Airline Director

You take over a small airline. One week at a time, you turn it into a name that appears on departure boards.

Lease your first jet or buy it outright. Fight for a slot pair at a major hub, or fly from an airport nobody has heard of. Open a route, set the fare, and find out on Sunday night whether you were right.

WEEK BY WEEK Every turn is one week. Make your decisions, hit Advance Week, and read the report: who flew, what they paid, what it cost you, and how much you kept. Five minutes or fifty — the game waits.

YOUR AIRLINE, YOUR CURRENCY An airline keeps its books where it is based. Start in Manchester and you report in pounds, in Amsterdam in euros, in Nairobi or Newark in dollars — down to the pence, cents and RASK on every route.

EVERY NUMBER IS EXPLAINED No hidden dice. Every route shows its RASK, its CASK and the gap between them. If your load factor drops, the game tells you why: a rival added frequency, your punctuality slipped, or you priced yourself out. If you cannot explain a number, it is not doing its job.

THE THREE THINGS YOU ARE ALWAYS SHORT OF Cash, because aircraft cost tens of millions and leases fall due whether anyone flew or not. Slots, because you need one at both ends and good airports have none to spare. Block hours, because every airframe has a ceiling and pushing past it breaks your punctuality, your maintenance and your crew.

Every real decision in the game is a trade between those three.

BUILD A FLEET Turboprops, narrowbodies, widebodies and ultra-long-range twins. Buy outright, finance it, or lease — each with a different shape of pain. Watch condition, book the heavy checks before they book themselves, and reconfigure the cabin when the market moves.

RUN A NETWORK Sixty-plus airports and hundreds of city pairs. Set frequency, assign the aircraft, price three cabins by hand or hold a position against the market and let revenue management do it. Declare a base and watch two routes start feeding each other.

THE OFFICE Hire a chief executive, a network planner, a head of engineering. Sign catering and ground handling contracts — cheap costs you something that is not money. Take on debt, raise equity, float the airline. Buy a rival if you can afford one.

CLIMB THE LADDER Eight tiers, from Air Taxi to Global Network Carrier, each gated on rating, reputation, fleet, network and net worth. Around 150 rival carriers hold the ranks above and below you. At the end of every 52-week year, a graded season review from the board, the passengers and the crew.

Open-ended. No win condition, no timers, no ads. Three save slots. Play it for an afternoon or for four in-game decades.

Airline Director is a work of fiction. Airlines, aircraft and market conditions in the game are invented or simplified for play, and nothing in it is aviation, business or financial advice.