It only takes about 5 years to build a global airline. After 5 years it just turns into a ***t fest. You have the major airlines covering everything and upgrading with larger aircraft, and you get the little airlines catching up. What happens is a wide spread devalueing of most routes, more comptetition and mudslinging. Places like Europe and north america become a cloaca because expansion is limited.
5 years is a good limit for now. Im happy to see 5 year terms until multiworlds is released. After then 10 years is okay. Though it can get a bit long.
If thats the case, I have yet to notice it. I'm slowly turning into a global airline, but I try to fly things more realistically, so you'll see logical fleet and route choices from me (thus meaning you won't see a Tu-114 flying from Koltsovo/Vnukovo/Osnova to Gomel or Zielona Gora, but rather something more like a AN-24V or Tu-134 base version for VKO/Koltsovo and a L-410 from HRK to those two airports.) Devaluation of routes will happen reguardless how many years the round is. Perhaps when runway restrictions finally get figured out, you'll see lower chances of routes getting A300s and 737-200s on them.
As a side note, I entered my first round later on (it was almost 2005 in the game I think), I recall that the BK script was ran and I was able to expand nicely without any issue. Obviously, I didn't make it into the top 100, but I did make a decent ranking for an airline that started when I did.
Another clue to help, stay away from large airports (pax #>10,000,000), if you're a start up, you'll get eaten by the more experanced majors anyways. Just ask any "new" airline in r/l who went into DFW. Most of them didn't last very long.
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