A large USA airline has just liquidated on Ellinikon (Peachy Air). Opportunity to set up hub in Ft. Lauderdale (FLL).
A large USA airline has just liquidated on Meigs (voeni Air). Opportunity to set up hubs in PHX, LAS, DFW, IAH, FLL
A large USA airline has liquidated on Stapleton (Central Airways). Great oportunity in DFW and about 10 other US airports whit more then 7 bars.
Also Stapleton has very many cheap used aircraft at the moment (A320s, Antonov 148/158s, E-Jets, 737NGs and CRJs).
Ellinikon has been opening up so many opportunities at different airports since the introduction of RiemThats because two major airline in Malaysia and Singapore (in Stapleton) have just liquidated in the past four weeks.
They're a big user of Airbus A320, A380, B787.
KUL and SIN have manyyyy slots currently. They're both having more than 60% slots yesterday.
I was quiet for a while as I want to grab those slots and aircrafts myself. Hahaha.
But now my airline has already taken enough planes, so let the news be spread...
Malaysia on Meigs is also compleatly free. If you want I can tell you strategies to take out competitors there as I am playing in Malaysia and I have taken out those players before.
Thats because two major airline in Malaysia and Singapore (in Stapleton) have just liquidated in the past four weeks.
They're a big user of Airbus A320, A380, B787.
KUL and SIN have manyyyy slots currently. They're both having more than 60% slots yesterday.
I was quiet for a while as I want to grab those slots and aircrafts myself. Hahaha.
But now my airline has already taken enough planes, so let the news be spread...
In Malaysia on stapleton we are comming now to the end. Soon there will be only 1 left so far me (Asian Airways) and Raffel Airlines have taken out 6 competitors now only our selfs left to take out, so may the best win the Malaysian market.
In Malaysia on stapleton we are comming now to the end. Soon there will be only 1 left so far me (Asian Airways) and Raffel Airlines have taken out 6 competitors now only our selfs left to take out, so may the best win the Malaysian market.
Dont forget, there is also Groff Fly Malay, an Indonesian Airlines who specifically fly Singapore-Malaysian routes to its country, connecting Malaysia through its own hub.
I have joined in Singapore. WOW Singaporean Airline. Expanding quickly (3 additional aircraft in 1st week) and has loads of 95%. Was in KUL but quickly changed because international demand is higher there.
I have joined in Singapore. WOW Singaporean Airline. Expanding quickly (3 additional aircraft in 1st week) and has loads of 95%. Was in KUL but quickly changed because international demand is higher there.
Well then, you haven't seen what Malaysia Truly Asia did in Malaysia before it decided to go on liquidation.
They have a strong international routes to Kuala Lumpur. It became the only Malaysian Airline that time. I wonder, why no one wants to fly within Malaysia. Once it goes on liquidation, suddenly many Malaysian airlines born.
I'm always pondering how we could collect, structure and present this information (about good spots on legacy servers that are open or have recently opened up) to new players or players interested in trying out an old world. Because that a huge hurdle out of the way for many. The issue I'm struggling with is that any other player would have the same information available as well, so an already huge airline/player in a game world could make use of that info to take over vacant markets even easier and quicker.
Any ideas? :)
I'm always pondering how we could collect, structure and present this information (about good spots on legacy servers that are open or have recently opened up) to new players or players interested in trying out an old world. Because that a huge hurdle out of the way for many. The issue I'm struggling with is that any other player would have the same information available as well, so an already huge airline/player in a game world could make use of that info to take over vacant markets even easier and quicker.
Any ideas? :)
A huge player is always going to notice the vacancy much sooner than a random player, because they have such extensive interlining contracts that they will be immediately notified as one of their interlining partners gone bankrupt / disappeared. Even if they exist in another game world, they probably pay more attention to potential vacant markets as they are constantly expecting and preparing for it. Therefore, presenting the same information generally helps the smaller players because it reduces the asymmetric information more for them than for the bigger players, and thus levels the playing field.
With the restrictions on traffic rights and legal status, I’m not sure that it would be easy to take advantage of a sudden vacancy in any place other than the USA and EU (or other common) markets, unless whomever is looking to operate a cargo business.
Look at it from the new player perspective. When I signed up for my account, or when I go to a server that isn’t my home, the first thing I see is the banner to found my enterprise and other information that has no meaning to me yet. I don’t know where the country lists are, or that I can find countries with currently active enterprises in the statistics tables. I pick an airport that I’m familiar with, either my own local airport or one of the big cities (JFK/LAX/LHR/FRA/SIN/etc). All I get is a rough slot availability percentage, passenger demand, and whether transfer is possible. What that doesn’t tell me is that on Croydon, NRT currently has 26% availability, but it’s counting the curfew hours too. All other hours are at 90%+ use, with more hours per week being full than not. On Pearls, which I’ve never logged into before today, FRA has 25% availability, but again, night curfew (which surprised me - Croydon’s FRA doesn’t have). There isn’t a single day with a single available slot at the same time throughout the week.
Let me choose a country, then display a list of all transfer-possible airports with demand of X-bars or more, and their effective availabilities and a separate link to the actual slot usage chart, so that I can choose instead of playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey to find an airport that I can use. If nothing looks good right away, then I can opt for another country. If I can’t find a country like that, then give me a link to the Countries:Enterprises statistic, but make it show the countries without an active enterprise so I can do a bit more research. All of these things are available without logging in, and without creating an airline, it’s just in a dozen or more places (and therefore a dozen or more page loads).
An established player could use the same tools as the new subsidiary page is exactly the same, but outside of the USA or one of the common markets or countries with colonies/territories, they couldn’t use their wealth advantage due to the restrictions on multiple holding collusion and traffic rights/legal status. To stop us experienced players from snapping up available slots, then make the liquidation process hold relisting the aircraft on the used market for a week or so, or relist them at 5 at a time instead of the current 50. If we have to wait for new airframes to be delivered because there aren’t any on the used market, that just slows the process at which we can consume the newly available slots. New players don’t have this disadvantage thanks to the immediate delivery program.
I don't think limiting used market aircraft to 5 is good. First of all, you could end up with old aircraft blocking the appearance of new ones. And also, it would be disadvantageous to new players, when I started my 3 main holdings, all three of them were started with 20-25 old MD80's, or 737-classics. Were there only 5 in the market I might not have had a chance ...
Much better solution is to list all medium and large liquidations (e.g. 100 or more aircraft) for the past 7 or 14 days, indicating the number of planes and the country, on the server overview page,
If we have to wait for new airframes to be delivered because there aren't any on the used market, that just slows the process at which we can consume the newly available slots. New players don't have this disadvantage thanks to the immediate delivery program.
Established players will always have an advantage and new players will always be in a disadvantage. If you make 200-300 million profit per week which is not unusual (and there are players making over 1 billion AS$ profit per week) then you already have more cash than you know what to do with it, and you can simply put 50-60 plane orders on 6 aircraft lines each (A319/A321, A320, 73G, 738/739, CRJ, E9X) and that is not even counting 2 prop lines (ATR, DH4). That means you can have on average 8 aircraft delivered per day, every day, for two months, without the order making dent in your cash balance.
While the new player orders 4-6 aircraft with immediate delivery and then has to wait a week (first week is always the least profitable) for 1 more aircraft... in the meantime the big player has gotten 57 airplanes scheduled while the new player has gotten 1 or 2 more at best. With 3 round trips average per airplane, that is almost 1200 slots grabbed by the existing major player, while the new guy gets maybe 170 slots in a week if he is lucky.
I'm always pondering how we could collect, structure and present this information (about good spots on legacy servers that are open or have recently opened up) to new players or players interested in trying out an old world. Because that a huge hurdle out of the way for many. The issue I'm struggling with is that any other player would have the same information available as well, so an already huge airline/player in a game world could make use of that info to take over vacant markets even easier and quicker.
Any ideas? :)
How about an airport search function, in which we can search airport based on some criteria like passenger/cargo bars, slots availability, etc. Also add some sort of market news section, weekly update on 7-10 bar airports that have slots open more than 50-70% for example.
Established players will always have an advantage and new players will always be in a disadvantage. If you make 200-300 million profit per week which is not unusual (and there are players making over 1 billion AS$ profit per week) then you already have more cash than you know what to do with it, and you can simply put 50-60 plane orders on 6 aircraft lines each (A319/A321, A320, 73G, 738/739, CRJ, E9X) and that is not even counting 2 prop lines (ATR, DH4). That means you can have on average 8 aircraft delivered per day, every day, for two months, without the order making dent in your cash balance.
While the new player orders 4-6 aircraft with immediate delivery and then has to wait a week (first week is always the least profitable) for 1 more aircraft... in the meantime the big player has gotten 57 airplanes scheduled while the new player has gotten 1 or 2 more at best. With 3 round trips average per airplane, that is almost 1200 slots grabbed by the existing major player, while the new guy gets maybe 170 slots in a week if he is lucky.
This right here is why it is nearly impossible to break in AND sustain a new startup on old servers in the bigger markets. You might get off the floor but as soon as a major player notices that you've found a niche they will come swooping in and take your market share unless you can reach critical mass with slots in your airport before they notice you.
Right now I'm playing in a mid-major market and I'm 1/6th the size of the biggest airline. In theory...for every 1 plane I add my competition is adding 6. But let's argue that I'm doing just a little better with my margins...then maybe it is 5-1 or even 4-1. This means that even while I'm locking down my local market he is busy locking me out of 2 or 3 other markets. So by the time I'm ready to attempt a 2nd hub I'll end up having to choose a secondary choice. Stil with 3 1/2 months of playtime I've managed to become the #2 airline in the country largely because the #1 went out of business 2 weeks ago. But before then I was the #3 airline and growing fairly well.
It is quite easy to build a startup in a restricted traffic rights market that has no competitors. And right now there are still a few decent sized markets out there that are available. But once you've satisfied your domestic demand building an international airline becomes VERY difficult. Your demand is miniscule compared to the bigger markets and if you don't have a local partner you won't get passengers. But if you do have a local partner they will want to eat up those passengers too. So ultimately you end up competiting even against your interlining partners.
I wish the passengers/week statistic page held data for some previous weeks. That way you could compare your growth rate to others without manually tracking that data.
I am not sure, simply pointing out "good starting locations" is going to change anything.
don't 90% of the new players found an airline at their home airport, buy or lease some planes of which the name sounds familiar, then wonder why nothing works and drop back out.
even if those players had the information available that there is a big airport with many "what do slots are free mean" available, they still lack the knowledge to understand all the things required to run an airline in AS. only those 10 % that then bother to look around actually find the information required. and those are the players, that are usually capable of stumbling across a favorable market.
what good does it do to know that somewhere in the work, there is a bar 8 airport with 80% slot availability if I don't know about the geographic situation, traffic rights, transfer mechanism, ORS ratings, appropriate a/c type choice, etc.?
also, depending on your version of a "dream airline" the best spot might very different from those most-likely listed on any kind of information output
Rather than pointing out reasonable choices for an airport, I think, an in-game tutorial would be way more helpful. Maybe for a new player, the first screen after logging in should be a "hello friend. I am your assistant and I would like to point out a few things before we get you in the air"-msg. maybe a link to an eventuallly updated wiki, maybe to a FAQ section.
then a few-steps-tutorial to get through the set-up, like: 1. pick a home country. you should consider traffic rights, slot availability, ... 2. pick your first aircraft type. consider range, fuel burn, ATE, UM, age, ... 3. open offices, consider slots, distance, national and international, for more information on demand calculation see.... 4. .....
you catch my drift.
what if there was a cap to the total number of slots an airline could hold at an aiport.. say 20% as example and then that established airline could go over that but at a pace of 1 per week
Search button is your friend. This was suggested multiple times, and multiple times was discussed and explained why this is not feasible and would make matters actually worse.
Hint 1: Anti competitive which would do more damage than good, because AS is hub based and you can create a successful hub system even at a 4-bar airport; with slot limitation you would not be able to create a meaningful hub anywhere in the game. Plus, there are countries that have only 1 or 2 transfer possible airports and slot limitation would have effect that nobody would base there, creating even more pressure and congestion at other airports, leading to even more slot scarcity.
I will now work with your example: So take an example of basing a hub at an airport with 5 departures per 5 minutes, that's 5,040 slot pairs per week. 20% is 1,008 slot pairs, which is about 41 airplanes with an average of 7 flights per aircraft per day. It takes about 2-3 months to get 41 brand new aircraft with a mix of RJs and 737s/A320s. So after 2 or 3 months you have reached your expansion potential because now you can add less than 4 aircraft in the next 3 months (13 weeks = 13 slot pairs = 3.7 planes). Yes, scheduling a slightly more than 1 aircraft per Month!!! BORING!!!!! The user base would dwindle faster than you can say "liquidation".
back to the topic. Is there any chance for a sticky thread to consolidate these "opportunities" in older servers?