Aircraft preference/passenger appeal

[homsar]

How about a preference/appeal factor, which might make larger aircraft more attractive?

Hypothetical example:
In the game, you can fly a route with a 757 with 200-some seats, and have to charge $200 to get a 100% load factor.  Charge $205, and it drops to, say, 95%, which is 10 passengers (I'm making the numbers up, but you get the idea).  Meanwhile, someone else can start the same route with a Beech 1900, charge $250 or $300, and the plane will go full.  So, it seems that there are 19 people who will pay $250 to fly a tiny, slow plane but you can't get 10 of them to fly the larger, faster plane.

So, how about some kind of passenger-appeal factor that is proportional to the plane's size and speed?  In real life, if you put a CRJ next to a 757, passengers would prefer the 757 (even if, in some cases, it meant they had to pay more).  This might actually make it worthwhile to buy some of the larger planes (DC-10s, 747s, etc) that are difficult/impossible to justify financially right now.

[Virgin Serbia]

That would 1) make it harder for the small airlines, and 2) give the big airlines yet another advantage.

You will find that 99% of passengers decide primarily by price, secondary by schedule, not by aircraft type. Only a select few would give a sh't about what aircraft flies the route.

[homsar]

I'll agree that not many care about the type of airplane, per se (A320 vs. 737).  However, back in the 90s and early 2000s, at least in the US, many certainly did care about prop vs. jet.  That's where the speed thing comes in.  Also, if they did choose based on fares, then you wouldn't have the slow prop running full at $250 while there are empty seats on a fast (larger) jet at $200.

That actually made me think of a different idea (different tiers of worlds), which I'll post in a different thread.

[CHR]

This sort of thing comes up every now and then, and I would agree that changes need to be made to the LF calculations.
It is actually reasonable that smaller aircraft can charge higher fares. You need to consider that every passenger will want to fly at a certain time of day. To fill a large aircraft, you need to find, say, 200 people willing to fly when your plane departs. For a small plane, you may only have to find 50. The small flight will be able to charge a premium, because it can tap into this market of people who absolutely need to fly at a certain time (say those on business). To fill all the seats on the larger aircraft, you need to have lower fares to entice enough people to come at a less convenient time. It's kinda difficult to explain.
You can also observe that the other effect of this is that the difference in prices diminishes as there are more aircraft flying the routes, as the time differences (and thus the number of premium payers) would be smaller.
However, I think the exact dynamics of this could be improved - often smaller aircraft do get too much of an advantage. Another interesting thing would be to have additional flights on a route completely separate from each other - not diminishing each other's LF any more than another competitor (at the moment, if you have a frequency of 2, you have to settle for a lower fare than your competitors - which isn't realistic, as each flight would be considered separately by customers).

Speed and fares are definitely issues. The Concorde is a great example of how speed makes minimal difference to fares in the game - where a large speed increase can lead to hardly higher fares. Small fare changes can also be a problem - where small differences in fares (like 5 Euros) can result in considerably different LFs.

[dktc]

There is quite a large factor of customer loyalty (or aka frequent flyer program) that is presumed in the assumptions for passenger behaviors. If you add that to the reasoning, the LF formula would make more sense. I am not saying the assumptions are valid, just that they seem to exist in the formula.

[Vampyre]

Brand name has an effect in RL on this aspect as well, who would fly Bob Air no matter what the plane if they could fly the same flight at the same price with say RyanAir - an established brand name known by many, but ppl would fly Bob Air and after a time that would become a recognized brand, but only if the flights were on time and service was good. If you want to have an effect in game on passenger appeal then it needs to link in with the brand(airline) name and the service it offers. No matter how many planes you start with,your brand won't be recognized at first until you get a reputation and only then will you realistically fill planes to the max.

[TheLastBaron]

I'll agree that not many care about the type of airplane, per se (A320 vs. 737).  However, back in the 90s and early 2000s, at least in the US, many certainly did care about prop vs. jet.  That's where the speed thing comes in.  Also, if they did choose based on fares, then you wouldn't have the slow prop running full at $250 while there are empty seats on a fast (larger) jet at $200.

That actually made me think of a different idea (different tiers of worlds), which I'll post in a different thread.

Working for one of the world's largest airlines, I hate but have to disagree. Studies of passengers worldwide have shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 percent do care what size the aircraft they will fly on is, with the penchant for "bigger is better" winning out clearly. Many pax dislike single-aisle aircraft and prefer carriers which provide wide-bodies over those which do not. As an experiment, our company during the previous year placed a temporarily unassigned 747 on inner-German routes and the response was overwhelming; people queued up to be able to fly the Jumbo on the same routes we normally deploy 737s and 321s on by more than 2:1. SAA in South Africa has also found the response to daily flights from CPT to JNB using an A346 to be much, much more positive (sold out nearly every day) than the same route flown with, say, a 321.

Personally, I don't care. I just wish all of the carriers would start instituting "family coach" - when flying with children under 10, you would automatically be assigned (or have your seat selection choices limited to) the rear of the cabin. The rest of us could enjoy some peace and quiet that way (when not flying J) and not have to endure 8 or more hours of "baby cacophony" concerts.  Alternatively, designing special crates for putting infants in the cargo hold seems like an attractive idea...