The bank and loans

A loan is not free money — it trades future profit for an aircraft today. Management takes it out, the whole airline pays it back, every week, whether anyone flew that week or not.

Terms

Payments are annuity-style: the figure never changes, it is simply weighted towards interest at the start and towards principal at the end. An airline may hold only one active loan — nothing new is issued until the current one is closed.

How much you get

The limit adds up from two parts: 20% of the value of the aircraft the airline owns outright, plus twelve average weekly operating profits (averaged over the last four weeks). It never goes above ₽2bn.

Only operating activity counts as profit. Aircraft purchases and sales, lease deposits, starting capital and the loan movements themselves are left out — you cannot inflate the limit by selling an airframe.

If you stop paying

• A 0.1% penalty accrues daily on the outstanding balance.
• Miss four payments in a row and the bank sells one of the airline's aircraft at 75% of market value, clearing the debt from the proceeds. Its crew is released.
• So lease instalments and loan payments are the ones to cover first: salaries can be trimmed, but these are debited on their own schedule.

Paying it off early

You can close a loan at any point: the principal plus half of the remaining interest. If the cash is there, that usually beats riding out the full term.

The price of scale

A big airline earns a lot, but it also costs more to run. When the scale load is switched on, two surcharges are added to a large airline's costs. Nothing forbids growth — there is simply a point beyond which each extra aircraft costs more than it brings in.

• The administration surcharge is based on the list value of the whole fleet — owned and leased aircraft together. Up to a few tens of billions it is barely visible, but closer to the limit it climbs very steeply. Buying out a lease does not escape it: a bought-out aircraft stays in the fleet value.
• The lease load makes every lease payment dearer the more contracts the airline holds. It is recalculated at every payment — old contracts get dearer along with new ones.
• It is phased in over four weeks: on the first day both surcharges are four times softer. The start date will be announced in advance; nothing is charged before it, but the forecast already shows what it will cost.
• An airline nobody has visited for two days pays the surcharges only from the remaining balance: they will not push it into debt or rehabilitation.

What to do when the size fee grows. Look not at the surcharge itself but at whether the airline stays in profit after the transition, and pick from four steps — they can be combined:

• Return leased aircraft that earn less than they cost to keep. This is judged by the aircraft’s own flights: its earnings minus its lease and the part of the surcharges that leaves with it. Returning costs nothing, and the deposit comes back. The deepest losers go first — after them the remaining leases get cheaper.
• Buy out a lease when the buyout pays back quickly: you stop paying the lease, and the other leases get cheaper. A buyout costs money, and the fleet-value surcharge stays after it.
• Buy new aircraft instead of leasing them when a leased one would lose money: a bought aircraft does not make your leases dearer.
• If even a bought aircraft would lose money, stop growing the fleet: each extra one will take money away.

The exact formulas, if you want them. The monthly administration surcharge = s0 × V × (V / V0)^q, where V is the list value of every aircraft; s0 is currently 1%, q is 4, and the surcharge never exceeds 39% of fleet value per month. Every lease payment is multiplied by 1 + L / L0, where L is the number of active contracts and L0 is currently 30. V0 and L0 are economy settings, tuned so that the limit falls on an airline noticeably larger than today's leaders; during the transition both bases are four times softer and converge to their working values over four weeks.

When the debt stops shrinking

A small negative balance means nothing on its own — going into debt is a normal part of growing. But if the account is in the red AND the airline has spent more than it earned for a week, it is placed under watch. This is not a procedure yet: nothing is taken from you, a warning letter simply arrives, and purchases, hiring and upgrades are unavailable anyway until the balance is positive again. The standing itself, the remaining term and the list of what to do are always visible in the “Company standing” block on the Finance tab.

If the debt goes deeper than your overdraft limit, the airline moves into administration, skipping the watch phase — once you owe more than you are allowed, warning you is already too late. In administration nothing is seized either: aircraft stay, crews keep flying, hubs keep running — but the debt keeps growing and the clock is running. The deeper the hole, the shorter the term: a month for a small overshoot, three days for a huge one.

• Sell aircraft. The cash arrives at once and their running costs stop the same day.
• Return leases early. That is a legitimate move, not a defeat: you stop paying for the aircraft immediately.
• Close or mothball surplus hubs — the upkeep of large bases is usually the real hole.
• Drop loss-making lines: the "Estimate · actual" column in the schedule keeps two values side by side — the per-hour formula estimate and how the leg really flew over the last 30 days. Only the actual is marked in red, and only when it is a loss: the estimate says nothing about the actual result.

If the debt is still outstanding when the term ends, the airline is liquidated. Crews are released, the schedule is closed and the fleet goes under the hammer: owned aircraft are sold, leased ones return to their lessors. The proceeds settle the debts, and whatever is left — if anything — is paid to your personal account and becomes the capital for your next airline.