Managing large airlines?

[george7378]

Hi everyone!

I've been playing for many years now as Maldivian Air Express, my 'signature' airline based out of VRMM. I have a question though about managing an airline when it becomes excessively large. Right now, my airline has 5 operational planes doing 16 routes:

Airline Mogul - See my airline

I like to keep things small like this and grow gradually for a few reasons:

1) I like to replace my fleet once the age starts to climb to ensure that maintenance costs are kept down.
2) When my airlines get too large, i.e. when I have something like 50 planes in my fleet and approaching 100 routes, everything just gets too complicated to manage neatly.

My question is mainly about point 2. How do all you people with 1000+ routes and 500+ planes manage everything? Surely it must take DAYS to assign all those planes to different routes. What do you do when your maintenance costs start to climb? It must be a mammoth task to replace 500 737-200s with new 737-300s?

Thanks for your help!

[1993matias]

Well, my approach to #2 is to use an hour a day to replace around 200 routes. It does take some time though, I usually listen to the radio while doing that
But with a small airline with only ~100 aircraft, it is not too difficult, especially if flying from lucrative bases.