Glossary

229 terms, A to Z. Search to include what every figure on the pages means.

5th freedom: Selling seats between two foreign countries on a flight that starts at home, such as the middle leg of a multi-stop rotation. Needs the right rights.
A-check: Light maintenance done overnight between flights.
ACMI: Aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance: a wet lease, hired by the block hour with a monthly minimum.
Acting up: A flight attendant taking the purser's place, or a captain flying as first officer, when the proper rank is missing.
Administration: What follows negative cash at a month's end, judged after salaries and rent. Still negative at the next month's end, the airline is liquidated.See .
Agency crew: Crew hired from an agency at short notice for a call-out fee and an hourly rate, when your own fall short.
Air service agreement: The treaty between two countries saying who may fly between them. Pairs not on file are open skies.
Aircraft family: Related types that share pilots' ratings and can cover for each other, such as the A320neo family.
Airline Today: The industry paper: news about every airline in the world, the economy and the weather.
Airport incentive: A discount on landing and handling for a new route, while you keep the promised frequency (Airport deals).
Alliance: A group of airlines that all codeshare with each other.
Ancillaries: Revenue on top of the ticket: bags, seat choice, priority, fare-family upgrades, onboard sales. Also called extras.
Annual report: Sent by Finance early on 1 January for the year just closed: the year's figures against the year before, the statements, traffic, routes, fleet and people, and a letter from the chair. Downloadable as a PDF.
ASK: Available seat-kilometre: one seat flown one kilometre. The measure of capacity.
Award seat: A seat a loyalty member buys with points.
Awareness: How well travellers in a city know your airline, 0–100%. Unknown airlines win fewer passengers: about ×0.62 at 5%, ×1 when fully known.
Away mode: What a solo world does when you leave: pause (the default) or run in real time.
Bag tracking: RFID tags that cut mishandled bags by a quarter for $0.20 a checked bag.
Bank: A wave of arrivals followed by a wave of departures at a hub, so passengers can connect.
Banking planner: The Network page's suggestions for better departure times, to make more connections and fly at better hours.
Bankruptcy: Liquidation after two month-ends in a row with negative cash. You can found a new airline in the same world.
Base: Another hub of yours: routes open from it, rotations start and end there and crew are stationed there. It costs to set up and to run.
Belly cargo: Freight carried in the hold of passenger flights.
Best fare level: The share of the reference fare, every cabin alike, that the market model says earns the most on a direction.
Binding arbitration: Ending a union dispute at once for $250,000: halfway between the union's demand and what it would accept, for two years.
Block hours: Time from leaving the gate to arriving at the next. What aircraft use, crews fly and maintenance counts.
Board: Your shareholders' board: it sets objectives each season and judges you monthly.
Board confidence: 0–100, 60 to start: how the shareholders' board rates you. It moves at each monthly meeting with your progress on the objectives.
Booking curve: How bookings build up before departure: leisure travellers book weeks ahead, business travellers in the last days. New routes fly light while their bookings build.
Brand: A second airline of your own in the same world, with its own name, code and hub.
Budget: A yearly plan by department and month that the board approves. Leave it to the CFO (only rewards) or set it yourself (counts in full and sets spending limits).
Bumped: Denied boarding on an overbooked flight. Many countries require compensation.
C-check: Heavy maintenance every year or two that takes an aircraft out for days. Book it ahead with cover.
Cabin configuration: An aircraft's classes, seat products and seat counts, within its floor space and exit limit.
Cabotage: Flying domestic routes inside another country. Allowed inside the European single aviation market.
Cadet: A pilot trained from scratch at your academy, bonded to you for a while after graduating.
Call-out: Bringing a rested crew member in on a day off to save a flight. Costs morale.
Capital items: Money spent on or raised from assets (aircraft, deposits, slots, loans, base set-up, fit-outs). Shown apart from the operating result.
Captain: The pilot in command. Every flight needs one.
Care: Meals and hotels owed to delayed passengers, whatever the cause.
Cash runway: How long your cash would last with no revenue at all, on the Finance page.
CASK: Cost per available seat-kilometre. Lower with long flights, dense cabins and busy aircraft.
Charter: A whole flight sold to a tour operator or group. Cancelling one costs half its price.
Cheats: There is one. It is not in the handbook.
City pair: Two cities with flights between them, whichever end they were opened from. One route in the game.
Claims policy: How you handle compensation claims: pay up front, pay when claimed, or contest them (Customer care).
Claw-back: An airport taking back an incentive discount when you fly less than the frequency you promised.
Co-branded card: A credit card a bank issues with your loyalty programme, paying you for the points it gives cardholders.
Codeshare: Selling seats on a partner's flight under your own flight number.
Comfort: How pleasant a cabin is, from its seats, service and entertainment. It lifts reputation, reviews and what passengers will pay.
Command upgrade: Promoting a first officer with skill 60+ to captain for a $15,000 course: the quickest way to more captains.
Company value: Net assets plus four times annualised operating profit. Most worlds are won on it.
Compensation: Money owed to passengers for long delays, cancellations and bumping under passenger-rights laws such as EU 261.
Concession: Letting a company run your tax-free sales for an 18% commission, with no cost or risk.
Condition: How worn an aircraft is, 0–100. Worn aircraft break down more.
Connection: A trip on two of your flights via a hub, with 45 minutes to 4 hours between them.
Contribution: Revenue less direct costs (fuel, fees, catering, handling), before salaries, rent and overheads. A route with positive contribution helps pay the fixed costs.
Coordinated airport: A busy airport (level 3) where every take-off and landing needs a slot.
Corporate contract: A deal with a company: its travellers fly with you for a rebate on what they spend.
Corporate tax: 22% of each month's profit, once losses carried forward are used up.
Cover aircraft: An idle aircraft of the same family that flies another's rotations while it is in a check, so passengers see no cancellation.
Credit line: A revolving loan of up to 15% of the airline's assets, at 7% a year on what you draw plus a small fee on the rest. Cheaper than the overdraft.
Crew planner: The Crew Planning Manager, who hires crew for your timetable every day.
Crew set: The crew one flight needs. Four sets per aircraft cover rest and days off.
Curfew: Night hours when an airport allows no departures or arrivals. Rotations cannot be scheduled into one.
Cycle: One take-off and landing. Short-haul aircraft wear by cycles, long-haul by hours.
D-check: The heaviest maintenance, every several years, taking an aircraft out for weeks.
Deferred defect: A minor fault allowed to wait until the next check under the minimum equipment list. The flight leaves on time, but the aircraft's risk rises.
Delivery: The day a new or leased aircraft arrives. A new lease takes about 30 days; used aircraft are available at once.
Demand: How many people want to travel between two cities a week: more between big cities, less over long distances and where trains and roads compete.
Department head: A manager in one of seven posts (operations, commercial, technical, people, finance, facilities, crew planning) who runs that part of the airline if you let them.
Depreciation: Owned aircraft losing value, 6% a year: a cost in the statement that moves no cash.
Designation: Permission to fly a restricted country pair, limited to a few airlines per side. Costs $50k and lapses after 120 days unused.
Direct operating costs: Costs each flight causes by flying: fuel, airport and navigation fees, handling, catering, crew allowances, emissions.
Direction: One way of a route. Each direction has its own fares and market.
Disruption level: A world setting (off, light, normal, heavy) that scales random delays and faults.
Diversion: Landing at another airport when the destination is closed; passengers go on by coach.
Dividend: A share of monthly operating profit a listed airline pays its shareholders.
Double catering: Loading meals for both legs of a short rotation at your base, avoiding dearer outstation catering.
Dry lease: Renting an aircraft without crew: the usual way to lease.
Duty: A crew member's working day, from report to release: 13–17 hours at most.
EBIT: Earnings before interest and tax: EBITDA less depreciation.
EBITDA: EBITDAR less aircraft rent.
EBITDAR: Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and rent: whether the flying itself pays, however the aircraft are financed.
Economy phase: Where the world's economy is: steady growth, boom, slowdown, recession or recovery. It moves travel demand and fuel.
Elasticity: How strongly passengers react to price: the % change in passengers for a 1% change in fare. Leisure travellers are more price-sensitive than business travellers.
Emissions: A cost per tonne of CO₂ your flights burn, booked per flight.
Employer costs: 35% on top of every salary.
Engine shop visit: An engine overhaul, taking the aircraft out like a heavy check.
Established carriers: The computer-run airlines already flying every route when the world begins, priced near the reference fare. They cut fares and flights as you win passengers and recover when you leave.
EU 261: The European passenger-rights law: $300–650 by distance for a delay of three hours or more that is the airline's fault, plus care.
European single aviation market: The EU plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. Its airlines fly freely between and within member states.
Exit limit: The most passengers an aircraft type may carry, by its emergency exits.
Extraordinary circumstances: Causes that excuse compensation under passenger-rights laws: weather, air traffic control, security, closed airspace. Never care (meals, hotels).
Extras: See Ancillaries.
Fare family: A version of a fare with its own rules and inclusions, such as Light, Standard and Flex.
Fare ladder: How the price steps up as a flight fills: gentle on economy-only aircraft, standard where business travellers book late.
Fare level: Your fares against the reference fare, every cabin weighted by the seats it sells. 100% matches the market.
Fare sale: A time-limited discount on your network or a city, with advertising. It fills empty seats; it costs on full flights.
Fast track: A quicker security lane for premium passengers and top members.
Fatigue limit: The most block hours crew may fly in 28 days: 100 legally, or a stricter company or union rule of 90 or 80.
Ferry flight: A flight without passengers, to move an aircraft where it is needed.
First officer: The second pilot, rated on the family.
Flight number: Your airline code plus a number. The same departure keeps its number from day to day.
Forward bookings: Tickets sold for flights still to come. The cash is yours now but owed to passengers until they fly.
Forward price: The fuel price a hedge locks in for a future month: where today's price is expected to have drifted by mid-month.
Founding team: A head in every department from the day you found, if you choose it.
Freighter: An aircraft built or converted to carry only cargo.
Frequency: How many flights a route has a week. More flights win a bigger share of the market.
Fuel shock: A sudden 30–60% jump in the fuel price that lasts three to eight months, then eases back. A 3% chance a month while none is running.
Game master: In a play-together world, the creator, who sets the speed.
Ground agent: Your own staff at a station who handle your flights: at four per daily departure, handling fees there are 30% lower.
Handling: Work on the ground for a flight: check-in, bags, loading, the turn. Done by the airport's handler for a fee, or by your own ground agents.
Hedge: A contract fixing the price of part of a future month's fuel, for a 1% premium. It gains when fuel ends up dearer than the hedge and costs when cheaper.
Holiday package: A flight and a week in a hotel sold together. The hotel is paid every night, sold or not; the seats were empty anyway.
Hotel allotment: Rooms you reserve in a resort for packages, for one to six months.
Hub: Your home airport, where rotations start and end and passengers connect.
Hub and spoke: A network where every route runs from a hub, so passengers connect there to anywhere else you fly.
Inbox: Letters from your heads, the ministry and the board, often with a button that does what they ask.
Interline: An agreement to sell trips that combine your flights with a partner's on one ticket.
Knock-on delay: Lateness passed from one flight to the next through the aircraft or crew.
Launch customer: One of the first three airlines to order five or more of a new type before it enters service, with an extra discount.
Lease: Renting an aircraft for a term at a monthly rate, usually with a deposit. Extend it or return it at the end.
Leasing out: Renting an owned aircraft you do not need to another airline.
Ledger: Every money movement, line by line, with a running balance (Money › Finance › Ledger). Exportable as CSV.
Lessor: A company that owns aircraft and leases them to airlines.
Lifeline demand: A floor on traffic from small Norwegian communities to their regional centre: remote places fly whatever the size.
Listing: Selling part of your airline on the stock market to raise money. Needs 180 days of flying and an operating profit.
Load factor: The share of seats filled (for cargo, of payload).
Lounge: A waiting room for premium passengers and top members: your own, another operator's on contract, or walk-in passes.
Loyalty programme: Points for flying, tiers with perks and award seats, to bring members back.
Market pay: The going salary for a role, which rises when staff are scarce. Pay under it and morale falls.
Market share: Your share of everyone flying a city pair.
Mechanics: Your own engineers: about 1.5 per aircraft halve technical faults and cut check costs.
Merger: Folding a computer-run airline you control into your group as a brand.
Milestone: An achievement in bronze, silver, gold and diamond, from your first flight to a giant's numbers.
Minimum equipment list: The rules for which faults may be deferred to the next check.
Misconnection: A connecting passenger whose first flight was too late. Rebooked, sent to another carrier or put up in a hotel, at your cost.
Mishandled bag: A checked bag delayed or lost. It costs delivery and a worse review.
Morale: How happy staff are, 0–100. Below 35 they start to resign.
MRO: Maintenance, repair and overhaul: your maintenance shop can take other airlines' work for money.
Multi-stop rotation: A rotation calling at a stop on the way, such as Oslo–Dubai–Bangkok, selling through passengers and, with rights, the legs on their own.
Narrowbody: A single-aisle aircraft such as the A320 or 737: short and medium haul.
Needs attention: The dashboard's list of urgent problems, each linking to where it is fixed.
Nerd mode: Typing your own names (the real ones, if you like) over the game's fictional aircraft and companies, shown only to you (Setup › Names).
Net result: What is left after every cost, interest and tax.
No-show: A booked passenger who does not turn up. Overbooking fills their seat.
O&D: Origin and destination: where a passenger's whole trip starts and ends, whatever the flights in between.
Objectives: The board's targets for the season: an operating result, punctuality, SkyRate stars and growth.
Occurrence: A minor safety event: a bird strike, hard landing, turbulence injuries, a tyre burst or lightning.
Offloaded cargo: Booked freight that did not fit on the day; passengers' bags go first.
On time: Leaving within 15 minutes of schedule.
Open skies: A country pair where any airline of either side may fly as much as it likes.
Operating result: Revenue less operating costs, before interest and tax. The dashboard shows it over 30 days so monthly charges are always in.
Ops control: The page where you watch the next 24 hours and can take recovery decisions yourself (swaps, crew cover, holds, cancellations, diversions).
Option: A right to order more aircraft later at the price locked in with the first order.
Overbooking: Selling more seats than the aircraft has, expecting no-shows. Too much and passengers are bumped and owed compensation.
Overdraft: Automatic borrowing when cash goes below zero, at 18% a year. Avoid living there.
Overheads: Monthly costs that grow with the fleet rather than the flying: the head office, IT, sales offices, insurance.
Pairing: A chain of flights a crew flies, starting and ending at their base.
Passenger rights: The law on what passengers are owed for delays, cancellations and bumping, by the departure country (and the airline's home for flights into it).
Payload: What an aircraft can carry in passengers, bags and cargo on a given distance.
Persona: A computer rival's style: low-cost (dense cabins, cheap fares), network (two and three classes, long haul) or premium (big business cabins, high fares).
Play together: A world mode that runs only while every player has the game open.
Positioning: Sending crew as passengers, often on another airline, to where a flight needs them.
Pre-delivery payments: Instalments on an ordered aircraft before it arrives: 20% at order, up to 30% by delivery, the rest on delivery.
Public service contract: A subsidised regional route the ministry tenders. Fly the contracted service or the subsidy is cut.
Punctuality: The share of flights on time. Well-run airlines manage 76–82%.
Purser: The senior cabin crew member on a flight.
RASK: Revenue per available seat-kilometre.
Recovery: What the engine does when things go wrong: swap aircraft, call reserves, position crew, ferry aircraft, hold for connections.
Reference fare: The market's usual fare for a distance and cabin: what established carriers charge.
Reputation: 0–100, weighing in every passenger's choice. It drifts toward a level set by comfort, cancellations, punctuality and service.
Reserve crew: Crew kept off the roster to stand in when others cannot fly.
Rest: Crew time off between duties: at least 12 hours at base and 10 away.
Restricted bilateral: A country pair that allows only a few designated airlines per side, each capped at so many flights a week.
Revenue management: Raising and lowering the price asked as a flight books up: cheap early seats fill weak flights, dear late seats harvest strong ones. On by default.
Rival: A computer-run airline that competes like a player: leases aircraft, opens routes, sets fares, hires crew and can go bust.
Roster: Which crew fly which flights, planned three days ahead within duty and rest limits.
Rotation: A timetabled out-and-back trip from a hub or base on one aircraft.
Route planner: The tool that estimates a route before you open it: passengers, load, revenue, costs and profit a week, against everyone flying it (Operations › Routes › Plan).
Safety audit: A regular inspection graded on your safety; a good grade lifts reputation.
Safety score: 0–100, 70 typical, from fleet condition and checks, crew skill and training, fatigue and the safety department. Lower means more incidents and dearer insurance.
Sale and leaseback: Selling an owned aircraft to a lessor at market value and leasing it back for eight years: cash now, rent from then on.
Sandbox: The tutorial world: private, gentle, and thrown away when you are done.
Scenario: A start with its own fleet, debts and goal, such as rescuing the flag carrier.
Season: IATA summer (from the last Sunday in March) or winter (from the last Sunday in October), named like S27 and W27. A rotation can fly all year, one season only, or between two dates.
Seasonality: How demand swings through the year: sun destinations peak in summer, ski and the Canaries in February, the Arctic at New Year, business routes fall at Christmas.
Seat product: A model of seat from a vendor, with pitch, width, comfort, weight and price.
Seat units: Floor space in a cabin. Bigger seats take more, so fewer fit.
Serious incident: An engine shutdown, runway excursion, smoke and evacuation or similar: repairs, weeks out of service, world news and a lower safety score.
Service score: How well a flight's cabin crew serve, from their skill and morale.
Severance: Pay owed when you let someone go: two months for crew and ground agents.
SkyRate: Your star rating from twelve months of passenger reviews; stars need 30 reviews.
Slot: Permission for one take-off or landing at a busy airport in a given UTC hour of a weekday. A rotation needs four a day.
Slot charge: A fee for every take-off and landing at a slot airport, dearer at peak hours.
Spare: An aircraft kept free to take over when another is late or broken.
Spending limits: Monthly caps on the spending you choose (catering, lounges, marketing, training) once you set your own approved budget.
Spoke: The far end of a route from your hub.
Stake: Shares you own in another airline.
Steady world: A world that runs in real time or double time and never pauses. A vacation covers absences.
Surface competition: Trains and roads taking passengers on short routes, under 500 km. Weaker where mountains and fjords make the trip slow.
Surplus crew: Crew above what the timetable needs, reported by the crew planner. Letting them go costs severance.
Takeover: Buying control of another listed airline by bidding for its shares.
Tax-free: Duty-free sales on international flights outside the EU.
Technical fault: A breakdown that grounds an aircraft for a repair of hours. Worse on worn aircraft without mechanics.
Tender: An invitation to bid: the ministry's regional routes, or a company's travel deal.
Through fare: The price of a connecting trip: the two legs' fares less a discount (10% by default).
Tick: One step of the world's clock, usually a game hour.
Tier: A loyalty level (such as silver or gold) earned by flying, with perks like lounges and priority.
Timetable: Your rotations and when they fly. Changes apply from the flights not yet on sale.
Traffic rights: Which routes your nationality lets you fly, by the countries' agreements (Setup › Traffic rights).
Turn: Time on the ground between landing and the next departure: at least 35 minutes for a narrowbody and 55 for a widebody.
Type: An aircraft model, such as the A320neo or 787-9.
Type rating: A pilot's qualification to fly one aircraft family. A new rating takes about a month.
Union reservation: The least a union would sign for. Never shown: offer above it and they sign.
Use it or lose it: A slot not flown at least 80% of the time over four weeks goes back to the pool.
Used market: Second-hand aircraft for sale now, priced by age and condition.
UTC: Coordinated Universal Time. The game keeps schedules and slots in UTC so they do not drift when clocks change.
Utilisation: Block hours a day per aircraft. Short haul flies 8–10, long haul 12–15; idle aircraft still cost rent.
Walk-in pass: Paying per visit for a common-use lounge where you have none of your own.
Weather: Storms, fog and snow forecast at your airports. They add delays and can close airports for hours.
Weekly challenge: A new start, hub and goal every week, the same for everyone, played in your own world and compared on a leaderboard.
Wet lease: See ACMI.
Widebody: A twin-aisle aircraft such as the 787 or A350: long haul and big markets.
Work to rule: Industrial action short of a strike: crew and ground staff make departures run later, engineers let faults through.
World: One shared game with its own clock, rivals and economy. You can play several.
Write-off: An aircraft destroyed in an accident. Insurance pays an owned one's value; a leased one goes back to the lessor.
Yield: Revenue per passenger-kilometre (cargo: per kilo).