Table of contents

1. Welcome aboard1
2. Starting a game2
3. Quick play3
4. The game screen4
5. The world5
6. Routes and passengers6
7. Flight slots6
8. Aircraft7
9. Managers and negotiations8
10. Hubs and offices9
11. Local businesses10
12. Operations and marketing11
13. Money matters12
14. The board of directors13
15. Alliances13
16. Winning and losing14
17. Eras and scenarios15
18. Strategy notes16
19. Keyboard shortcuts17
20. Credits18

Welcome aboard

You have just been named chief executive of a brand-new airline. The board has handed you three aircraft, a little money and a home airport. Somewhere out there are rival carriers with the same ambitions and the same 24 hours in a day.

AeroX is a real-time strategy game about running an airline, from the propeller airliners of 1950 to the hydrogen and hypersonic designs of the 2040s. You choose where to fly, what to fly and what to charge. You send managers abroad to win landing rights, buy hotels and travel agencies, ride out wars, oil shocks and recessions, and try to finish the game as the world's leading airline.

Up to ten airlines share a world. Each can be run by a human player or the computer, and human players can form alliances.

Starting a game

Open the game in any modern browser. Type your airline's name, then either start a room or join one from the list or with a five-letter room code. The host chooses the settings:

Leaving and coming back

• Your browser remembers every airline you run. Return to the lobby and your games appear under Your airlines; press Rejoin.
• To continue on another device, open Menu → Copy rejoin link and open that link there. Keep it private: anyone with it can run your airline.
• While nobody in a real-time room is connected, the clock stops.

Your first year

1. Choose a home hub. Click a pulsing city. Big, wealthy cities make strong hubs. You start with three aircraft chosen to make money from there.
2. Read the "Best routes from your hub" list on your hub's Airport panel. Routes marked yours can be flown right away with the aircraft you own. Press Fly it to open the office and launch the route in one click.
3. Open an office at the destination. Every office is negotiated by one of your four managers: about 2 months at home, 3 or more abroad. At founding your managers are already in talks with your best first destinations.
4. Plan the route. Pick the aircraft, how many, flights per week and the fare. Watch the forecast and its chance of profit.
5. Launch it and enjoy the maiden flight.
6. Check the route colours on the map: red losing money, yellow breaking even, green a small profit, blue a strong one.
7. Call a board meeting (B) every few quarters. Your directors will point at the weakest spot in the business.
8. Grow. More offices, more routes, newer aircraft, hotels and travel agencies in your busiest cities.

Main commands

Across the top, the departure board shows the date, your cash, loans, net worth, rank and the price of fuel. The world map fills the screen. Along the bottom, the command bar opens each screen as a window over the map; click a city and its window pops open with everything about it. Prefer a fixed panel? Menu → Use the side panel.

AirportThe selected city: its stats, your offices, route planning, slots, expansions, campaigns, local businesses, and every airline there with its routes, flights, fares and businesses.

RoutesEvery route you fly, with load and profit. Open one to change aircraft, flights, fare, or to suspend or close it.

FleetYour aircraft, deliveries on order, and the aircraft showroom (A).

OpsMaintenance, onboard service, advertising, your four managers, campaigns, businesses and safety record.

FinanceThe quarterly report, history chart, loans and your credit rating.

AirlinesRival airlines and alliances, ranked, with market share by region and your progress toward the crown.

News · ChatWorld events as they happen, and messages between players (team chat for alliances).

BoardA meeting with your five directors, each reporting on one part of the airline.

Cities, countries and history

City statistics

Regions, countries and relations

The world is split into seven regions: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Every city belongs to a country, and every pair of countries has relations that change over time.

• Good relations make negotiations quick and aircraft cheaper. Poor relations slow everything down.
• War closes the talks between the two countries, cuts travel and can ground aircraft or requisition them.
• During the Cold War, travel across the Iron Curtain is sharply reduced, and the blocs do not sell aircraft to each other.
• Members of the European Community and later the EU enjoy a demand boost on flights between them.
• Borders move with history: empires give way to independent states, the Soviet Union rises and falls, Germany divides and reunites. The map redraws itself as it happens.

History and events

In a historic world the great events arrive on schedule: wars, crises, Olympic Games, the first jets, the oil shocks, the end of the Cold War, pandemics and more. After 2025 the record runs out and the future is written by chance. In a fictional world everything is random from the start. Fuel prices drift with events, and busy airports expand when their flight slots run short.

World news. When something big happens, a bulletin flashes up over the world map (red for wars, disasters and epidemics, gold for sport and booms) followed by that day's front page, with what it means for airlines. You get at most one bulletin a quarter, and can switch them off in the Menu. Old front pages stay in the News tab.

Coming next year. Olympic Games, World Cups and other big events are announced one year ahead, so you have time to win landing rights, order aircraft and buy hotels there. They appear in the News tab under Coming up, in the host city's window, and on the map as a dashed gold badge.

Map badges. Cities where something is going on carry a badge with a pulsing ring: crossed swords for war, a warning sign for disasters, a cross for epidemics, rings for sport, a sun for tourism booms, a falling chart for crises. Zoom in to see the label and its effect on travel.

Routes and passengers

A route links two cities where you have an office (or, in an alliance, where a partner does) and flight slots at both ends. Each route flies one aircraft type. You choose how many aircraft, how many round trips a week each makes, and the fare. A route with n aircraft flying f round trips a week takes n×f slots at each end (see Flight slots).

Example: two aircraft with 150 seats, each flying 5 round trips a week, offer 1,500 seats a week each way, or 19,500 a quarter. If the route carries 15,600 passengers in a quarter, it was 80% full.

The forecast and the chance of profit

Before you launch, the planner forecasts revenue, fuel, fees, maintenance and profit, and replays the route across 24 what-if quarters: every season, weaker and stronger demand, cheaper and dearer fuel, and a rival undercutting you. The chance of profit is how many of those quarters still made money. Green is above 75%, amber 45 to 75%, red below.

Click any city, even one where you have no office, to see the route outlook from your hub: the best aircraft for it, the expected load and profit, and how long the investment would take to pay back.

Tuning a route

• Full planes and money left on the table: raise the fare, then grow in this order: fly more often (a full route shows + flights while its aircraft can fly more and your free slots allow), then get slots (it shows Get slots when the slots run out), and only then + aircraft. When an airport has no slots left the button reads Airport full — wait for expansion; a bigger aircraft carries more people in the same slots. Auto-grow follows the same order.
• Half-empty planes: cut flights per week first. Fewer, fuller flights save fuel and airport fees. Then try a smaller aircraft, or advertise.
• A fast aircraft is no use if fuel eats the fare. The planner's "Compare aircraft" table shows profit for every type that can fly the route.
• Suspend a route to stop flying through a war or slump without giving up the slots. Close it to free its aircraft.
• Fares run from 50% to 200% of standard. Passengers compare fares as a percentage, so long routes, with their high base fares, earn the most.

Flight slots

Every airport has one pool of flight slots that all airlines share. One slot is one weekly departure from that airport. A route with n aircraft flying f round trips a week takes n×f slots at each end, so a daily flight (7 a week) with one aircraft takes 7 at each end, and a route can never fly more often than your free slots at the scarcer end allow.

A new city: its Airport window offers Open an office with a stepper for the slots to ask for. At home, the office opens with the slot purchase after about 3 months; abroad, the manager wins landing rights and the slots together. The office always opens; the slots may be refused.

Expansions: once more than half of an airport's slots stay sold for a whole quarter, it starts building more (see Airport expansions). Big hubs fill up early: ask for slots before your rivals do.

The aircraft showroom

Open the showroom from the Fleet tab or with A. First comes the makers' map: every manufacturer selling aircraft (or about to) has a sign at its home city. Signs marked ⛔ will not sell to you, because of the Cold War, a war, or poor relations. Pick a maker to walk onto its sales floor, then slide through its aircraft with ← and → or the strip of thumbnails. Backspace returns to the map.

Each aircraft has a spec sheet: seats, range (km and miles), cruise speed, fuel rank (higher burns less fuel per seat), maintenance (higher is cheaper to keep flying than its contemporaries), comfort, start of production, and your price.

• Real aircraft types from the DC-3 and L-049 to the B787 and A350, with real seats, range and speed. From 2029 come announced and then imagined designs: battery-electric commuters, hydrogen airliners, blended-wing jumbos and a hypersonic airliner.
• Delivery takes 6 to 12 months; you pay when you order. A route waiting for aircraft starts flying as they arrive, with a maiden flight for the first.
• Price depends on relations with the maker's country. Close relations give 10% off. A loyal customer, with more than half the fleet from that country, gets another 10%. Hostile relations add a markup or stop sales, and so do war and the Cold War.
• Age matters a little: older designs lose some appeal against the latest types, older airframes need more maintenance, and types out of production are slightly riskier.
• Supersonic aircraft charge premium fares but burn a great deal of fuel. They pay only on long, rich routes.

Managers and negotiations

Your airline employs four managers: two diplomats and two dealmakers, locals from your home country. Every negotiation sends one of them away until it ends, so you can never run more than four at once. When you start one, your assistant asks "Who will you send?" Pick a manager at headquarters and watch them set off across the map. A little figure waits at the city, talking, until the deal is done.

• War between the two countries stalls the talks until peace returns. No new talks start in a city at war.
• Calling off a negotiation brings the manager home and refunds half the money.
• Every office is negotiated, at home and abroad.
• Head start: when you found your airline, your managers have already opened talks with your best first destinations (three if your country has few airports, one for big domestic markets). They finish within three months.

Hubs and offices

Your home hub is where you may hold the most flight slots: up to 75% of its airport. You can hold up to 24 offices at first; each regional hub adds 4 more, and the limit grows by 2 every decade of the game, up to 48.

You may build one regional hub in each other region, in a city where you have an office. A hub costs money and takes about three months to set up. You may hold up to half of its airport's flight slots, you get 10 free slots there, slot talks there are quicker, and it brings connecting passengers: every route at a hub gets a little busier for each other route there. Build or close one from the city's Airport window (Regional hub); closing it refunds part of the cost and keeps the slots, but no more than an ordinary city allows can be added.

Under classic hub rules, every route must start at one of your hubs, and a route into another region must land at a major city or another of your hubs.

Local businesses

Buy businesses in cities where you have an office. Each earns money in its own right, and most also send travellers your way. A manager has to close the deal first, then construction takes about a year. On opening day the business gets a guest rating of 3 to 5 stars: a 3-star hotel is a roadside motel, a 5-star one is a Grand Hotel. The local paper covers every opening in the style of its day.

Operations and marketing

Advertising and campaigns

Brand advertising builds your reputation everywhere. A city campaign (Local ads, City-wide or Blitz) lasts a year and makes travellers on every route touching that city choose you over rivals.

Airport expansions

When more than half of an airport's flight slots stay sold for a whole quarter, it starts an expansion of its own. It takes 4 to 10 quarters, and the slower projects add fewer slots: +50% of the pool for the quickest, +20% for the slowest, at least 4. An airport grows to at most four times its first size, and waits two years after one opens before planning the next. While the plans are open, up to two airlines with an office there can help fund it: a partner gets 7 free flight slots at once and 40% off landing fees there for ten years. Airports only partner with well-run airlines: you need an airport favour of 75 or more.

Money matters

• Revenue: tickets, airmail contracts (valuable in the early decades, gone by 1970) and business income.
• Costs: fuel, airport fees and handling, maintenance, onboard service, offices, advertising and interest.
• Tax: profits are taxed at the rate of the day. Losses carry forward and offset later profits.
• Net worth is cash plus the value of aircraft and businesses, minus loans.
• Fuel surcharge: when fuel is dear, every airline's fares pass some of it on (about 16% higher fares at the 1973 oil shock's prices).
• Special contracts pay up to 2.5 times their usual limit in a game's first years, tapering back to normal after six years, to help a young airline through the slow start.

Landmarks and era projects

From the Airline window's Investments page you can build, once each and at your home hub: the headquarters tower, flight academy and heritage museum, and an era project that opens up roughly every decade:

Loans and credit ratings

Your credit rating depends on your debt compared with your assets. It sets the interest on everything you borrow.

The board of directors

Press Board (or B) to call a meeting. Five directors sit round the table, and each lights up green, amber or red depending on how their area is doing:

• VP, Network Planning: your weakest and fullest routes, and the next route to open.
• Director of Fleet: idle aircraft, ageing types and new models on the market.
• Director of Sales: brand strength, load factors and businesses worth buying.
• Head of Safety: maintenance, safety score and airport favour.
• Chief Financial Officer: results, cash, credit rating and, in a classic game, your progress toward the crown.

Each director offers a Show me button that takes you straight to the problem. Your managers also report in person when they come home from negotiations.

The chairman's desk

Press Desk for the things that need you between route plans. The button lights up when something is waiting.

• Decisions. Every few months a director brings a choice: a pilots' pay demand, a fuel price lock, a launch-customer discount from a maker, a TV interview, a film-star endorsement, cracks found on a type you fly, a tourist board's joint campaign, extra gates at your hub, an overbooking scandal, a relief airlift, a staff bonus. Each option shows its cost and effect. If you don't answer within three months, the last option is taken for you.
• Charter board. One-off contracts posted around the world: package holidays, football clubs, orchestras, oil-crew rotations, state delegations, student exchanges, pilgrims and relief airlifts. Each needs a set number of seats every week for one to four months. Take one with up to three idle aircraft of one type, from a city where you have an office. The fee pays a full load at a premium fare; you pay the flying costs, and the board shows your net before you commit. Offers expire after two months, and rival airlines take good ones quickly.
• Industry awards. Fifteen milestones, from your first route to ten million passengers a year. Each one lifts your brand and makes the news.

Alliances

In a game with teams, an Alliance button joins the command bar and your alliance's combined net worth and rank show on the top bar. The Alliance window has:

• Members and standings: each partner's hub, cash, routes, fleet, last quarter's profit and rank, and how your alliance ranks against the others.
• Shared network: highlight every partner's routes and offices on the map. You may fly into any city where a partner has an office (codeshare): get flight slots there without an office of your own. Routes touching a partner's hub carry 8% more passengers (connections), and slot talks at a partner's hub are quicker, likelier and a quarter cheaper.
• Help: send cash; lend cash, repaid automatically over 2 to 12 quarters with 2% a quarter on what is still owed; lend an idle aircraft for a set number of months (it comes back by itself); give an aircraft for good (a 6-month handover, flying for nobody meanwhile); pass unused flight slots (within your partner's limits).
• Requests: ask your partners for cash, slots at a city or an aircraft. Requests appear on their Desk and in their Alliance window, answered with one click. Computer partners answer when they can spare it.
• News: you hear when a partner opens a regional hub, buys a business, or when a war reaches a region where a partner has a hub.
• Alliance chat at the bottom of the window.

Winning and losing

Richest airline

The airline (or alliance) with the highest net worth when time runs out wins. Every five years a review ranks everyone and names the fastest riser.

Classic goal: number one worldwide

Checked every January. You win when you carry the most passengers in your home region and in enough other regions, have hubs in all seven regions, and made a profit over the last year.

Defeat

• An airline that runs out of cash and credit goes bankrupt. Its owner can stay and watch.
• Under classic hub rules the board fires a chief executive after four losing quarters in a row. It warns you after three. A new airline has two years to set up first, small losses only bring warnings (the four quarters must lose more than a tenth of what the airline is worth), and during a fuel crisis the board blames the crisis and holds its fire. The board answers to human chairmen only; rival airlines can still go bankrupt.
• In a classic game, a rival who meets the goal first ends the game.

Eras and scenarios

Strategy notes

• Profit first, passengers later. A small airline that makes money can always grow; a big one that loses money cannot.
• Use what you own. Your starting aircraft are already paid for. Put them to work before ordering more.
• Pair rich cities with resorts. They are cheap to serve and pull travellers all year.
• Match flights to demand. On a thin route, three full flights a week beat seven half-empty ones.
• Start talks early. Your first foreign offices take months to win; open domestic routes while your managers negotiate.
• Keep a manager free for a sudden airport expansion or a bargain business.
• Never skimp on maintenance to cover a bad quarter. One crash can cost you a year of passengers.
• Watch the news. A war can close half your network overnight; suspend routes rather than fly them empty.
• Retire ageing types before they go out of production, and buy from friendly countries to earn loyalty discounts.
• Borrow while your rating is good. Cheap debt that buys a profitable aircraft is good debt; a B rating is a warning light.

Keyboard shortcuts

Credits

AeroX is an independent game inspired by the classic airline-management games of the 1990s. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any game publisher, airline or aircraft manufacturer. Aircraft are referred to by their type designations only to describe them.

Character portraits: Avataaars by Pablo Stanley, free for personal and commercial use, rendered with DiceBear (MIT). Fonts: Exo 2, Share Tech Mono, IBM Plex Sans, Oswald and others from Google Fonts.