Alliance acting as buying group for new equipment

Hi,

Reading all information about Alliances (Forum, Arlinesimpedia)  I learned that the benefit of being a member of an Alliance is not that big as in real life.

If you buy a huge number of new airplanes you get a discount from the manufacturer. It would be very interesting for small airliners who are member of an Alliance that they can combine their buying power together. It could work similar to the existing IDF program.

By example: The Alliance buys an option on 20 aircrafts from a manufacturer. The manufacturer will give the option for discount for a certain period of time (1 month) to the members of the Alliance. If the delivery of the number of airplanes has reached the agreed number than all buyers have full benefit of the discount, even that player that only 1 airplane. If the number of delivered airplanes after the option period hasn't been met than the manufacturer will charge the "missed" discount to the buyers of aircraft later on. This rule is obligatory to keep the number of options to a reasonable size.

What about this suggestion?

Kind regards,

Ronald  

If you look around at the forums you may find this or similar suggestions. Alliances are not limited by rules like the accounts are. So if we decide to offer anything like this for an alliance, the alliance-membership will be limited too like the current regulation of holding.

Thanks for the reply. I don't understand the point that if an alliance is being used as a group that can carry out activities in favor of all members or at least the member who initiated an action (like buying aircraft together) must be regulated. Straight forward I believe that you give the smaller airliners also the benefit of getting benefits that larger airliners can achieve by them own. But may be I am wrong.

Thanks for the reply. I don't understand the point that if an alliance is being used as a group that can carry out activities in favor of all members or at least the member who initiated an action (like buying aircraft together) must be regulated. Straight forward I believe that you give the smaller airliners also the benefit of getting benefits that larger airliners can achieve by them own. But may be I am wrong.

Part of the anti-cheating measures precludes the cooperation of multiple top-level holdings within an account. They can still be within the same alliance, but cannot interline with one another as that would effectively give a single player more than the initial $10 million in seed money. There are a number of alliances on various worlds where one player creates three top level holdings, and the three holdings form a self-contained alliance operated by a single player. I’m not sure why, as there are no benefits (tangible or otherwise) and it’s three separate airlines operating with no connection with each other, but they do anyhow.

I think the sublease system would take care of what you want. If a big alliance player gets a discount by ordering 100 planes, he gets a discount, If he can sublease the planes to smaller alliance members, the discount can be passed onto them.

Also subleasing among the airlines of one holding would be great, it could work the same way as current "lease within holding structure", but instead of using fully-owned aircraft, using leased aircraft. The lease payment would be due when sublease is signed, and if the original lessor cannot pay for the plane, the plane is returned to AS Aircraft Co. While this may sound unfair, it's the same thing that happens when a player-lessor terminates your lease contract just minutes before the lease is due and the aircraft is returned to him, or when a terminal is demolished, you lose the ability to handle pax at that terminal immediately, so this should not be a problem.

Can you imagine Earth Stand with this power?

No thanks.

Can you imagine Earth Stand with this power?

No thanks.

My understanding was that they use old planes found on the used aircraft market, instead of new planes leased from AS Leasing but bought directly from the manufacturer. No manufacturer discount is given for the used aircraft market.

IIRC, the manufacturer discount tops out at 5% for an order of 50 or more aircraft.

While in real life the average discount is about 40% off list price for average order, 50% for quite some big orders, and in some cases even 60% for exceptionally large orders for hundreds of planes.

The likes of Ryanair, Easyjet and now AirAsia have made a business model out of this, they get 60% discount, use the plane for 5 years max and sell it for the same money they bought it. Given the exceptionally high discount they have received in the first place, after 5 years their plane is worth exactly that much.

So they virtually get to use the plane for free for 5 years and maybe even make some small money from the sale.

That was their strategy - initially.  Now they have massive airlines quickly, they can afford brand new aircraft - so have bulk orders of B787s.

The biggest airline in ES has about 130 (some still in production).  The next two biggest ES alirlines have about 50 each.  I imagine ordering that number of aircraft in an alliance would be a big saving - no other alliance would be ordering that many aircraft.

And now, nobody will ever catch them.  They own most of the slots at the major airports and have massive fleets of modern aircraft.

Our only hope is they get bored.  I wouldn't go so far as saying it ruins the game for others, but it's extremely frustrating. 

@JT7 ... if you look on older servers, you cannot find ES there .. I don't think even Aspern has ES any more. So why worry? They will be gone, sooner rather than later. they are not in the game to last 5 years or more as some old airlines on the oldest servers ...