Size of airlines

[CHR]

I noticed airlines in Airline Mogul seem to get very large, very quickly. So I decided to compare the biggest airlines in the real world, to world 6. I would like to first note that this game has been going on for less than 10 years, the real airlines have had much longer than us to build up. There are some interesting statistics.

The largest airline by passengers (in world 6), carries 1,544,496 daily. This equates to 563,560,000 passengers per year.

When we look at real stats, the biggest airlines (in 2007) are:
Southwest Airlines: 101,911,000
American Airlines: 98,162,000
Delta Air Lines: 72,900,000

The data, which goes back 3 years shows Southwest has been increasing, and American/Delta have been decreasing slightly. Despite this, I doubt any would have ever been near the 500,000,000 mark.

As another example, to have 200,000,000 passengers per year (far higher than any present real world airline), you need about 548,000 daily passengers. 7 airlines fit into this category.
To have 100,000,000 passengers per year (making you tie with our world's largest, Southwest), you need about 274,000 daily passengers. 22 Airlines in world 6 fit into this category.

Another intesting statistic is that the 300 airlines listed as tranporting passengers, transport over 26,000,000 passengers per day, or 9.49 billion passengers per year.

Finally, the 344 airlines (many of which are in debt, bringing down the value) are worth 2.2 trillion euros.

[Lord Voldemort]

One of the things that offset this are that we can go from any point A to any point B and make profit...
Real airlines can't.

[LOT 737-300]

And to add, with little restriction.  There are also real world politics that prohibit businesses from doing businesses in certain areas (like US airliners can't have regular service to Cuba (there are a few charters though), Iran, North Korea, and I also think Zimbabwe). In AM, an airline can fly on these routes without having to worry about such. There is also the fact that the supply/demand concept is slightly twisted.

[blumage]

You can't compare a game to the real world. Just enjoy your airline and try to reach your goals.

[CHR]

My point is that the game's formulae are a bit off, some profitable routes probably shouldn’t be. This is not an entirely bad thing. While it sacrifices some realism, it means that we are actually able to have big planes and fly international routes in a short, few year, round. Without these flaws, most players (if they hadn't given up for boredom) would still be flying tiny 20 seaters for most of their routes after 5 or 10 years. I was just showing some interesting comparisons between the game and the real world.

[LOT 737-300]

My point is that the game's formulae are a bit off, some profitable routes probably shouldn’t be. This is not an entirely bad thing. While it sacrifices some realism, it means that we are actually able to have big planes and fly international routes in a short, few year, round. Without these flaws, most players (if they hadn't given up for boredom) would still be flying tiny 20 seaters for most of their routes after 5 or 10 years. I was just showing some interesting comparisons between the game and the real world.

I'm having a good focus on the 36 seat IL-14M (not big), just because I like how it performs for me (as well as trying to stay with a primarly East Bloc fleet). But the formula is based off of  the "supply" and "demand" between two airports based on the passenger numbers. It does take away from some reality, but if you look, in reality, there is a BUNCH that differs from this game.

1) Lower profits on "long haul", part of the reason is the maint costs involved in the game, another is the fact that in reality, the numbers are solely based off the airport numbers in the game, where in reality, you'd have people going from many cities connecting to a larger cities to catch that long haul (i.e. lets say that UA was to begin ORD-HKG service, and they are the only ones doing it in the whole country, well people would typically come from all over the country, and from there, would connect at ORD, thus giving large profits, where in the game, the pax is more evenly distributed between cities.

2) In reality, there is tons of competition, where if today in r/l, an airline was to start out like this, it would take them at least 2 or 3 decades before they start to fly anything larger than 50 seats. In the game, there is no competition prior to the round starting, so it starts out as "everyone for themselves". There is also the fact that carriers that have gotten huge had also started out with a larger type (i.e. Jetblue with A320s, SWA with 737-200), and a very good amount of investor cash.

3) This game has simplified a lot of the industry. The simplicity is part of the beauty as well though, as it allows for the game to stay entertaining. If the game was made so only 100 people could move around, trust me, many players would go ditch this for other games.

[fewlimitz]

Hmm perhaps there should be an "event" to suddenly raise costs for a short time. IE: fuel cost/blockage nation ect. ?  Im pretty sure of all the airliners, few have a solid business plan in game. This could help even out the playing field? Or really piss ppl off. One if not both ^_^

[Tiger In Training]

I think its all down to the AM Bosses being much better at their virtual jobs than the real guys. Anyone agree?

[MrOrange]

Obviously there's a big difference between this game and the real world where airlines can't just do whatever they want whenever they want. But we're still working on improving the simulation, so eventually we should get somewhere near reality. As noted though, we can't just simulate every real-life event because the game would become unplayable. Maybe we will, some time in the future, stop you from flying from the US to Cuba

[Air Elbonia]

I noticed airlines in Airline Mogul seem to get very large, very quickly. So I decided to compare the biggest airlines in the real world, to world 6. I would like to first note that this game has been going on for less than 10 years, the real airlines have had much longer than us to build up. There are some interesting statistics.

The largest airline by passengers (in world 6), carries 1,544,496 daily. This equates to 563,560,000 passengers per year.

When we look at real stats, the biggest airlines (in 2007) are:
Southwest Airlines: 101,911,000
American Airlines: 98,162,000
Delta Air Lines: 72,900,000

The data, which goes back 3 years shows Southwest has been increasing, and American/Delta have been decreasing slightly. Despite this, I doubt any would have ever been near the 500,000,000 mark.

As another example, to have 200,000,000 passengers per year (far higher than any present real world airline), you need about 548,000 daily passengers. 7 airlines fit into this category.
To have 100,000,000 passengers per year (making you tie with our world's largest, Southwest), you need about 274,000 daily passengers. 22 Airlines in world 6 fit into this category.

Another intesting statistic is that the 300 airlines listed as tranporting passengers, transport over 26,000,000 passengers per day, or 9.49 billion passengers per year.

Finally, the 344 airlines (many of which are in debt, bringing down the value) are worth 2.2 trillion euros.

Actually, the root of that difference is likely based on the fact that there's order books in real life. in AM planes are quickly acquired and easily acquired en mass all on the same day.  I've got a few other ideas and tweaks which are dropped in now and then (depending on the size of the mod or the size of the swing) which are designed to slow it a bit.  I think it's been effective, but not dramatically so in any sense. you'll never wake up and go "whoa. what happened", but if time travel were possible, you'd probably go "whoa. that's dropped off a lot more then i thought" if you went back in time 6-7 months and did the same thing.