The airline

A virtual airline (VA) is a crew, a shared account and a shared fleet. A line pilot only needs to take flights off the schedule; everything else is management's job.

Join an existing one

The catalogue shows each airline's size, its fleet and how active it is. Applying takes one click, and the owner or a manager decides. It is the easiest way in: the aircraft are bought, the schedule is written and salary is paid from day one.

Start your own

That capital covers either one aircraft outright or several on lease — with something left over for running costs. For a young airline leasing is almost always the wiser call: the money stays available for fuel and salaries.

Who does what

• Owner and managers — fleet, schedule, hiring, finance, hubs, loans.
• Pilots — take flights, fly them, collect salary and bonuses.
• NPC crews — hired computer pilots. They fly the schedule themselves and bring in money while human pilots are offline, and they draw a salary too.

The schedule

Flights don't appear by themselves: management creates them by hand or imports the real route network of an existing carrier. An empty schedule means pilots have nothing to take, and it is the first thing worth checking in an airline you don't know.

Hubs & bases

A hub is an airport where the airline is established: handling is cheaper there and passengers are more plentiful. Opening and running one costs money, so an airline should hold exactly as many hubs as it can feed.

Ops room

Every so often an event lands on the airline: a storm over the hub, a route tender, a rival poaching one of your pilots. Each one asks you to pick a single response, with money and reputation at stake. The mechanic is optional, but it moves the books noticeably.