Maintainance costs?

[jimiuk]

Hello. I am new and could use some advice.  My airline is 2 days old and was going rather well until i recieved a maintainance bill of 19m euros. I have the 2 startup planes and just bought an airbus 300 very cheaply but it is 22 years old.. Is this a bug or am i gonna have to re think my business plan?

            Thanks in advance jimi..

[1993matias]

Hi Jimi, welcome to the forum

It is generally not recommended to have any plane older than three years of age, but that depends on the size of your airline. The fact that you bought a 22 year old widebody aircraft makes your maintenance costs shoot to the sky. The best you can do is scrap the plane immediately - no-one will buy it as fast as you need.

If it is too late for you to have a profit after scrapping the Airbus, you can mail for a reset of your airline.

I hope this advice helped, feel free to ask if there is something you are wondering about

[jimiuk]

Thanks for the reply. An expensive lesson.

[csclegg]

I kind of had the same thing happen to me.  Bought (2) 7 year old 737's and my monthly maintenance went up by 34 million from 11 to 45 million..  Total fleet is (5) 3 month old 707's, (2) leased MD 87 and the two 737's.  Should this addition have caused this much of an increase?  If so, why would anyone ever buy a used plane.  I could have leased 2 MD's for 8.5 mill per month.

[Grawood]

Bad luck.

I never buy off the market, as it's full of people trying to trap newbies into buying useless old aircraft at over-inflated prices, when they really should scrap them.

If you base at a reasonably large airport with good routes, you can soon make enough to buy from new. OK you have to wait a bit, but AM is in part a waiting game, especially in the early stages.

Think like a real airline - start off small and keep it affordable.

Think twice about going for those widebody jets before you really need them and then plan their routes carefully- you now know about the maintanance charges

Established brokers are a good way to buy, you'll get a discount but might have to wait a bit longer.

I replace my aircraft at about 7 years old, and then I replace my mouse as I've worn it out with all the clicking

Have fun and enjoy watching your airline grow

[csclegg]

Yea. Nothing like a $54M mistake on your 4th day.  It looks like a 3 or 4 game month setback.  Sure would be nice to have some way of calculating what maintenance costs will be before you purchase aircraft.  I knew they would be a bit higher on older planes but never assumed that they would cost 15 million more per month, per plane to maintain than the 707's were costing.  I could have bought the planes for $1.00 and couldn't make a profit with them.

[Calebrw]

Bad luck.

I never buy off the market, as it's full of people trying to trap newbies into buying useless old aircraft at over-inflated prices, when they really should scrap them.

If you base at a reasonably large airport with good routes, you can soon make enough to buy from new. OK you have to wait a bit, but AM is in part a waiting game, especially in the early stages.

Think like a real airline - start off small and keep it affordable.

Think twice about going for those widebody jets before you really need them and then plan their routes carefully- you now know about the maintanance charges

Established brokers are a good way to buy, you'll get a discount but might have to wait a bit longer.

Note that this isn't so bad (buying older planes) if you get a good price and you have the feeder network (not feeder in the traditional sense, but feeding revenue to your airline). Especially if post of your other planes are new.

[Pingu]

I want to buy a 8 year-old plane, but the cycles/airframe hours is 0. The cost will be the same of a new plane or not?

[1993matias]

Currently only the age affects the maintenance. It is generally reccomended to keep your average fleet age under three years, but it all depends on your size and profit.

[Calebrw]

I want to buy a 8 year-old plane, but the cycles/airframe hours is 0. The cost will be the same of a new plane or not?

To expand on what Matias said. You could reap some short turn benefits from the plane if the selling price is low (50% of current value) and it allows you to move into a market (city pairing) that you can't serve now or between two big cities that you've been priced out of by competitors.

Also as Matias said, if you have a larger fleet of smaller airplanes, adding a cheap but old plane of a larger capacity (more per flight profit before maintenance) may inject some cash into your airline.

[StephenM]

If anyone here plans to open a new private world I can enable a new maintenance formula for you to try out. I am not happy with the results but it does not penalise you for such older aircraft, and looks more at fleet commonality, and how hard you fly your planes. For example if you use aircraft flying 24 hours a day on very short sectors the bill is much higher compared to less frequent longer sectors. It is still in development and so it is not recommended for widespread use until I fix a few issues in its costs.

[Calebrw]

Stephen,

Let me know what you need. I'd be happy to help as long as you do all the hard work (like aggregating the data).

Thanks,

 - Caleb

[csclegg]

Stephen,

I would not mind trying to figure out a new world with new maint. costs.  The ideas you had in your message sound more "real world".  Cycles for airplanes such as you mentioned (flying short routes, 24 hours) takes much more out of a plane than flying 3 cycles a day on longer routes.

Also, if there is any way to make maint, costs known or even be able to anticipate would be great.  Buying a used plane is a crap shoot depeneding on fleet size and age.  I got burned so bad the first time that I won't buy used planes and have leased or waiting to buy my own new planes than take a gamble on purchasing 2 or 3 year old used planes.

Just started playing but have enjoyed what I see so far, just a few unkonwns for newbies like me that can take some "stress" out of the equation.

[StephenM]

The current formula has no way to estimate the cost of maintenance. It is not based on each aircraft but rather the fleet as a whole. If you have a large delivery of aircraft at once it will really cause problems, especially if you have an older fleet. It just makes the values jump while the average age stays high, resulting in a big bill at the end of the month.

Ironically the more realistic way is to calculate costs on fleets as a whole rather than individually. Sometimes it is hard to attribute costs and overheads to a particular aircraft. The new formula was designed in mind to calculate costs for each aircraft individually. The formula I use updates itself automatically and I simply take a snapshot when the game is ready to charge maintenance costs. The intention is to allow users to see their monthly maintenance cost per plane every month, as well as an estimated cost for the next month end.

Because a new formula will be so different from the old one, it wont be able to be applied to worlds already in existence. I have been building some of the infrastructure required for the new formula into each world for quite some time, but I wont be offering it as a retrospective upgrade when it is ready.