I'm trying to come up with a realistic way to generate customers in a simulated air charter company and wanted to know how the real companies do this?

 

I would expect the normal, web/seo stuff, social networking twitter, fb, etc..magazine ads, etc word of mouth..

 

what I'm trying to figure out is the expense associated with something like this..

 

 

I've come up with a little method I have used and that is for every airport that I want to offer my air charter service to.  For every $1000 I spend on advertising per month I get one 6 sided die to roll per day.. only on a roll of a 6 do I get a customer(s) to fly... so that if I spend $5000/month on one airport I get 5 dice.. then I roll those and for every 6 I get I get one customer or group of customers.. since it is a charter, I charge $x/hr depending on the plane I'm .. there are lots of other factors.. but I think I'm "spending" more money that what you would in real life.. 5 grand seems a bit excessive..

 

thanks

 

From my airline class at ERAU, the US government provided subsidies to airlines to encourage economic activity and growth in the smaller communities.  For example, in the early days, they paid airlines to fly mail to help show people that you could count on the airline to fly Tampa to Sarasota daily at this time. 

 

Perhaps also you could include a stock market hit as well.

 

Also, the smaller companies probably work through airlines to feed (hence the term feeders) pax to the majors coordinating their schedule, so they may provide special fares, which the major may sell versus someone who goes directly to the commuter airline.

 

There are holidays and vacations that may add or detract from revenue as well.

I'm not talking about commuters/feeders.. I'm talking about small mom/pop charter companies... on demand

 

flying anything from say C206 to B200 etc.

I'm trying to come up with a realistic way to generate customers in a simulated air charter company and wanted to know how the real companies do this?

 

Soliciting corporate sales. SALES PEOPLE knocking on doors. Sports teams, corporations etc.

Something I always say is that you should always have one of the following when starting any charter company:

 

 - Deep pockets (someone to bankroll the venture until you have a steady client base.....for a private jet/turboprop charter, management fees for the owners are often the primary source of income, with charters used to offset fixed maintenance costs etc.)

 

 - Existing contracts (I don't recommend to anyone that they purchase an aircraft, or move one into a new market unless they have a commitment of 30-60 hours of flying per month depending on the type)

 

 - First mover advantage (If you see a gap in the market, where there's a genuine need for the service you're providing)

 

 

In the charter business, getting new clients isn't exactly as random as just rolling a die. Typically, customers who charter often (more than once per year), will have a preferred company they go to, and will not likely shop around (online or otherwise), unless there is no availability (and their supplier isn't smart enough to sub-charter someone else's aircraft). New companies are not usually re-inventing the wheel, so they're not likely to open up the market to first-time charterers either.

 

New charter companies will usually have to actively target clients who charter (cold calling, local trade shows etc...) to gain the business. Most have a dedicated salesperson or sales team focused on generating new business.

 

Typically, online marketing through (Google...SEO...etc), will pick up the people who have never chartered before (and rarely have any idea how much it costs), or charter rarely and shop around to the entire market when they do (not the ideal type of client)....or brokers (who can be a decent source of business, but shouldn't be relied upon as they tend to be low margin). To be fair, there is some business to be had here and unless you're in a very small market where everyone know's you, you will need an online presence.

 

Word of mouth is huge on the private jet side of things, as people who charter usually have friends or colleagues who charter. Doing a stellar job can often lead to recommendations...and easy business walking in the door.

 

 

 

Things are a little different for larger groups, as the number of companies are comparatively less than with executive charter. This type of business uses larger regional turboprops and executive airliners to move the bigger groups around (sports teams, orchestras, incentive groups, oil rig crews etc). In this type of business, you have to invest the time to build a relationship with the organization before you even get the chance to bid on the business.

 

These types of charters happen less frequently (usually once per year), unless you get a contract to move a sports team or work crews around (jackpot).

 

 

So it's not really about how much money you spend, but how good is your sales team? Expensive marketing is helpful, but not nearly as effective as a persistent, dedicated sales team, good word of mouth, or getting to know the right people. The rate of return is not directly measurable against the amount of money you spend on marketing. I would set an annual budget that would attract good salespeople, add a bit to build and maintain a decent website and include little bit of marketing to help your salespeople do their job. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers,

DB

thanks.. that was very helpful... the tricky/difficult part is how to convert what you said into a mathematical model.

 

getting back to my die roll method.. to roll a 6 (or any one specific number) on a six sided die (d6) is 16.7% chance.. fairly low.

 

I have a very beginning background in BOARD game design..particuarly board wargamming.  One of the methods used is what is referred to as "buckets of dice" method, where as an example in a wargame.. a Player advances his squad of 8 soldiers and they all open fire on the enemy.. well then.. its broken down as follows:   each "soldier" gets 1d6 (one 6 sided die) then if the player has a machine gun team in his squad he might get an extra 3-5 extra dice, to simulate more bullets flying, etc. then on every 6 that is rolled a "hit" is scored on the oposing force, where maybe a 5 is a wound etc..  further rules can be implemented to say take away dice from the dice pool, for example different types of terrain that can hinder, etc.. so, I've taken this approach and carried it over to my air charter company.. and I'm trying to do the following:

 

so maybe you would get more dice the more salespeople you hire.. each salesperson would require a monthly salary? 

hiring marketing team etc.. would cost money to hire them, then you would get more dice for that.. 

for every say 50hrs of flight (you would have to accelerate it a bit) you could get another 1d6.. this would simulate the "word of mouth"  the more time you put in the more people talk about your company, again increasing your chances of getting more customers....

 

wouldn't this kind of work?  and I do understand that you do have to make it a bit "gamey" to make it work.. but I think the effect would be pretty good.  Just like in the wargame example.. the squad leader/commander, (you the player) doesn't get to control the individual men on every little thing they do and that is where the dice come in at, to represent the little nuances of life that we can't control.)

thanks.. that was very helpful... the tricky/difficult part is how to convert what you said into a mathematical model.

 

getting back to my die roll method.. to roll a 6 (or any one specific number) on a six sided die (d6) is 16.7% chance.. fairly low.

 

I have a very beginning background in BOARD game design..particuarly board wargamming.  One of the methods used is what is referred to as "buckets of dice" method, where as an example in a wargame.. a Player advances his squad of 8 soldiers and they all open fire on the enemy.. well then.. its broken down as follows:   each "soldier" gets 1d6 (one 6 sided die) then if the player has a machine gun team in his squad he might get an extra 3-5 extra dice, to simulate more bullets flying, etc. then on every 6 that is rolled a "hit" is scored on the oposing force, where maybe a 5 is a wound etc..  further rules can be implemented to say take away dice from the dice pool, for example different types of terrain that can hinder, etc.. so, I've taken this approach and carried it over to my air charter company.. and I'm trying to do the following:

 

so maybe you would get more dice the more salespeople you hire.. each salesperson would require a monthly salary? 

hiring marketing team etc.. would cost money to hire them, then you would get more dice for that.. 

for every say 50hrs of flight (you would have to accelerate it a bit) you could get another 1d6.. this would simulate the "word of mouth"  the more time you put in the more people talk about your company, again increasing your chances of getting more customers....

 

wouldn't this kind of work?  and I do understand that you do have to make it a bit "gamey" to make it work.. but I think the effect would be pretty good.  Just like in the wargame example.. the squad leader/commander, (you the player) doesn't get to control the individual men on every little thing they do and that is where the dice come in at, to represent the little nuances of life that we can't control.)

 

I kindof see what you're trying to do now. Are we talking about a physical boardgame, or a computerized one? Using chance (dice alone), would possibly require a whole lot of dice, but it's doable (and would need to really simplify things). I'd say it's possible to simplify it by using moving averages and proportions (computerized), as well as chance (rolling dice) Here are some factors to consider:

 

*Please note all the numbers I use below are for example only and would have to be re-worked to make everything fit into a playable game.

 

 

Size of Market - Total number of clients and total hours per year of flying available. This would proportionally affect everything below and would set the tone for the rest of the game (fleet size, aircraft types etc). Let's say the max market size is 40000 hours per year and 1000 potential clients**..... you could randomize the market size according to homebase location...so if you start in New York, you get 100% market size, but if you start in Lincoln, NE, you get 10% market size. 

 

**In the real world, the top 10% of clients would account for 70+% of the flying if not more.

 

 

Your Company Reputation - This can slowly increase with time (every year of operations) and also proportionally affect everything below. (That would account for word of mouth....making it easier for your salespeople to find clients...and better clients...more flying etc). Just add a multiplier....

 

Number of new clients per month, per salesperson - This can vary depending on the amount of money you spend on each salesperson, and also would vary randomly between a low and high every month. (This is overly simplified, but basically, some months are better than others). This could be affected by market size and reputation.

 

 

 

Average amount of flying per month, per client - Better (more expensive) salespeople will bring in better clients, with more flying per client, per month, on average. You can maybe assign a rating to each new client that comes in....higher rated clients would fly, for example 10-15 hours per month, versus...let's say 8-10 hours per month, or 2-5 per month for low rated clients***. ***In real life, many clients only fly 2-5 hours per year

 

It would be your choice on how to manage this. You can keep track of each new client that comes in and have a moving average of the amount of flying based on the mix of clients on the books. ....you can then apply a monthly variance to the whole thing (to simulate crazy busy months and slow months).....or..... just keep it simple by having a fixed monthly average per client...

 

 

Average number of new clients gained through marketing spend - This is relatively easy. The more money you spend increases the likelihood of new business coming in the door. Your sales team is still going to be the primary source of good clients, so you won't get the best clients through marketing spend, but occasionally you hit the jackpot from an online inquiry or call-in. So let's say at your maximum marketing spend, you get 2 new clients per month on average, and these clients will be more likely (70% chance) to be 5+ hour per month clients. At lower marketing budgets, you can scale back the above proportionally. Then, there can be a (very) random event of getting a great client (lots of hours per month) through marketing.

 

 - Also, since marketing helps your salespeople directly...you can just add a multiplier that ties your marketing spend to the number of new clients your salespeople bring in per month. Eg... More spend adds up to 10% more clients per salesperson per month etc etc

 

 

Attrition - You will always lose some clients off your books per year...some companies go out of business, some jump to other charter companies, some finish the project that required the charters, some restrict travel due to budget cuts. The only thing you have some control over is the ones that move to other companies...and this will be related to the quality of your salespeople (account managers)...the rest could be just a random average of your total number of clients at the end of the month/year.

 

 

 

I'll stop there as it's already getting really complex, but there are quite a few other factors that would make this interesting (multiple markets / bases, accidents affecting reputation....the whole side of managing the aircraft etc...)

 

I'd be happy to help dive deeper into this...but just wanted to make sure I wasn't way off base with what you're trying to do.

 

Cheers,

DB

wow!  yeah.. that is exactly what I'm trying to do...

 

what I've been doing now is using a spreadsheet for everything.. using the randbetween(1,6) for my die rolls, this way I can generate litterly hundreds of rolls if I need to without having to litterly throw tons of physical dice!  Which could be fun 3 times maybe! LOL..after that. more like work!

 

see, this is what I've allways suspected.. games like FSEconomy and FSAirhauler, etc.. just make winning way to easy.. it would be fun to try something like that but with the real posibility of loosing it all.. 

 

I'll have to re read that several times.. before I get it all. Thanks

sorry,, I forgot to say... more of a spreadsheet "game" to be then used and flown with FSX or your flightsim of choice.   

 

basically just a financial attachment to fsx.. with an aviation charter company.

I think the difficult part of this.. is the reality of it.. let me give an example..

 

joe blow has a day off from work today, so now he wants to flightsim the day away.. so lets say he has 8 full hours to flightsim.. well the problem with a game like this when its realistic is then it just so happens that the day he took off is a "slow day" for the "business"  if you know what I mean... so instead of getting to fly 8hrs he only get to fly 2hrs that day.. lets say that is all that is generated for him that day.. well now I know he can fly whatever else he wants on his own.. but as far as "playing the game" he only gets to "play the game" for 2 hrs instead of the 8 that he had in real life to spend.. 

 

so users won't end of playing the game at all if they can play it when they have real-world time to play it .... and that is why FSE and all those other type of ad-dons work and are successful they generate way more traffic then you would in real life but at least it keeps players occupied as much as they want to spend at it.

 

I don't know how to do that with what I'm talking about and still keep it realistic.. I don't think its possible.. so now you have to kind of introduce a "gamey" fudge factor to keep players busy... what a monster I created! 

Why not just have a fast-forward button?

 

If I finish my 2 hour flight and feel like being assigned another one, I can just hit fast-forward to jump ahead to the next charter that comes up. 

 

At first, it might skip to being a week later in "game time" (or spreadsheet time), but as the company grows, the frequency of available charters will increase as well.

 

 

Thoughts?

yeah.. exactly.. I've done just exactly that.. in fact you can start the game and set fsx at jan 1, xxxx (year of choice)

 

this way you can model things like flying business people out in the morning for an all day meeting and then holding you and the plane until 5pm that evening to fly home... yeah I like that a lot actually.. this works great on an individual level but if trying to do that sort of thing for a VA then it would be a nightmare because you would have different players/pilots not in real time sync.

 

 

its kinda neat that way actually..because you can even simulate RON (remain overnight) then fly out the "next morning"

 

so then you would actually get through a simulated game year a lot quicker than usual.. and time would stand still and stop when you are not playing it..if you want it to.

 

 

 

some other thoughts.. I thought of first to base the customer potential off of the closest city/town population.. then I thought.. wow that would be a total nightmare to keep track of.and then it would change every year.. so what I've been toying with is the idea of using the 50th busiest airports in the world according to this (i'm using 2012)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic#2012_statistics  and then depending on where your home airport/base is  and then how close it is to one of those airports then determines how many potential customers you get, etc.

btw.. how do you come up with 40000 hrs per year... I got the notion that I read that no pilot can fly no more than 1000 hrs/year

Interesting thread

 

Are you actually planning on making this game Brian?

Why not just have a fast-forward button?

 

If I finish my 2 hour flight and feel like being assigned another one, I can just hit fast-forward to jump ahead to the next charter that comes up. 

 

At first, it might skip to being a week later in "game time" (or spreadsheet time), but as the company grows, the frequency of available charters will increase as well.

 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

you know now that I think about that.. once I figure out what my total dice pool is or how many dice in my "bucket" so to speak.. I think I was rolling to often.. maybe I should be rolling for "jobs" for each game week, yeah?  this would be more realistic. 

 

also what is fun with dice is that there are many ways to increase the odds.. you can keep it at on a roll of only 6 you get a "job/customer"  not only can you increase the number of dice but you can increase the amount of successful numbers to throw.. so later on.. you can keep the same amount of dice and say you get a customer or a roll of 5 or 6... then maybe 4,5,6 (50% chance)  that is far different than adding more dice..

Interesting thread

 

Are you actually planning on making this game Brian?

 

 

well I've been writing rules for it for quite some time now.. can't ever seem to bring it full to completion.. what it really needs is someone to code this on a server and a client (like FS Ecconomy) then all if would be seamless.. but anyway.. I'm just trying to get it out there.. rather than sit on it and just let it die..

 

At first I wanted to run it as a role playing game.. and do a monthly fee for it.. but soon realized that I would never be able to handle hundreds of people.. so now.. I'll just throw it out in the public domain and see what happens.

 

I wanted to allow players to hire other pilots to "help" "fly" the routes but.. then it almost becomes a full time job trying to keep track of everything..(this is why a coded front end client would be awesome!)..

 

sooooooooo to answer your question.. yes.. although I'm not sure what kind of completed state it will ever be in.. but that is the idea.. to do this..

 

I don't know how to code.. so you are looking at a "boardgame" so to speak to run along side of FSX.. actually it would be a spreadsheet that you can keep track of stuff on with a set of rules in  doc format

l but if trying to do that sort of thing for a VA then it would be a nightmare because you would have different players/pilots not in real time sync.

 

Not necessarily.....in a VA setting, the system would have to be set up based on a larger client base and large fleet (every VA pilot would be another aircraft in the fleet) .....so multiple trips would be generated per day. They can just be put up on a flight board...up for grabs by anyone who wants to fly a trip that day. If a trip doesn't get assigned to a VA pilot, then it gets "sub-chartered" to another company. (Technically this happens in real life.... if there's no crew availability, then someone else gets the business)

 

 

 

 

50th busiest airports in the world according to this (i'm using 2012)  http://en.wikipedia....2012_statistics  and then depending on where your home airport/base is  and then how close it is to one of those airports then determines how many potential customers you get, etc.

 

That's a pretty good idea if it keeps things simple. Would you be looking at some sort of interpolation based on distance from the aforementioned airports?

 

 

 

 

btw.. how do you come up with 40000 hrs per year... I got the notion that I read that no pilot can fly no more than 1000 hrs/year

 

The limit for pilots is 1200 hours per year, but an aircraft can keep going indefinitely (as long as you meet the maintenance schedule). Yearly utilization on a private jet can be anywhere from 100 to 1000 hours per year depending on who owns it and how it's used.

 

If you were to add up the total number of hours flown by every private aircraft based in the New York area, you would probably find that the number was a bit higher than 40,000 hours per year.

 

The "market" would be the total number of flying hours up for grabs for every charter that will fly in a year. if you had 5 aircraft in the fleet, each averaging 50 hours per month, your company would be doing 3000 hours per year.

 

 

This project is definitely worth discussing further.

 

Cheers,

DB

 

*edited twice due to my inexperience with the forum system...

you know now that I think about that.. once I figure out what my total dice pool is or how many dice in my "bucket" so to speak.. I think I was rolling to often.. maybe I should be rolling for "jobs" for each game week, yeah?  this would be more realistic. 

 

also what is fun with dice is that there are many ways to increase the odds.. you can keep it at on a roll of only 6 you get a "job/customer"  not only can you increase the number of dice but you can increase the amount of successful numbers to throw.. so later on.. you can keep the same amount of dice and say you get a customer or a roll of 5 or 6... then maybe 4,5,6 (50% chance)  that is far different than adding more dice..

 

 

well I've been writing rules for it for quite some time now.. can't ever seem to bring it full to completion.. what it really needs is someone to code this on a server and a client (like FS Ecconomy) then all if would be seamless.. but anyway.. I'm just trying to get it out there.. rather than sit on it and just let it die..

 

At first I wanted to run it as a role playing game.. and do a monthly fee for it.. but soon realized that I would never be able to handle hundreds of people.. so now.. I'll just throw it out in the public domain and see what happens.

 

I wanted to allow players to hire other pilots to "help" "fly" the routes but.. then it almost becomes a full time job trying to keep track of everything..(this is why a coded front end client would be awesome!)..

 

sooooooooo to answer your question.. yes.. although I'm not sure what kind of completed state it will ever be in.. but that is the idea.. to do this..

I don't know how to code.. so you are looking at a "boardgame" so to speak to run along side of FSX.. actually it would be a spreadsheet that you can keep track of stuff on with a set of rules in  doc format

 

Sounds good Brian. I have nothing to offer in terms of coding but if you need help with anything else, I would love to help