I was wondering why so many airlines are choosing to fly with 737-200, tupolev and other old aircraft when there where some great deals with some 10 year old 737-900 HGW's. I have 5 and a capacity of almost 40,000 a week as well as a high image. Old planes are not really a thing I would use in the game as they have a lot of fuel burn and a bad image,
I am happy that the 777's are profitable on the aircraft type evaluation and may invest in them later rather than the dream liners, (there is more size varies.)
Players are using these in early days, because they are quickly available and cheap, so you can gain slots early while there is enough demand, that image not yet matters.
Or players (which might be the minority during the first days) use this as a general strategy, that can be viable for certain markets and personal aims as well.
This strategy to occupy slots is unfair. At least using such old aircraft should receive huge penalty in the form of low load and high maintenance expenses.
Their is a penalty ... but within the first weeks you can compensate this by higher ticket prices. That's all bad for the image, but basically one can just shift assets and slots later on to another holding company with a more sustainable strategy.
I don't like it either, but it's an early market strategy to be a step ahead. Beside passenger aircrafts, there are some cheap cargo aircrafts that have provided really high margins in the past. People are using this gap ... and one might argue, whether that's unfair or just what the market is demanding.
I agree with you. The market will give us the result.
Oh please: not again this Diskkussion. With each new server will start arguing about whether this should be right, if someone starts with old airplanes, for strategic reasons.
Who does not like to please start in worlds where there are only new aircraft. How example: Aspern.
Moreover, the market will regulate the time anyway!
At some point the airlines using the older planes will have to adjust their strategy to compete with more modern aircraft as competition becomes more fierce. During this period their growth will be drastically reduced while airlines using more modern aircraft will continue to grow. If these "legacy" carriers wait too long for the changeover to better seats and aircraft then airlines with better ratings will drive them out of business.
Company ratings take a long time to adjust higher so it is a definite risk vs reward strategy.
However though, so much of this game is geared towards market share in your home hub with connections. As the saying goes. Quantity has a quality all of it's own.
The 737-200 is by far the second most efficient plane on short and medium hauls in the game, second only to the 321 family. But for the price of a 321 you can get 4 or 5 732. I dont mind saying why i use them, i am aiming to be the largest airline in the server and every competitive advantage i can have in the beginning is exponential. Dont fear though, we are definitely out of 732 until someone that holds them goes broke. Hope i have clarified your question
Currently the game worlds largest airline and my competitor has loads of russian aircraft (60 or so) in PEK and they have 4 or 5 red ratings. I have a fleet of 8 aircraft that when I check route management all are full on mine and his some are not. The average load factor in alliances is around 70% and mine myself is 99%. So I may get a bit of a load and profit start to get a large continuing growing fleet of Boeing 737-NG and Dash 8's (300)
So just now I started a new cargo airlines in Ellinikon. Snapped some 60 old Russian cargo aircraft from the market, also 10 old Russian pax aircraft as well.
While the lease rate for those oldies are neglible, the maintenance cost is actually quite high to the point that I might at best break even if not losing money.
I'll give it a try for a week or so and see if the old fleet can actually help propel a new start-up or they really belong to the scrapyard.
Cargo airline is difficult per se, and with old planes with substantial maintenance cost, and with russian planes which are generally more fuel-intensive, you may be in for a challenge. If you want to run cargo, I would suggest ATR72, they are quite economical even at older age. And if you absolutely want to run old russian planes, you should aim for passenger side of the business.
Passengers side of the business? interesting.. that's really contrary to my belief. My initial amateur strategy was to tap unserved cargo routes around the world given a fleet of cargo aircraft. While passenger side of business will be restricted by country's traffic rights, the cargo side will be free to operate globally. Though in practice, while looking for that unserved potential routes, I sent those AN24B, AN32, AN26 to operate popular passenger & cargo routes.
From a day long observation, there's no way to make profit with slight price increase as the high maintenance cost simply eat your margin as well as your cash balance. So from the observation I conclude that the passenger side of the business is doomed. As for the cargo, I think if I can find potential unserved cargo routes, I might still be able to charge premium price for those routes, although I'm not sure if I can find such routes.