Closing in on 3000 :D

I for a short time tried to compete. Granted I was number 1, 2, or 3 on the rankings then. But then everyone came online with their big planes and consortiums while I was in HNL and I dropped to my current 9th. I'm back to my orginal plans and I'll see how I do. I still wonder how some people got so many large planes so fast on a stictly capital basis.

3,000 :rolleyes:'s.

Yeah, I was going to be creative but hate being in last place! :D

I think I've more-or-less figured out the key to success. Well, I'm still 4th, but if we start a different world I would do some things differently then. ;)

I don't want to spill too many "secrets". But I will stick to these two principles next time:

- Short flights between big markets. Like what Ryanair and Southwest does in real life. Well, until all those markets are exhausted, then get the next longer flights.

- Fleet like CO. 74-seat turboprop is good. Biggest 737 model is good. 757 pushing to the limit is good.

And of course, to choose the right hubs. My PEK is horrible and HKG not much better. While they have lots of passengers, most routes are at least medium haul. Closest airport from PEK is ICN, over 500 miles away. They eat up aircraft utilization like crazy, resulting in very very slow start for me. Only after I started CDG did my cash come in much quicker. I think I'm doing okay at PEK and HKG only because there's not much competition in Asia.

Then I bought the widebodies. Gosh, they are too expensive, don't generate much revenue, and takes forever to build. Huge mistakes. No wonder FR or WN don't fly widebodies.

As I noted earlier, with the small world setup, I think the key is having a robust domestic service. Either domestic US or domestic Europe. I don't think there are enough routes available in Asia to pull it off but rkkwan may feel differently about that.

colpuck is quickly catching up but I've been battling with notabob for the past week between first and second place solely, I believe, because of our respective strong domestic networks. All of that revenue gives me the capital to go buy the larger birds for longer flights. The game is written such that large aircraft do not demand nearly the revenue premium that smaller aircraft do, and I hope that is something they fix. I have a 767 doing DEN - PEK and it only nets me $140,000 per day; my ATR-72 doing six domestic legs nets me over $600,000 per day. Something is a miss with that.

But yeah, getting more than $9 million each day in the game/hour in real life makes it easy to buy one long-range aircraft every 24 hours.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.1; en-us; dream) AppleWebKit/525.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Mobile Safari/523.12.2)

Choo choo

My top two profitable aircraft are both ATR's

This choo choo goes faster than many new ones do in this country. (talk about first class services)

I agree with you. I am fine in Asia only due to lack of competition.

I am netting just over $9m/day for today, but only after spending all last evening re-assigning my aircrafts. I got about a 9% improvement in profits from that. And the 752s are cheap. One can buy one in about 11-12 hours if netting $9m/day. And from a hub in northeast US (which I don't have), one can get to most destinations in Europe - and that's a lot!

Doesn't that remind you of some real life airline?

In contrast, from my hub at CDG, the 752 can only reach MIA at most. That covers the east coast and Chicago, but not the west coast cities. Once I exhaust those cities, I have to buy more expensive planes - 767s or 310s at least.

damn CO website i cant login half of the damn time - cant check my mileathon status

It's only current to the end of February, at least that's what my statement said.

Yeah, Asia is one of those places in this game that is extremely difficult to access from any other part of the world due to the high cost of widebody aircraft. You struck gold in setting up your HKG base though, as I'm just now preparing aircraft orders to reach that area from either AMS or DEN.

And I agree about the 752 to Europe. My IAD hub is seeing a lot of that traffic. And I'm flying intra-Europe routes on the 752 to use up their remaining hours since the select of close airports to IAD is rather slim. No wonder CO does this so much; it really works.

I found out today from a local attorney that in NJ and many other states, Good Friday is a state holiday. Beer me. :D

Happy whatever you're into this week, all - me personally, I'll be declining the church invite and pretending that rabbits pass eggs. :rolleyes:

Have you tried doing your version of the exact CO 752 turn? IAD-Europe-IAD-Florida?