Getting aircraft

Five ways in

Get aircraft has a tab for each:

• New from manufacturers: types on sale, built to order. Each enters and leaves production on its historical dates; your delivery waits behind the backlog, and makers build faster as backlogs grow.
• Used for sale: airframes with their age, hours, cycles, condition, cabin and seller. Used aircraft arrive within days and cost less, but older ones need more maintenance.
• For lease: airframes offered by the game's lessors and players' leasing companies, with rent and terms. Hide those that will not be leased to you.
• Find through the broker: a search for a used aircraft of a type.
• All aircraft: every type offered in the world so far, with all its figures.

Used aircraft come from airlines and lessors selling, and from the market, which releases airframes that were really flying at the time, keeping more of the types players fly.

Leasing an airframe

The lease sheet shows the airframe's seats, age, condition, and the rent for the term you choose. Choose the term, where it goes back, and the fleet it joins. What happens says where it is handed over and when it reaches your base, the deposit, the rent and when the lease ends, and any checks already due, which you pay for as lessee.

Every type

All aircraft lists every type offered in the world so far, whether you can get it new or used and how many, and every figure: size, range, speed, runways, weights, fuel, engines, ETOPS, noise, cabin, crew, turnaround, maintenance, checks, design life, prices and production.

The broker

You can always grow with the types you fly. The broker looks among aircraft of a type really in airline service that nobody in the world holds yet. It shows how many are in service, in this world, being looked for and left to find; how long it takes; their typical age; and its fee. What it finds is held for you for 30 days at a price above the open market's, then goes on the market. Scarce types take longer and cost more.

The lessors

The game's lessors differ in what they lease, their terms, rent, deposit and the rating they ask. Some lease only in certain regions; some end with an option to buy. An airline rated a few notches below a lessor's minimum still gets an aircraft for a larger deposit. Players' leasing companies can undercut the game's lessors, which remain there for any airline.

Paying for aircraft

• Cash has no ongoing cost but ties up money a young airline needs.
• A loan spreads the price at a rate set by your credit rating, secured on the aircraft.
• A lease needs little up front; return the aircraft at the contracted airport or lose the deposit.

New airlines usually lease. See Money & credit.

Choosing a type

Range and runway decide which routes a type can fly; seats, speed and fuel decide whether it can make money on them. Twins are held to the diversion-time rules of their era over water and remote areas. Every additional family needs its own pilots and makes maintenance dearer, so a new type has to earn its place.