When to replace an aircraft?

[GoldDragonFly]

When is a good time to consider replacing aircrafts? From what I have read on the forum, alot of people say around 3 years. Is this correct?

[CHR]

For medium size aircraft, yes. For over 100 or so seats. 3 years is around about right. However, it is not a disaster if you don't buy new aircraft.
For large aircraft (over 200 or so), you will pay quite a bit in maintenance either way, but 3 years is probably the limit.
For smaller aircraft, you can keep them longer, as maintenance is not as high.

Another thing you may want to consider is their resale value. At 3 years or so, many airlines will still buy them at their value or a little discount. By 5 years old, few people (excluding start up airlines) would touch them without heavy discounting. With smaller aircraft, even after 3 years, the demand for them is often decreasing anyway.

[GoldDragonFly]

Ok, thanks for the advise. I will take that in consideration. Its quite crazy replacing a few at the same time with having to re-create each route! 

[CHR]

I don't know if you saw the other thread on swapping aircraft: http://stephenm.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=10653.msg94664#msg94664

If you use the Recreate Route function, it makes it less confusing recreating the routes (as you are able to re-make them as soon as you delete them). Alternately, you can use the Premium Gate search, and ask it to look through gates you already own. If you have enough free tokens (60) you can get it for free.

[ATE24]

I can say...even as expensive as an A320 family, it can still survive for 5 years without harming you too much...if and only if you manage to maintain an income of around 500K-600K or above per month.

That's my usual routine in private world. I know it's hardly possible in a public world, but 3 years is not a definite limit for plane. Of course if you wish to sell instead of scrap, 3 years is a suitable deadline.

Currently I kept 280 planes and with an average aircraft age of 2.X year, the maintenance grows at a steady rate of 6M per month.
Compared with 130M of income per day, 6M per month means nothing for me at all...

[CHR]

To make myself a little clearer, in my experience, you can still make profit on aircraft which are quite old, however the amount it would cost to replace them is less than the maintenance. Keeping them on means you make less (as opposed to no) profit.

[ATE24]

Keeping them on means you make less (as opposed to no) profit.

Nothing is impossible, especially when the planes are extremely old together with fierce competition...

[CHR]

I wasn't saying it is impossible to make a loss, I was saying that I was not saying before that that you will certainly make a loss.
It certainly is possible to make a loss on aircraft (although, in a private world I have a fleet with an average age over 10, and a number of large aircraft, still making money - admittedly competition is not as fierce as in some public worlds).
My point was simply that you make less money overall with an old plane (less does not mean you will get a profit, nor does it mean you won't get a profit (and make a loss), but nevertheless, is not desirable).
This is starting to get confusing...

Anyway. Buy new planes.

[GoldDragonFly]

  Thanks! I will see how it goes with the maintenance costs and make my decision. So far in every world that I have been playing, I have made sure to replace all aircrafts when they are more or less 3 years old. When you have a large fleet, it takes up quite alot of time!

[kcclieou]

I wasn't saying it is impossible to make a loss, I was saying that I was not saying before that that you will certainly make a loss.
It certainly is possible to make a loss on aircraft (although, in a private world I have a fleet with an average age over 10, and a number of large aircraft, still making money - admittedly competition is not as fierce as in some public worlds).
My point was simply that you make less money overall with an old plane (less does not mean you will get a profit, nor does it mean you won't get a profit (and make a loss), but nevertheless, is not desirable).
This is starting to get confusing...

Anyway. Buy new planes.

It boils down to whether you can accept the maintenance costs vis-a-vis your daily income. I own 279 aircraft in one of the private worlds, with an average fleet age of over 2 years; among these 279 aircraft, 21 are widebodies (the oldest one is 4 years old) and the biggest narrowbody is the A321 (the oldest one being 5 years old). Maintenance cost amounts to roughly 25% of my monthly income, and I think that is still OK for me.

Replacing old airplanes is of course less fun than opening new routes, and is time consuming as well (it takes me about an hour to replace 8 airplanes). As your own airline grows, it becomes much more time consuming to keep track of aircraft age. Until routes can be transferred from one aircraft to another of the same type, replacing airplanes will remain a nasty feat.

You might also want to consider the cost of writing off an aircraft when replacing it.

P.S. The last time I played in a public world, most of my aircraft would be replaced between the ages of 1 and 2, and put on the open market with a 133% markup - and of course made huge profits out of that. I ened up being one of the top 15 airlines even though I had far fewer routes and destinations than any of the other top 50 airlines in that world. This strategy cannot be implemented in a private world, however.