HOTFIX — Feb 14, 2026 Branch: simulation-mode

Clock-driven flight phases. Game clock is now the single source of truth.

Flights depart and arrive at the times shown on the FIDS board.

Phase transitions tied to clock timestamps, not distance fractions.

Speed slider scales the clock directly.

FIDS now shows both DEP and ETA columns.

Renderer crash fix. Found infinite recursion in state update cycle causing stack overflow and white screen crash. Autosave effect was re-triggering itself. Fixed with ref guards. This is likely the crash players reported. Auto-return duplication fix.

Daily routes were creating duplicate return flights after completion. Stale auto-returns persisted across days and fired alongside the recurring schedule.

Ground handling turnaround. Return flights now wait for the actual turnaround time before dispatching. Default 45 minutes, Regional Handler 35 minutes, Premium Handler 25 minutes. Ground handling contracts are no longer cosmetic.

Pre-save state sanitizer. Every save now validates and cleans state before writing. Catches duplicate flights, orphaned aircraft references, NaN cash, null array entries. Logs everything to crash.log. Launch button removed in sim mode.

DEPART ALL and LAUNCH buttons hidden when gameMode is simulation. Flights auto-dispatch at scheduled time. Arcade mode unchanged.

Duplicate flight on completion verified fixed. Traced the full daily route lifecycle. Auto-return skip logic, lastDispatchedDay guard, and one-time schedule cleanup all working. No duplicate entries after round-trip completion.