Airline Manager (Empire passion project)

Airline Manager (Empire passion project)

Found and run your own airline inside ConsoleMe. Build hubs, buy or lease aircraft, open routes on a world map, tune operations, run marketing, and compete against rival carriers. Airline income and expenses roll into your main Finance tab like your other empire businesses.

Available from week 1. No reputation gate. You need $5,000,000 personal cash to found your airline.

Getting started

Steam post imageOpen the sidebar and go to Empire → Airline Manager

1. On the splash screen, click Found airline

2. Work through the wizard:

   • Identity: airline name and 2–3 letter code

   • Branding: pick colours, logo shape, and logo glyph (live preview on the right)

   • Starter hub: choose your first hub airport

   • Confirm: review and found

3. You land on the Overview tab with $4,500,000 in your airline cash ledger and one starter hub already open

From there, advance weeks as normal. Your airline simulates every week automatically once founded.

Airline Manager screen (10 tabs)

After founding, the header shows your logo, airline name, cash, last week P&L, load factor, and CSAT.

Buy aircraft and set cabin layout

Path: Airline Manager → Fleet → + Acquire aircraft

1. Pick a model from the left list (greyed models unlock in later eras)

2. Review stats, range, capacity, and the white-livery preview image on the right

3. Choose Buy outright or Lease

4. If buying outright, set Cabin layout below:

   • Seat pitch: Tight / Standard / Comfort / Luxury

   • Toggles: Premium economy, Business class, First class

5. Click Confirm purchase

Leased aircraft: cabin layout is fixed by the lessor. You cannot refit them while on lease.

Refit an owned aircraft

Path: Airline Manager → Fleet → Refit (on an owned, unleased tail)

1. Adjust seat pitch and cabin class toggles

2. Review refit cost, new capacity, and ~2 week grounding time

3. Click Confirm refit

The aircraft is grounded during the refit. Assigned routes may need attention if the plane was in service.

Open a route

Path: Airline Manager → Routes → + Open route

1. Origin: must be one of your hubs

2. Destination: pick any airport from the catalogue

3. Aircraft: pick an unassigned tail from your fleet

4. Frequency: set round trips per week (slider caps to what that aircraft can realistically fly on that distance)

5. Fare tier: Low / Standard / High

6. Review projected weekly economics at the bottom

7. Click Open route ($200,000 setup fee)

Rules:

• Route must touch at least one of your hubs

• Aircraft must have enough range for the distance

• Frequency is capped by aircraft speed and route distance (shown as [c]X / max[/c] in the wizard and routes table)

Manage existing routes: edit frequency or fare tier inline in the Routes table. Use Suspend / Resume / Close on each row.

Open and upgrade hubs

Open a hub

Path: Airline Manager → Hubs → + Open hub

Pick an airport. Cost scales with airport tier ($1.5M to $9M).

Upgrade a hub

Path: Airline Manager → Hubs → Upgrade level / Add gate / Add lounge on an existing hub

Upgrades increase slot capacity and weekly operating cost.

Operations (fleet-wide)

Path: Airline Manager → Operations

Set policies that apply across all flights:

• In-flight meals: None / Snacks / Hot meal / Premium

• Crew training spend: 0–15% of revenue

• Safety spend: 0–10% of revenue

Cabin layout (premium economy, business, first, seat pitch) is set per aircraft in the Buy or Refit flows, not here.

Live CSAT and Safety scores update at the bottom of this tab.

Marketing and logo

Path: Airline Manager → Marketing

• Regional campaigns: click +$100k campaign next to a region to boost brand awareness there

• AddedLogo studioclick Refresh logo seed to generate a new procedural logo variant without re-founding (colours and shape stay the same)

Map

Path: Airline Manager → Map

• Green pins: your hubs

• Blue pins: route destinations

• Route lines: green = strong profit, amber = modest profit, red = loss-making

• Line weight reflects frequency

The map fills the available screen space and scales with your window size.

Competitors and alliances

Competitors

Path: Airline Manager → Competitors

View rival airlines. If a rival goes bankrupt, click Acquire to buy them out (price scales with their size).

Alliances

Path: Airline Manager → Alliances

Codeshare alliances unlock from 1997 onwards. Meet the route threshold and entry fee, then click Join on an alliance. You can also found your own alliance later (30 routes, $25M).

Move cash between personal and airline

Path: Airline Manager → Overview → Cash transfer

• +$500k from personal / +$2M from personal: move mogul cash into the airline ledger

• −$500k to personal: move airline cash back to personal

Founding already costs $5M from personal and seeds $4.5M into the airline.

Finance integration

Path: Sidebar → Bank (Finance)

Once your airline is running, last week's airline numbers appear in the main finance breakdown:

• Income: Airlines row

• Expenses: Airlines row under business unit expenses

Inside Airline Manager, Overview gives a deeper breakdown:

• Last week itemised P&L: route revenue, ancillary, fuel, crew, landing fees, meals, maintenance, leases, hub opex, marketing, net result

• Top routes (last week): per-route fuel, crew, landing, meals, maint, and profit

The Routes tab also shows Fuel / Crew / Landing / Maint columns per route.

Aircraft catalogue (era-gated)

~30 fictional models across 8 parody manufacturers. What you can buy depends on the current game era:

• Early game: turboprops and classic narrowbodies

• Mid game: regional jets, widebodies, jumbos

• Late game: NEO/MAX efficiency jets, composite widebodies, super-jumbos

Every model has a white-livery preview image in the Buy flow, Fleet list, and Refit screen. These are base assets for a future livery builder.

Achievements (new) <-- Only 'in game achievements for now' - not Steam Achievements

• First commercial flight

• 100 routes opened

• Global network (all six regions)

• 5-star safety score

• Bankrupt a rival

• Form an alliance

• 1 billion lifetime passengers

Save compatibility

Existing saves are supported. Loading an older save adds Airline Manager data automatically. If you already had an airline running before this patch, existing aircraft keep their cabin layout (migrated from your old fleet-wide settings). Leased aircraft are marked as refit-locked.

Quick reference: common tasks

Thanks for playing. More airline depth (including a proper livery builder) is on the way.