So I am in the middle of building an airline industry simulator as a side-project (I'm a computer programmer). Users create an airline, set their flights, ect. and then once or twice a week, all the user data gets loaded into a simulation engine and ran against real-world historical data to simulate the behavior of the virtual industry and determine which users will succeed or go bankrupt accordingly (only supports US markets).
One of the factors I want to add to my simulation engine is passenger preference based on the times of the flights. But I don't have a really firm grasp of how volitile that preference is, so I figured I would ask some opinions from people who know the industry better than I do (I've worked for 2 airlines, but I haven't worked for an airline in the past two years). The only "data" I have in this respect is my personal preferences, but that is hardly a representation of the consumer base.
So, what factors, when it comes to the times of the flight (departure and/or arrival times) do you consider when chosing your flights? Do you consider both departure AND arrival time, or do you only think of arrival times? For this exercise, you can ignore having to make a connecting flight, the simulation already handles that. You can also consider time based on the time zone of the origin or destination, since the simulation also already calculates that. I only care about your initial departure and your final destination.
For example, in my opinion, I would consider the travel times to go a little bit like what I have below. The numbers reference a sort of difference from an average, where negative would be less preferred, and positive more preferred.
For departure times, I would expect something like this:
11pm to 5am = -5
9pm to 11pm = -3
5am to 6am = -2
6am to 8am = -1
8am to 12pm = 0
12pm to 4pm = 1
4pm to 6pm = 0
6pm to 8pm = -1
8pm to 9pm = -2
Does anyone else have other thoughts as to preference of traffic at given times of the day?
One of the factors I want to add to my simulation engine is passenger preference based on the times of the flights. But I don't have a really firm grasp of how volitile that preference is, so I figured I would ask some opinions from people who know the industry better than I do (I've worked for 2 airlines, but I haven't worked for an airline in the past two years). The only "data" I have in this respect is my personal preferences, but that is hardly a representation of the consumer base.
So, what factors, when it comes to the times of the flight (departure and/or arrival times) do you consider when chosing your flights? Do you consider both departure AND arrival time, or do you only think of arrival times? For this exercise, you can ignore having to make a connecting flight, the simulation already handles that. You can also consider time based on the time zone of the origin or destination, since the simulation also already calculates that. I only care about your initial departure and your final destination.
For example, in my opinion, I would consider the travel times to go a little bit like what I have below. The numbers reference a sort of difference from an average, where negative would be less preferred, and positive more preferred.
For departure times, I would expect something like this:
11pm to 5am = -5
9pm to 11pm = -3
5am to 6am = -2
6am to 8am = -1
8am to 12pm = 0
12pm to 4pm = 1
4pm to 6pm = 0
6pm to 8pm = -1
8pm to 9pm = -2
Does anyone else have other thoughts as to preference of traffic at given times of the day?
