Is it better to keep your passenger load at 100%?

[bottlesquared]

I noticed that when you create a route, it should ideally start off at the max profit for 100% passenger load.

But when competitors come in to fly the same route, your passenger load falls.

So is it better to incurr the additional marketing costs to find a new flight ticket price?

And is it better to wait until the passenger load falls below a certain %, then go adjust ticket prices?

[pseudoswede]

I like the way you're thinking.

If you do some experimentation, I think you'll find out your answers.

[jetrc]

I always keep it at 100%. I don't know why. If i see my LF below 100%, i always do something to bring it back to 100%. If a competitor competes with me in a route, and brings my LF down, i undercut his fares to keep my lead.

[Japanair]

The actual max. profit percentage is around 98.5-99.5%, but keeping it at 100% should be good too. If you want to try and keep every route at 100% LF, then you should change the prices whenever it is lower than 100% (better to keep track of)

[bottlesquared]

thanks for your views guys

[JSnow789]

With the bigger airlines I only change routes below 90%. The smaller ones I keep it 98 or above.

[wishfulanthony]

Look at it this way:

If you maintain your passenger loads for all routes at 100%, there will be several advantages to this, most notably:

- Your DOC will be at a maximum point (if you utilize all your aircraft efficiently with less than 1 hour turnaround time remaining), thus allowing your airline's balance to grow quickly.
- With all of your routes at 100% passenger loads, it will then allow your airline to compete well with other airlines that have bigger aircraft fleets or have larger aircraft used for routes that you do, thus allowing you to gain inspiration on "how to outpace the airline that has a lower fare"

It may be ideal for you to keep 100% passenger loads for all routes, but it's also important to consider the number of frequencies you provide per trip because if you increase frequencies without changing prices, the tendency would be passenger loads will be lower because you allocate more seats for your aircraft, thus you have to lower the fares (and as a result, lower DOC).

[pseudoswede]

Gah. No idea what I was thinking. My apologies.

[wishfulanthony]

Route: ORD-CDG
Aircraft: L-1049 Connie

Current route profit: €143,851
Current load factor: 97.25%

Marketing fees: €430,882

Profit after attaining 100% load: €150,286

Difference: €6,435

Number of game days needed in order to recoup marketing fees (while hoping someone doesn't lower their fares and reduces my load factor): 67

---------------------------------

Route: ATL-YYZ
Aircraft: Constitution R6V

Current route profit: €93,291
Current load factor: 84.82%

Marketing fees: €47,173

Profit after attaining 100% load: €104,467

Difference: €11,176

Number of game days needed in order to recoup marketing fees (while hoping someone doesn't lower their fares and reduces my load factor): 4
     

Whoa, you have to recoup all of the money you spent for researching your routes before creating another one? I don't usually do that -- I just get gates from the start, put in one trip from at least one of my hubs, then I operate it as it is... no need to be bothered by how much marketing fees I spent since I research through all of my routes carefully before buying my gates. I don't mind paying high marketing fees, for what's important is that I deploy a plane to that destination and serve it!

Right now, I'm about to start hotswapping aircraft all over again, removing my old propellers to give way for several new DC 9-21s, DC 9-50s, B737-200s, and a HS Trident 121C, and it's going to be a fun swapping!

[bottlesquared]

I didn't know marketing fees can creep to almost 500k euros. My marketing fees are almost always under 50k.

[pseudoswede]

Marketing fees are determined by distance and sizes of airports.

[pseudoswede]

I redact my previous statement, but I will say this...

It is much better to simply create more routes than to spend massive amounts of time editing routes.