king when it comes to stealing as many passengers as possible. A side effect of this inbalance is that so many more slots are taken compared to reality because players in AS prefer 50 daily departures with small airplanes on the same route. Real passengers will first look at what airlines fly a connections and only in rare cases care if there are 40 or 4 daily connections available to choose from.
Max ORS of 99/100 is possible to reach while still being quite profitable in AS. IMO real passengers on a competetive market would never be 100% satisfied and happy with zero room for improvements unless you are selling tickets at a big loss. To change the system so it's very hard to get above ~70/80 rating and still break even would be a great thing because now all airlines has to decide how low profit margins that are acceptable to attract the most passengers. Yes this means that a big airline can decide to knock out smaller ones by undercutting and making a loss. But for how long can they do this, how much time can they devote to detailcontrolling the pricing, and what if other smaller competitors start to challenge them everywhere else where their margins are high and ORS rating is low?