Tips and Tricks

Learn some tips & tricks on how to improve your airline. Have some tips or tricks to Air Tycoon Online? Add onto this page and help the new players out!

## **Tips & Tricks:**

* Never leave a plane untouched and never do cargo routs from inner land areas.
* Put every dollar you have to work for you. Don't sit on cash!
* Avoid buying planes with bad fuel efficiency, and in later years most Russian-made planes. Boeing is almost always the winner on fuel efficiency, even better than Airbus. Fuel efficiency doesn't matter much in the early years, but it will kill your airline in the late 70s and beyond if you are still flying planes with efficiency levels under 6.0.
* Even though Concorde is not very fuel efficient it can make more profit than a fully loaded A380-800 (flying long haul routes) if you fly between big cities with no competition.
* Buy fuel tank(s) and a maintenance depot at your hubs, as this will increase your income and decrease your expenses. The earlier in the game you do this, the better.
* Try to form a closed flight network in order to maximize the efficiency of counters and offices.
* Start hubs that have good stats but are not too popular (e.g. Dubai, Osaka, Nagoya, Busan, Alexandra and etc.). If your hub is New York, London, or Tokyo, you will have competition on every route, and your revenue will be lower. Identify cities that have low competition and build routes there.
* Finding and keeping monopoly routes is the key to staying profitable. But don't be afraid to compete if the stats support it. If somebody else is already flying a route and they're getting 100% occupancy with 1.70 fare level (1.60 in ATO 2) , by all means start flying the same route!
* Make sure that you get as many slots between two cities as your aircraft can complete and have your plane fly as many slots as possible on every route.
* Lease as many aircraft as you can - up to the maximum of 30% of your total inventory. Some have argued that leasing costs money and does not build your airline value. That' s true, but it's also true that leased aircraft don't depreciate, and can be returned without any cost whenever you want. Think about it: Say you have $100M to spend on air-planes. You could buy one aircraft for $100M, have it earn you say $3M a month and depreciate at the rate of $1M a month -- for a net positive of $2M/month. Or you could lease 10 aircraft at $10M down-payment each, a monthly payment of $1M each, and earnings of $3M each for a net positive of $20M/month. Your revenues from leasing are 10x higher than if you had purchased! As the game goes on and you become flush with cash, you can replace the leased planes with purchased planes.
* A good seating arrangement can earn more satisfaction and be cheaper (e.g. all economy but best pitch).
* Pack your seats like sardines. In the early years, you need to keep seat pitch in the GOOD range (around 32 - 35 inches in economy) since there is only one kind of seat per class, and no in-flight perks like satellite phone or internet. But as the game progresses, you can pack the seats to the bottom of the POOR range (less than 32 inches in economy) and still get satisfaction of 70% if you buy the best seats and includes all the perks.
* Never buy used aircraft unless it is has 10 years of service life left or you really need one fast. Because you have to replace them frequently when they run out of life to keep up satisfaction which can be annoying especially for big airlines.
* Operating with old planes isn't necessarily bad: Although it causes higher maintenance costs, planes with zero lifespan don't deprecate! You can operate them for another 55 months, if they don't crash. Psst... if they crash the insurance company will compensate you some 80% of the remaining value, which gives you more money than that of selling it.
* Diversify. Passenger routes earn more profit than cargo routes but they have very high month-to-month fluctuation, they are more susceptible to economic downturns, and you face more competition from other players. Also, cargo aircraft are generally cheaper than passenger aircraft, and they don't ever need to be renovated. Your best bet is to balance your portfolio with both passenger and cargo aircraft, in the same way you would balance a financial portfolio between stocks (higher returns but greater risk and fluctuation) and bonds (lower but steadier returns).
* If the occupancy on one of your older routes is dropping -- especially on a route with competition -- check the satisfaction of the aircraft. If it is low, a quick renovation can be a lot cheaper than buying a new plane.
* To check if a route is adding on to you value, calculate the following: Purchase price of the aircraft flying the route X 0.41% (This is approximately how much money your aircraft is depreciating) subtract that amount from the profit that the route is making to obtain the value increase of the specific route.
* When flying competition routes, make sure the plane in question has a high satisfaction rating (this will allow you to attract more customers)
* At the start of the simulation when you have low amounts of flights, maximise the amount of employees you have at your airlines, investment in advertising and training. This will help the service and name value to go up quickly and allow you to out compete others airlines at the start.
* Always start in 1960 if you have any interest in being a top finisher. But if you're just playing for fun and don't care how you finish, a great time to join is during the economic crisis of 1978-1979. There are many cheap used planes on the market, many players are abandoning good routes or quitting altogether, and there is a huge boom in the 1980s that is about to start.
* If you want to be a top finisher, you will have to buy airports. There is no way around it. But they cost big money, so you will need to build many profitable routes first, then hope to start buying airports by the late 1970s.
* Don't waste your credits. They cost actual money to replace. Use them sparingly in the early years for fuel tanks and maintenance depots where you are making a long-term investment in a hub, and then in the later years to buy airports. Don't spend them on quick-buy slots, quick-buy aircraft, aircraft upgrades, duty free shops, or lounges. It may seem tempting to upgrade your aircraft to get a few more kilometres range so you can open a route between two distant cities. Resist the temptation. You will regret it later when you need airports.
* Make block orders of aircraft. If you start buying 14 minutes before the next turn (it will save money), you can buy up to 480 slots without using any credits. Although this operation takes at least 2 and a quarter hours, it can cause your value to sky-rocket, especially if you are going to buy planes with over 80 seats. On the other hand though, it is important that the planes have low operating costs, at first you don't have any competition, and slot expenses are not through the roof.
* Use higher latitude airports. Think of it this way; if you were to draw a horizontal line around the world at the latitude of Anchorage, it would be far shorter than one at the latitude of the equator. While there are not many cities far south of the tropics there are many a long way north (the isle of man has a higher north latitude than the southerly latitude of Tierra Del Fuego). An example is the distance from Mombasa (40°E)to Lima (77°W) is 12,807KM. Meanwhile the distance from Saint Petersburg (30°E) to Anchorage (150°W) is just 6,548KM - A319 Range! So the distance is 51% less further north to go half way around the world than it is to less than a third round the world near the equator.
* If you are going to build an airport the best place to open an airport is when at the time you first consider it, the city has one airport with roughly 2200 used slots. lets say you are in the process of ordering 150 717s, by the time you have raised the funds for an airport the main airport should be almost full and you should be in the prime position to get slots. When you open your airport, charge the same as the amount at the main airport as otherwise the best airlines will move airports and the worst airlines will carry on using the default main airport because they do not realize that they could move.
* If you want to fly a monopoly route with low satisfaction planes (e.g. Russian planes) cram in seats like sardines as the satisfaction is so bad there is no point in trying to make it good.
* Try to start in Asia, or smaller European cities like Luxembourg and Budapest you will have fewer opportunities to compete with other players.
* Buy fuel efficient planes so it won't cost you as much on fuel.
* Try to find routes between two high number cities and try to be the only route (It really helps if you are the only one with that route)
* If you are in economic crisis you need to close the route that have bad profit, decrease invesment to 0-2 and decrease employment rate to 1-2 and decrease employment salary if the employees still satisfied.
* Never use IL62 because it is not fuel effecient, you should wait and use the DC-8-62.
* In 1970's, when you buy a plane on the seat option press the arrow to give more option of seat that give more sastifaction.
* Press the left and right arrow key on the seat for more sastifsction (it cost a bit more)
* Use the aircraft correctly (use speedy and short range plane for short range route and use speedy and long range plane for long range route)
* If the City you are going its business is less than 99 dont put Business class.