That's what I'm saying. Flight time and aircraft type should all be a factor in deciding fares. It's horrendously inaccurate for someone to assume that a seat is just a seat because a seat is NOT just a seat. Factors other than price need to be taken into consideration. It's ridiculous to assume that someone would pay more to fly from JFK-LAX than JFK-CDG.
It's also inconceivable that someone someone would pay the same amount of money to fly between two major cities in 8 hours vs. 3 hours. The game needs to allow for more differentiation. And no, price "differentiation" doesn't count.
The solution is to have multiple different market "sectors" you can cater to, and for each sector the most important factor is different. It's just simply not realistic for someone to assume that a seat on board a supersonic jet is no different than a seat on board a crappy turboprop (which is what the game assumes-perfect competition, no differentiation in the product offered, when in fact there IS differentiation). A 10 year round where there's no product differentiation would just bore people into leaving.
This is the only way, short of heavy, heavy regulation, to slow down or eliminate the saturation in the game. Force people to, I don't know, THINK before (and even after) they act. Yes, the game will get more complex, yes, the era of the trillion dollar airlines is over, and yes, running a huge 10,000 route airline would take so long nobody would be able to do it short of quitting their jobs (which is the point) but this would make the game much more enjoyable. As of now, it's kind of tedious. Competitiveness entails mobility up and down the rankings. When you do the same thing over and over and over and over again, you get bored. And I like this game, don't get me wrong, but it's still a hobby. And I'd like it to be, um, enjoyable. Make the right decision and enjoy the fruits of your success. Make the wrong decision, and well, have fun going bankrupt. The way it's set up this isn't a strategic game, it's a finger reflex game.
As far as the airline industry goes, it's a HEAVILY differentiated industry. No two products are the same. You have everything from decreipt US Scareways and Southwest and their emphasis on low fares to Virgin America and their mood lighting and high tech entertainment to jetBlue and their extra legroom and DirecTV and that's just in the US domestic market. If you go to the international market there's even more differentiation.
Thus some changes I'm suggesting:
1. Segment the market into different sectors: even a big airline can't realistically serve 12 different segments of the market at once.
2. Massive product differentiation: prices aren't affected as much when no two products are alike.
3. More realistic pricing: it's absurd to assume that one pays $800 to fly from JFK-IAD then $800 to fly from JFK-CDG. Make the price-distance proportion much more blatant. Price higher for shorter flight times. Give monopolies and oligopolies much more pricing power.
4. Make image a factor in the game: when you fly newer planes, have kinder staff, and have generally a pristine image, more flyers come to you.
5. Provide for a discount on maintenance for a more uniform fleet (makes sense; it costs exponentially more if you have to train mechanics on 45 different airplane types from 25 different manufacturers rather than just one or two or three, all from the same manufacturer): this forces people to choose their first planes carefully (slowing saturation-people are going to have to take more time choosing their planes) because they know that it gets exponentially more expensive to have more than 4-5 airplane types in a fleet.
6. Make it exponentially more expensive to become huge and bloated: in the real world, airlines that try to be everything to everyone have historically not done well.
7. Make it so that people can compete on something other than scale: to assume that the airline that carries the most passengers is the most successful is a ludicrous and absurd assumption. Often the biggest airlines are the ones that people are least satisfied with and have been through bankruptcy the most times. As much as it's difficult for people to imagine, things like service and legroom actually matter.
8. Constantly change the nature of the game every so often so that in no two games the strategy would be successful both times. Meaning make the game so that strategy A would only be successful in game A but not game B, C, D, or E. As of now, strategy A succeeds in game A-E and the same people win, every time.
9. Make sure that there are catastrophic consequences for making the wrong decision: and the "right decision" is different every time.
And finally, 9. link the activities in all sectors of the markets you serve with each other, and link your activities with image: i.e. what you do in the business traveler market has a significant impact on what happens to you in the vacationer market, your business practices affect your image, etc.
And further, this may be difficult to implement, but I'd like to see other players in the industry come in as well. The airline industry, like any other industry, is a consortium of industries. You have the airlines themselves, aircraft makers, and airplane brokers/holding corporations (the obvious players), and then you have the not so obvious ones like consultants, lawyers, bankers, advertising/marketing firms, accountants, ground services contractors, caterers, you name it. I'd like to see those players come into being. That would further spread out the gameplay (in that not everyone's an airline).
