The aircraft manufacturer names are now dynamic, and follow historical changes.
There have been various mergers of aircraft manufacturers throughout the history and this new small feature aims to model these changes. The update is part of the fleet commonality v.2.0 update, and with this change we can make the fleet commonality bonuses work even more accurately than before.
Example #1: Dornier and Fairchild-Dornier were previously separate manufacturers in the database, but have now been merged, with a name change from Dornier to Fairchild Dornier in 1996 following the buyout. This allows you to benefit from fleet commonality manufacturer bonuses if you fly Dornier 328 and Fairchild-Dornier 528/728/928.
Example #2: In 1997 Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merge, thus all McD aircraft are being manufactured by Boeing after that date. However since there is no actual manufacturer commonality involved, since both companies retained their own production lines and systems, there is no manufacturer bonus in fleet commonality for opearating B737 and MD-80 series after the merger, but you do get a bonus for operating B717 and MD-80/90 ( = situation remains the same as before the merger).
Example #3: Bombardier sold the Cseries development to Airbus in 2018, thus creating the Airbus A220. The manufacturer name changes only for this aircraft series, and not for other Bombardier aircraft models.
The update does not affect the aircraft model names, so even though Boeing buys McDonnell Douglas, the aircraft model names remain as McDonnell Douglas MD-82 etc.
The British aircraft manufacturer name changes are not yet modelled since all what happened there in 1950s to 1970s is rather complicated. There might be also some other omissions in the data, but please let us know and we'll update.
Added exception to fleet commonality calculations: If the fleet group has more than 1 aircraft in total, AND all of them are for sale, except for one-two aircraft (which are not for sale), AND those particular planes are in maintenance AND have zero routes, then they do NOT count for fleet commonality. This (rare) case happens when you are selling your entire fleet in the used market, but need to keep the C/D checks valid. Previously the single plane in maintenance of the otherwise inactive entire fleet would have created commonality costs even though the fleet was not in operation, and change is made to not create unnecessary costs of a fleet that you do not actually operate.
Bankruptcy and airline closure news listings improved. The Airline News feed at Dashboard shows a bit more information of each closed airline, such as the CEO's username, airline HQ airport (among other bases), and number of aircraft per each base, base's opening date (incl. airline founding date for HQ), and the possible alliance membership of the airline, and also the fleet listing of the airline (fleets in operation, for sale, or long-term storage; not those that were leased out). [change applies only to pages of v.2.0 code, thus manual airline closure via Office->Bankruptcy doesn't yet post this type of expanded news]
The new salary calculation rules will be also in effect in Airline Generations and The Age of Flight game worlds, refer to changelog dated 31st Jul 2025 ("Game Balance Updates").
Fixes
Base airport selector did not show correct airports when opening a new base for airline based in the French "departments".
Filtering by individual aircraft model in Manage Routes -> Destination View did not work.
Airline bankruptcy news did not always show up at the Dashboard's Airline News feed.
Game clock (time of day) calculation in one internal backend function could have exceeded 23:59, putting some game news into the wrong game date.
For extremely large airlines, the staff management interface at Office -> Personnel page was limiting the amount of staff you could hire manually (UI limit).
Aircraft Information listing page showed the "age" of aircraft that were already scrapped.
Tuned the game world's initial airport slot growth mechanism to make sure the standard slot amount is reached after two full game years (steady growth at random dates during this period).
The e-mail template at the main website is updated to be more mobile-compatible, and better formatted across different devices and e-mail clients.
The main website e-mail templates are now dark-mode compatible (depending a bit on your e-mail client).
Updated the layout of the in-game billing notification/warning emails to show the relevant information more clearly.
AirwaySim newsletter is updated with a new more mobile-compatible layout with dark-mode support (similar to other site e-mails).
Account activation and password reminder processes at the main website improved with additional security layers and technical improvements.
User account inactivity checks re-activated. The system will send a reminder mail to keep the user account alive if it has been inactive (no logins) for more than 180 days. A second reminder is sent at 270 days, and the account closure happens automatically after 360 days of inactivity. The email includes a direct one-click link to retain the account activity status. (n.b. unactivated or otherwise "pending" accounts are removed faster without separate reminder e-mail)
Some other technical improvements and changes to the login handling at the main website. The login session timeouts after 60 minutes of inactivity (no clicks) if the "Always stay logged in" checkbox was not checked.
Improved the handling of our anti-spam ban list (provided by 3rd party) to avoid false-positives.
Fixes
Fleet Commonality page grouped data incorrectly for fleet groups with multiple different manufacturer names (e.g. data for McDonnell Douglas MD-81 and Boeing 717 were shown twice); did not affect cost calculation, UI display issue only.
Newsletter subscription button did not work at My Account page.
Automatic login timeout handler did not always work properly, and could have booted the user out even he was active at the site.
Dornier 328JET separated to its own fleet group (with significant partial commonality benefits with the prop-D328 group). This update is only effective for any games starting from August 2025.
Salary calculation rules updated. The salaries are now based on the cost/salary levels of each base country instead of the HQ country. This update is only effective for any games starting from August 2025 (update may be added to other running games later; not decided yet).
Cost calculation of route-specific marketing campaigns updated. The cost is now based on the cost/salary levels of the base airport the campaign relates to instead of the airline-wide cost/salary levels.
Adjusted the opening dates of following airports to be 1950-01-01 instead of their actual opening date of 1951-1952 to be in line with the custom setups of all recent ultra-long game worlds (unrealistic change, but done for playability): Johannesburg, Helsinki - Vantaa, Moscow - Sheremetyevo.
Slightly adjusted partial fleet commonality bonuses for several fleet groups (within Airbus, Boeing, Fokker, Ilyushin, Piper and Saab).
Various code structure changes to keep up with our coding standards.
Updated several 3rd party backend systems and libraries.
Content Security Policy (CSP) configuration updated to the site.
Improved cleanup of some old data in the backend processes.
Fixes
Nagoya airport was not properly configured to relocate to the new airport.
Corrected some missing fuel supplier companies in the long games.
Added "Idle Fleet Types" rule to Fleet Commonality.
A fleet type is considered idle (and exempt from commonality costs) if both of the following conditions are met: a) No aircraft of the fleet type are assigned to any active routes AND b) The oldest aircraft in the fleet type was delivered no more than 45 game days ago.
This grace period ensures flexibility for airlines adding or returning fleet types (e.g. from leases from other players) without incurring immediate costs.
This change is now "live" in all games apart from "Airline Generations" and "History and the Future". The change will apply to these two games next week - please check your idle fleets before that.