Strategy Tips

Cash keeps your airline alive. Every gate costs maintenance, including a gate waiting for a future route, and route launches, closures, forfeitures, expansions, taxes, lobbying, and dividends all spend cash.

Build the network

A large airport raises a route's size factor. Multiple routes touching the same airports raise the network factor. Direct competitors increase the competitive factor and usually reduce the payoff. Watch the full route payoff in the Costs and Profit Reference before committing gates.

Treat unused gates as a decision

An unused gate can launch a future route or support a trade, but it still costs maintenance and can be taxed by Increase Airport Utilization Act. Forfeiting costs $1, so compare that fee with the maintenance you avoid and the route options you lose.

Time your cash

A gate auction charges the winner immediately, while operations, taxes, and dividends settle later in the round. Keep enough cash for the fees and charges still ahead. A route with a negative operating profit can be useful for network growth, but only if the rest of the airline can carry its maintenance and other costs.

Negotiate carefully

Trades can move complete routes and their endpoint gates, unused gates, and cash. A transferred route changes both airlines' networks and can change the profit of other routes. A good trade accounts for those downstream changes, not just the assets named in the offer.

Read the stage

Pioneering rewards a low-cash table with a subsidy. Maturity makes lobbying and temporary regulation part of the economy. Reinvestment, taxes, airport monopolies, and unused gates can all change the value of holding cash or gates.