Tips for New Players

To Keep Leasing costs as low as possible, keep planes at a minimum of a 3 year term until you're ready to replace your aircraft with better aircraft.

I have only one sentence for all players: Concorde is the most efficient plane in this whole game due to its speed. They will fit on almost any route. Operate them as much as you can. Good luck!

Start from United States/China/UK. Build hubs everywhere. (You can use 35+hubs from the US) Do not hesitate to launch long haul routes from relatively small airports (with demand of around 5+million such as BUF)

Start from United States/China/UK. Build hubs everywhere. (You can use 35+hubs from the US) Do not hesitate to launch long haul routes from relatively small airports (with demand of around 5+million such as BUF)

Can I also point out that some EU countries (France, Germany and Italy to some extent) have lots of mid-sized airports that generally have little competition. It's very easy to build extremely efficient airlines in these countries and of course there is the lifting of restrictions in 2000 enabling you to fly anywhere within the EU (or just Europe, I cannot recall)

Could anyone please tell me what purpose hubs serve in the game? And terminals? And in an alliance, who is the one who decides whether to accept airlines into the alliance?

Could anyone please tell me what purpose hubs serve in the game? And terminals? And in an alliance, who is the one who decides whether to accept airlines into the alliance?

Hubs allow you to get connecting PAX from your flights. So if you have an aircraft with 100 seats but the route only has a demand of 70 people the other 30 seats on the aircraft may be taken up by connecting passengers. 

Terminals allow you to have more gates

question: How do you improve your OTP (On Time Performance) I tried many things and the bar keeps yellow all the time.. THX!!

question: How do you improve your OTP (On Time Performance) I tried many things and the bar keeps yellow all the time.. THX!!

Could anyone please tell me what purpose hubs serve in the game? And terminals? And in an alliance, who is the one who decides whether to accept airlines into the alliance?

Hubs allow you to get connecting PAX from your flights. So if you have an aircraft with 100 seats but the route only has a demand of 70 people the other 30 seats on the aircraft may be taken up by connecting passengers. 

 

Terminals allow you to have more gates

Also, you can refer my guide

alternatively he could refer to a post that answered his question

To Minimize leasing costs, set to a 5-10 year term, This way you can spend less on monthly leases and put more aside towards leasing new and better aircraft.

Also a quick question. Will owning a Terminal decrease gate costs?

To Minimize leasing costs, set to a 5-10 year term, This way you can spend less on monthly leases and put more aside towards leasing new and better aircraft.
 
Also a quick question. Will owning a Terminal decrease gate costs?

new player, if you have any, any common sense at all..... stay away from spreadsheets... in this game, they

help exactly squat. they will only confuse you and bog you down in both time and patience, which will in turn

run you off leaving the rest of us hanging, and having to deal with your fault-er-ing  un-played airline for the

rest of that worlds foreseeable future.......

listen, here is some common sense.

the world that you are in right now. you go and look at the ranking page.... now you see those top 10 players

there......... there is noooooooooo spreadsheet or even super-duper spreadsheet in the world that made them

guys that way...   their airlines are humongous because they run 20 different types of planes, and in fleets of

100's ..... and 100's more on top of that......    soooooo, again..... poo - - -leeeeee - - - zzzzzzzzz . do not let these

spreadsheet people corrupt you........

ohhh, ohh, ohhh.   I see it now...... spreadsheets is a ploy.... it's meant to boggle down gullible players time which

otherwise would have been spent on filtering airports and laying routes.......

yaaa, you now know, spreadsheets are a dirty trick...... 

Buy one fuel efficient aircraft with good speed and range to begin with. The 737-300 is a good one for that. Then, take out the maximum possible bonds in the Finances page and then lease as many as possible of that aircraft. Then make routes with no competition and good profit. Hint: I nearly always make a profit at LYS -- that was the first airport at which I ever made more than 100K / day!

I am making over 500K with 55 rotations DUB-ZRH. To make profit, get a profitable route and add as many frequencies as possible. 

Miscellaneous Tips for New Players

Item 1:  Don't be afraid to ask the top ranked players questions like, what strategy are they following, how are they set up (IFS/IFE, whether they took out loans or not, how did they use them, etc)

Most of us will be happy to answer (although it might take a little time to get back to you).

Item 2: Join an Alliance.  It helps to have other airlines in your home country, especially those who have numerous hubs set up that you as a fellow alliance member can make use of by flying to and from such hubs.

Item 3:  When you get your starting aircraft, one of the things you can do is extend your lease from 1 year to at least 4 years (you can extend all the way out to 9 or 10 years [I forget which]).  Extending that lease for the starter plane will lower your monthly lease payout by quite a lot.

Item 4:  Understand that no matter which airport you choose as your HQ, for the 1st month only you will pay 250k for 5 gates - so it makes good financial sense to choose an airport where the monthly lease per gate is at least $25,000 (oops, correction: that should be $50,000, as pointed out to me in a later post)- as you benefit from operating at an airport that normally you would have to pay a higher gate lease cost for.  By the time that the second month comes and goes, hopefully you will have filled all 250 slots (you get 50 slots per gate.)

Item 5: You are more or less forced to pay all your employees the minimum wage allowed for the 1st few months; otherwise you will be at a profound disadvantage.  After the 1st few months, if your preference is to play realistically, you can 1) adjust the salaries to the appropriate level, and 2) pay out one or more bonuses to make up for the below market wages your employees endured in the 1st few months.

Item 6: utilize all 140 hours for each aircraft you acquire/lease, especially in the 1st few months, otherwise - again - you will be operating at a financial disadvantage.

Miscellaneous Tips for New Players

 

Item 1:  Don't be afraid to ask the top ranked players questions like, what strategy are they following, how are they set up (IFS/IFE, whether they took out loans or not, how did they use them, etc)

 

Most of us will be happy to answer (although it might take a little time to get back to you).

 

Item 2: Join an Alliance.  It helps to have other airlines in your home country, especially those who have numerous hubs set up that you as a fellow alliance member can make use of by flying to and from such hubs.

 

Item 3:  When you get your starting aircraft, one of the things you can do is extend your lease from 1 year to at least 4 years (you can extend all the way out to 9 or 10 years [I forget which]).  Extending that lease for the starter plane will lower your monthly lease payout by quite a lot.

 

Item 4:  Understand that no matter which airport you choose as your HQ, for the 1st month only you will pay 250k for 5 gates - so it makes good financial sense to choose an airport where the monthly lease per gate is at least $25,000 - as you benefit from operating at an airport that normally you would have to pay a higher gate lease cost for.  By the time that the second month comes and goes, hopefully you will have filled all 250 slots (you get 50 slots per gate.)

 

Item 5: You are more or less forced to pay all your employees the minimum wage allowed for the 1st few months; otherwise you will be at a profound disadvantage.  After the 1st few months, if your preference is to play realistically, you can 1) adjust the salaries to the appropriate level, and 2) pay out one or more bonuses to make up for the below market wages your employees endured in the 1st few months.

 

Item 6: utilize all 140 hours for each aircraft you acquire/lease, especially in the 1st few months, otherwise - again - you will be operating at a financial disadvantage.

I really agree with this - forum alliances are also a good place to go - some are targeted at new players - there are also many guides about these in the alliances forum. For number 1, while many would consider me an unexperienced player (no trophies) - I still really welcome any questions - please send me a PM. I would love to help!

Hi all,

I have a question for those more experienced in the route mechanics. I have read the forums and found many seasoned players advocating using direct routes vs. spoke'd routes from hubs. My question is what about the pax potential between my already established direct routes. For example I have my hub at (BOS) with direct routes going to (SEA) and (LAS). Now to me it seems like I am loosing pax who might want to go from say (SEA) too (LAS) or other cities that I may have direct routes such as (JFK) etc...  Is it wise or not wise to have smaller routes connecting some of my other majors routes? Hopefully this makes sense to you guys

Miscellaneous Tips for New Players

 

Item 1:  Don't be afraid to ask the top ranked players questions like, what strategy are they following, how are they set up (IFS/IFE, whether they took out loans or not, how did they use them, etc)

 

Most of us will be happy to answer (although it might take a little time to get back to you).

 

Item 2: Join an Alliance.  It helps to have other airlines in your home country, especially those who have numerous hubs set up that you as a fellow alliance member can make use of by flying to and from such hubs.

 

Item 3:  When you get your starting aircraft, one of the things you can do is extend your lease from 1 year to at least 4 years (you can extend all the way out to 9 or 10 years [I forget which]).  Extending that lease for the starter plane will lower your monthly lease payout by quite a lot.

 

Item 4:  Understand that no matter which airport you choose as your HQ, for the 1st month only you will pay 250k for 5 gates - so it makes good financial sense to choose an airport where the monthly lease per gate is at least $25,000 - as you benefit from operating at an airport that normally you would have to pay a higher gate lease cost for.  By the time that the second month comes and goes, hopefully you will have filled all 250 slots (you get 50 slots per gate.)

 

Item 5: You are more or less forced to pay all your employees the minimum wage allowed for the 1st few months; otherwise you will be at a profound disadvantage.  After the 1st few months, if your preference is to play realistically, you can 1) adjust the salaries to the appropriate level, and 2) pay out one or more bonuses to make up for the below market wages your employees endured in the 1st few months.

 

Item 6: utilize all 140 hours for each aircraft you acquire/lease, especially in the 1st few months, otherwise - again - you will be operating at a financial disadvantage.

Good tips, except in number 4, you will want gates that are at least $50,000 as 5*50,000 = 250,000