Dev blog - The airline manager update

We wanted to share what we have been building for the next big passion project in ConsoleMe: Airline Manager.

If you have played the game already, you will know we have been adding empire-style side businesses over time. Real estate, football chairman, and others. Airline Manager is the next one in that line, and it is probably the biggest we have attempted so far.

The idea is simple: you found your own airline, build a network, buy planes, open routes, manage hubs, and try to stay profitable while the world keeps moving forward week by week. It is meant to feel like a proper airline tycoon layer inside the wider mogul game, not just a small mini game tucked in the corner.

What is in so far

You can found an airline from early in a run.

You pick a name, a code, colours, and a procedurally generated logo. From there you get access to a full Airline Manager screen with its own tabs for overview, map, fleet, routes, hubs, operations, marketing, competitors, alliances, and history.

We built a new fictional airport catalogue for this feature, around 80 airports across different regions, with parody names and codes so we are not tied to real world licensing. Routes are opened from your hubs, and the map uses the same Leaflet setup as real estate so you can actually see your network grow on the world map.

On the fleet side, there are fictional manufacturers and aircraft models, again parody names rather than real brands. Aircraft unlock by era, so an early 1980s save starts with turboprops and older narrowbodies, while later eras open up modern jets and big widebodies. You can buy outright or lease, and each plane has its own stats for capacity, range, fuel burn, maintenance, and lease cost.

We have also been putting a lot of work into making the airline feel like something you actually operate, not just click buttons on.

Per plane cabin setup

One of the latest bits we added is per aircraft cabin configuration. Instead of setting premium economy, business, first, and seat pitch globally for the whole airline, you now configure that per plane.

When you buy an aircraft, you can set the cabin layout in the purchase flow. Leased aircraft come with a fixed lessor layout and cannot be refitted while on lease. Owned aircraft can be refitted later through a dedicated refit wizard, which costs money and grounds the plane for a couple of weeks while the work is done.

That opens up some nice strategy. You might run tight pitch narrowbodies on short domestic routes for max seats, then fit a widebody with business and first for long haul premium routes.

Realistic aircraft usage

We also added utilisation limits so one plane cannot realistically fly ridiculous frequencies on long routes. Max weekly round trips now depends on aircraft speed and route distance. Short hops can run much more often than long haul sectors, which feels a lot more believable.

The route wizard and routes screen both show those limits, so you can see what a plane can actually do before you commit.

Finance and reporting

Airline income and expenses now feed into the main finance page like the other business units, so your airline is part of the wider empire ledger rather than sitting off to the side.

Inside Airline Manager itself, the overview screen now has a much better breakdown of last week’s numbers. You can see route revenue, ancillary income, fuel, crew, landing fees, meals, maintenance, lease payments, hub costs, marketing spend, and net result. There is also a per route breakdown for your top routes, which makes it easier to spot what is actually making money and what is quietly bleeding cash.

Visuals

We have started generating white livery renders for every aircraft model in the game. These are plain white studio style images with no airline branding, because we want to use them as base assets for a future livery builder. You will already see them in places like the buy aircraft flow, fleet list, and refit screen.

The long term plan is to let players paint their own airline identity properly, but these base images give us a solid starting point.

What is still coming

Airline Manager is already playable in a meaningful way, but we are treating this as a feature that will keep growing. Still on the radar:

• A proper livery builder so you can apply your airline colours and branding to aircraft

• More depth around competitor behaviour and alliances

• More polish on hub operations and route management

• More events, crises, and era specific airline industry moments

• General UI polish and balance passes as we playtest more

Why we are building it this way

We wanted Airline Manager to feel like something you could sink time into over many in game decades, not just a one off side feature you unlock once and forget about. That means era progression, fleet decisions, network building, operational tradeoffs, and financial consequences all matter.

It also has to sit properly inside ConsoleMe as part of your wider empire. Your airline should feel like one more business you are juggling alongside everything else, with real cash flow impact and long term strategic choices.

Thanks for reading

That is where Airline Manager is at right now. We are actively building and refining it, and we will share more as the feature gets closer to where we want it for release. It should get released (at least the first version), later this week!

If you have ideas for things you would like to see, especially around route strategy, fleet management, liveries, or rival airlines, drop them in the thread. This is exactly the sort of feature where player feedback can shape what we prioritise next.

More soon!