Airline Management Simulation Game

Repairing a bad performing flight can be very difficult. It requires careful planning and careful adjustments. There are lots of reasons your flight might not be performing very well, but there are lots of indicators you can use to determine what the culprit is.
The first thing you should do is visit the Flight Overview page and search for the flight that has the problem. This page can provide you with useful hints as to what the problem may be.
The easiest problems to fix are your flight not having a plane, and your flight's departure time or arrival time being at unpopular times of the day.
Once you rule out the easy problems, the next most common problems is low, or negative, Profit or low Load Factors. These problems commonly go hand-in-hand, as a low Load Factor will usually result in low, or negative, Profit. These problems can be very difficult to solve, and it is sometimes best to just get rid of the Flight.

Problems:

• No Plane: A flight without a plane cannot go anywhere. Every flight MUST have a plane for it to get you any profit. If your flight doesn't have a plane, read up on how to use the Manage Flights page and give your flight a plane!
  
• Bad Time of Day: Passengers don't like to fly very late at night or very early in the morning. In the Airline Industry, a Red-Eye Flight is a flight that takes off very late at night and arrives very early in the morning, and they are known to have very low Load Factors (which can lead to low, or even negative, profits). It is best to avoid late flights, especially if the flight's Market does not have a lot of traffic. To fix this problem, simply change the time of the flight in the Manage Flights page to an earlier time, or delete the flight in the Manage Flights page and create a new Trip with the same Flight at an earlier time.
  
• Low Profits with High Load Factor: If you have a Flight earning low, or negative, Profit, but you have a high Load Factor, this is a tell-tale sign that your Ticket Prices are too low. If you price consistantly, you will probably notice this problem on all of your flights in the same Market. The best way to fix this is by going to the Manage Flights page and using the Route Price Adjuster. Increase your Ticket Prices!
  
• Low Load Factor with Good Profits: If you have a Flight earning a decent amount of Profit, but with a low Load Factor, this is an indication that your Ticket Prices are too high. While this doesn't sound like a problem, a Market earning good Profits with low Load Factors will almost definitely attract more competition. These new competitors will probably try to undercut your Ticket Prices to steal away Revenue and Passengers. If this happens, the Market's Revenue and Passenger ceilings will be reached quickly, and the Flights with the highest Ticket Prices will suffer the most. It is a good idea to avoid price gouging to prevent increased Competition.
  
• Low Load Factor and Low Profits: This is the most difficult situation to fix because the problem could be occurring for several reasons. Sometimes it is best to just cut your losses and get rid of the Flight, but if you really want to try to repair the problem, you have to figure out the reason. The first thing you should do is go to the Manage Flights page and look for the Market in the data tables. The first thing we want to do is look at the health of the Market, so find the Market in the Global Market Data table, and have a look at the columns labled "Cap PAX" and "Revenue". You may have to resize the Revenue Column to see it better. Each Market has a Passenger Ceiling and a Revenue Ceiling. These ceiling can be exceeded, but not by much. If the Cap PAX or the Revenue column shows a percentage of 80% or more, you should become cautious of expanding the Market, as there is very limited room for growth. If the Cap PAX percentage near 100%, but the Revenue percentage is not, this is an indicator that the Passenger Ceiling has been reached. To increase your profits, you can raise Ticket Prices or downgrade Planes (view: Manage Planes page help).
  You can determine the amount of Competition in the Market by looking at the column labeled "# Comp" and by comparing the column labeled "# Flights" with the column labeled "Flights" in the Company Market Data table (view: How to be Competitive). If the Competition is high, raising your Ticket Prices may not be the best option, since doing so may result in passengers moving to your Competitor's flights and further reducing your Load Factors. If Competition is high, there is also the the possibily that a Competitor is undercutting your Ticket Prices to run you out of the Market. To determine if this is happening, have a look at the column labled "% Collected Rev" in the Company Market Data table. If this percentage is high, it means you have a significant control of the Market, and your problems are not due to your Competitors. If this percentage is low, it means all of your problems are probably Compeition related. At this point, you can either choose to be aggressive or cut your losses and move on. You can read more about being Competitive in the How to Be Competitive section.
  If, however, the Revenue percentage is near 100%, but the Cap PAX percentage is not, this is an indicator that the Revenue Ceiling has been reached. Solving this problem has a lot to do with how much Competition there is in the Market. If the Competition is low and you control a large percentage of the Market, lowering your Ticket Prices is best. However, if the Competition is high or you don't control a large percentage of the Market, it is sometimes best to be aggressive by lowering your prices sharply and increasing the number of Seats you have in the Market. You can read more about this in the How to Be Competitive section. If you do not wish to salvage the Market, you can simply cut your losses and leave the Market.
  Lastly, if both the Revenue and Cap PAX are near 100%, this is an indication that the Market is near peak efficiency. At this point, it will become a power struggle for control of the Market. Your only options are to either be aggressive or cut your losses and reduce your control in the Market. Neither option guarentees success, and can lead to your eventual bankruptcy if you stay in the Market.
  

Please

The Airline Industry is all about Competition, and this simulation is no different. The Companies that manage Competition the best will stay in business, and the ones that manage it poorly will go bankrupt. Each situation requires a different approach, and you have to be ready to change your strategy. Below is an overview of some of the different approaches to be Competitive.

• Aggressive Approach: This approach has high risks, but high rewards. The way the Passengers are distributed are determined by lots of different factors, ranging from Ticket Prices to how many Seats a Company has in a Market. The aggressive approach is commonly used in the real-life Airline Industry to scare away would-be Competitors. The approach is very basic and can explain in a few steps. Step 1: Gain as much control over the Market as you can by greatly increasing the number of Seats you have in the Market by either increasing your number of Flights or upgrading your Planes. Step 2: Drop your prices by a large amount very rapidly. You will almost definitely find yourself earning Negative Profit in the Market now, but if you have enough control over the Market, you will sink the entire Market with you. The harder and faster you sink the Market, the more likely and faster your Competitors will cut their losses and run. Your ultimate goal is to run into the Passenger Ceiling while withholding at least 85% of the Market's Total Revenue. Doing this will give you considerable control over the Market and scare away Competitors. Once you have scared away enough of the Competition, you can raise your prices to turn a profit again. This approach should ONLY be done by Companies with a lot of excess Money and it is strongly encouraged to expand your network to conver the massive losses you will sustain while sinking the Market.
  
• Conservative Approach: This approach has low risks and low rewards, but can lead to a very stable future. To put it simply, you try to keep all of your Flights with positive Revenue, ignore Competition as long as possible, and leave Markets when they become too Competitive or Aggressive. Your goal is stability. Expand slowly, keep an eye out for Markets with lots of growing room, and adjust your prices very gradually. Your plan is to be smart. Do your research on Markets before you enter them and figure out how much you should charge and how many flights you should operate before you enter them. Be wary of newly discovered Markets by the industry, as they can be a hotbed for Competition.
  
• Bait and Switch Approach: One of the most used and abused tactics in the Airline Industry is diverting Passengers through Hubs. This tactic can let an Airline move a lot of Passengers while keeping costs down. However, this tactic can also be greatly exploited, moreso in this game than in real-life. The approach has to do with sinking an entire Company by sinking a lot of their Markets all at once, and can be extremely useful against aggressive Companies. The idea is to reinforce a Hub of the Company you are wanting to sink by creating lots of Flights into and out of that Hub and waiting for them to expand considerably into the new Markets. If you divert enough Passengers to a single Hub, you can manipulate the Routes into and out of that Hub by making them seem more profitable than they really are. After several months, and once your victim has devoted lots of their resources to further expanding their Hub, you should go around and create lots of Direct Flights that cut out the need for Passengers to be diverted through the Hub. If you create these Direct Flights all at once, and your victim has expanded their Hub enough, they will find almost all of their Markets have dried up overnight and their Flights into and out of their Hub are empty with massive financial losses. Their only option will be to downsize their operations, which will leave them with lots of unused Planes. If they bought the Planes and find they can no longer use them, they can sell them back to get some of their money back. But, if they leased the Planes, they will either have to find somewhere to fly them, continue to pay their lease on a Plane they are not using, or cancel their lease and incur a massive fine. The combination of losing lots of Revenue overnight and having lots of excess Planes will cripple the company, and perhaps even lead to their bankruptcy.