Question about route length

[Lord Voldemort]

Does longer route length increase the demand or just the amount people are willing to pay?
I know it seems trivial but if the former then I can place a larger aircraft on some of these routes 

EDIT: Unrelated but it popped up.
Recently I just finished creating routes from all my bases to ALL my gates.
My not base gates all had 50% capacity (5 routes). However, two of my bases had two more routes than the other 3. Can someone explain how this is the case?

[Virgin Serbia]

Does longer route length increase the demand or just the amount people are willing to pay?
I know it seems trivial but if the former then I can place a larger aircraft on some of these routes 

Distance increases how much passengers pay.
Airports at the ends increase the number of passengers, and also how much they are willing to pay.

[CHR]

On the extra routes, it may be caused by routes between your bases - which show up as under a certain base. Alternately, you may have just missed out some of the gates.

In terms of demand/how much people pay/how many passengers there are, it is sort of the same thing.
As far as I know, AM doesn't consider all the variables separately (indeed you can run routes to airports with 0 pax - which should have no demand). It is a bit artificial in discussing the game to break things up into the number of potential passengers and how much people pay, when they aren't really separate issues in terms of the game.

But yes, longer routes can charge higher fares (though in my experience this is not proportional to the extra distance (and time) of flying there - i.e. 2x the distance is less than 2x the revenue - i.e. short haul is more profitable).
Larger aircraft should be more profitable on longer haul routes, as less time (relative to the flight duration) is spent reloading at the gate.

To go off on a slight tangent, you could argue that (in real life at least) route distance does affect demand (not just base fare price) - in that people can't be bothered to go to the hassle of flying for short distances.

[Lord Voldemort]

Well, its definitely not the latter. I sorted by gate utilization and all were the same percent.
Interesting. I'll have to change some routes around then...

Also thanks for the info.
I just don't like putting 100+ seat aircraft on routes that are simply Good (in terms of pax count), since there seems to be a point where even if there's no competition, you provide too much supply and the profits go below maximum. Also larger AC are typically faster and thus have higher fuel usage and have higher expenses.

[Virgin Serbia]

Also larger AC are typically faster and thus have higher fuel usage and have higher expenses.

1. A 737 or A32X is hardly faster than an E-Jet 19X, and slower than the CRJ-900, and have longer turnaround times

2. Fuel usage means almost nothing on the bottomline, maintenance does And that is calculated by the aircrafts value.

So overall you are right, the E-Jet and CRJ are much better suited  

[Lord Voldemort]

Well I mean not in overall expenses but in route profits.
Like, my 119 seat AC gets 80,000 on a route in revenue. However, 9,000 is on expenses, much of it fuel.
On the other hand, my 78 seat AC gets 70,000, and only 5,000 is on expenses. Thus, the profit difference is smaller than it would seem. Also I don't know the seating capacity of the aircraft you listed, but it seems like in the short term around 80 seat aircraft are only slightly worse than larger aircraft and much better in the long term due to drastically lower maintenance costs.

[nwadeltaboy]

Oh Nitin

no i think it just depends on the size of airports...for example, if you were smart you would fly between big airports on long routes, and obviously the frequency should be a lot less, so bigger planes work a bit better...it all depends

[Virgin Serbia]

Oh Nitin

no i think it just depends on the size of airports...for example, if you were smart you would fly between big airports on long routes, and obviously the frequency should be a lot less, so bigger planes work a bit better...it all depends

Distance also has an effect.

[Vamerica]

This question is amazing tbh, simple but never been asked.

Range plays a part in pax. I like to think of it like real life, the farther away, the more realistic it is to fly then drive. Take SFO-OAK, you will expect most to drive(I know those lazy business men, but still). But SFO-YXD(Edmonton, Canada). Even tho OAK has more passengers, you will see a increase of pax and amount they will want to pay. SO, the pax of AM are realistic or...

Range plays a part in pricing. Each NM will increase the amount pax will pay by $X.XX. It may not play a big factor in close range airports, but as you start venturing into the farther out places, you will see that you can increase the amount of cash to sell seats as the nm to $$$ factor has more nm to increase that $$$. Say SFO-OAK is 20nm, and that each nm increases how much pax will pay buy $.10. So your looking at the regular price that you can get from that airport to this airport plus an added $2 for the distance. This may not seem much, but when it comes to 500+nm your looking at $50+ you can have them pay cause of the range. So In long distance flights, it may not be the airports trafic doing the key profit, but just how far they are.


*nm = nautical mile   **the "1nm= $0.10" was an example.

[CHR]

I think it probably isn't as simple as just adding on extra money to the route fare for the extra distance, but something more akin to multiplying it.
To choose a fairly random number, say you get a 50% increase in fares when comparing two alike (in terms of competition) routes of short and long haul routes. Two large cities, with low competition, would normally earn quite high fares, which, when boosted by 50%, makes quite a decent extra profit. Compare that to a large and a small, or even two small cities, where you would be earning only small to moderate fares - which when increased by 50%, are still not terribly large.
I've tried making a fairly extensive long haul network between Europe and America before, and found that the flights drop off fairly steeply in revenue when you start flying to the sub 10-15 million airports.

I think a thing that often confuses people regarding long haul is that they are not so readily compared to short haul between similar sized airports, due to the considerable difference in competition. While it is fairly clear that at least some additional revenue seems to come from simply having longer routes, it may be that most of the extra revenue is simply due to the decreased competition. Think how much higher the fares would be on something like LHR > FRA if it had as little competition as LHR > JFK.

[nwadeltaboy]

Oh Nitin

no i think it just depends on the size of airports...for example, if you were smart you would fly between big airports on long routes, and obviously the frequency should be a lot less, so bigger planes work a bit better...it all depends

Distance also has an effect.

of course it does, i don't know what i was talking about. i think it was like midnight when i posted this or something

Well anyway, consider these airports:  A--------B-------------------C
One way to think of it is like this: Suppose you have the airports lined up like this.  Logically, the nonstop flight between A and C should be priced about the sum of (and perhaps more than) the fares of A to B and B to C.  So no matter what way passengers go, the fares should be about the same.

I think AM's loadfactor calculator works in a similar way.

[Lord Voldemort]

How my a answer guys.
I found a less than 1000 PX airport in NA from CDG, it was excellent, 2500+ pax.
For my shorter routes, CDG - X is usually Very Good for similarly sized, or indeed, large airports.
Also Nate, I will stick with my KFCs until I have exhausted all gates within 1600 nm.
Then I will use a Fokker 70 (79 Seats) until I have exhausted all gates within 2200 nm.
Only then will I buy any Lockheeds, Boeings, Airbuses, Illuyshins, MDs, or anything above 100 seats.
I <3 low maintenance costs.