News

Several changes and updates to various features have been done during the last weeks, and here are the highlights. For always up-to-date information and full list of all changes please see the announcement forums and the AirwaySim Changelog.

Updates

• Increased the number of aircraft allowed to be based outside airline's HQ. The number now increases from 600 at year 2015 to reach 1000 in 2035 (previous gap was 600). Growth and change rates of these limits prior 2015 are unchanged. [effective in all game worlds]
• Added new messages from your "personal advisor" to the route opening/editor screen to help new users to avoid costly mistakes:
• Warning if trying to open a route with no or very little passenger demand.
• Warning when trying to open a route where the aircraft is way too large for the route.
• Warning if the aircraft is clearly too small for the route.   
• Added "Operating profit / loss" data to Airline information page's financial overview.
• Added "Operating profit margin" and "Net profit margin" to Income statement.
• "Fuel contract fees" item on all financial statements is renamed as "Fuel contract and hedge fees".
• Added manual page about world events: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Others/Events/
• Rules for maximum allowed daily flights per destination updated. Previous limit was 40, it has been increased to 50 / day.
• Fine tuned new aircraft production dynamics: The production line will close, despite of any player actions or new orders placed, if the aircraft has been out of production in real life already more than 35 years.
• When opening new routes system automatically pre-selects "Transport only passengers (block all cargo capacity)" if the potential cargo demand is zero.
• Updated the temporary slot quota mechanism at highly slot-constrained airports for fair play purposes:
• This functionality has been changed to ensure more fair chances for everyone to get slots at the airports that are totally slot-locked.
• Aircraft registration and nickname can be now changed when a/c is in long-term storage.

Fixes

• Various bugfixes, see changelog at our website for details.

A new Beginner's World #1 scenario is now open again according to our normal scenario rotation schedule.

This Beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. The two beginner scenarios follow always the standard easy settings and same time frame as the previous beginner scenarios, and they restart about once every month.

Google Pay has been today added as one of our payment methods. Google Pay (formerly Pay with Google and Android Pay) is a digital wallet platform and online payment system.

Besides of mobile payments from Android, Google Pay also supports payments from normal desktop web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and works also in iOS.

Our other payment methods for AirwaySim Credits are: Credit Card (Visa (including Visa Electron and Visa Debit), MasterCard, American Express, Maestro and Discover), PayPal and BitCoin. Possibility for adding Apple Pay is considered in the future too.

A new Beginner's World #2 scenario has been just opened.

This game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. The two beginner scenarios follow always the standard easy settings and same time frame as the previous beginner scenarios, and they restart about once every month.

This time in our rotating series of mini-games we are setting up a new theme. Bring in the mullets and watch out for the yuppies - it's time to play in the 1980s!

The 1980s Challenge starts in January 1980 and you can play through the whole decade, up until December 1989. The overall play time, with 30 minutes per simulated day, is approximately 2½ months. The regions of North America, Europe and Asia are included in the simulation. There are no political or geographical restrictions on where you can open your bases.

This Challenge theme game will use custom settings:

• Difficulty level: Standard
• Aircraft: All aircraft models available
• Regions: Asia, Europe, North America. (airports and routes in other regions are not included)
• Cargo with City Based Demand system included.
• No geographical airport basing restrictions - open additional bases anywhere in the world! (normal base number and aircraft number limits exist)
• Time span: 1980-1989, 30 minutes per game day.
• Fuel prices are customized and may not follow real world history. Random world events are included.
• Achievements can be earned.

Some additional notes to consider:

• We've made sure there is a good selection of new aircraft models still in production. Some models that ceased in late 1970s in real life are still in production.
• Passenger demand levels are rather low to begin with, but will rise soon.
• First turn is 24 hours long as usual.

This time in our rotating series of mini-games we are setting up a new theme. Bring in the mullets and watch out for the yuppies - it's time to play in the 1980s!

The 1980s Challenge starts in January 1980 and you can play through the whole decade, up until December 1989. The overall play time, with 30 minutes per simulated day, is approximately 2½ months. The regions of North America, Europe and Asia are included in the simulation. There are no political or geographical restrictions on where you can open your bases.

This scenario will open at approximately 10 UTC on August 3rd. You can pre-join already now to reserve your spot and to be notified of the launch.

» Pre-join 1980s Challenge


In the meantime you can set yourself into the mood of the decade with these few clips from the past:

• British Caledonian, flying The Beach Boys style
  
  
• Alaska Airlines, how they predicted the future

Some new in-game Achievements have been again added after a while, a total of 33 new items.

New Achievements

• New aircraft operator. Three levels, "Your airline's average aircraft age is less than 2.0 / 1.0 / 0.5 years." (The size of the scheduled fleet must be over 15 / 25 / 35 aircraft. Airline must be over a year old. Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Old aircraft operator. Three levels, "Your airline's average aircraft age is more than 20.0 / 25.0 / 28.0 years." (The size of the scheduled fleet must be over 15 / 25 / 35 aircraft. Airline must be over a year old. Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• European plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 250 / 500 / 1000 planes made in Europe." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• American plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 250 / 500 / 1000 planes made in the USA." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Brazilian plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 100 / 250 / 500 planes made in Brazil." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Canadian plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 100 / 250 / 500 planes made in Canada." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Chinese plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 50 / 100 / 250 planes made in China." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Japanese plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 50 / 100 / 250 planes made in Japan." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago.)
• Ukrainian plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 50 / 100 / 250 planes made in Ukraine." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago. Available after 1st Jan 1992.)
• Soviet plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 50 / 100 / 250 planes made in the Soviet Union." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago. Available prior 1st Jan 1992.)
• Russian plane lover. Three levels, "Your airline operates at least 50 / 100 / 250 planes made in Russia." (Only aircraft with routes scheduled are counted. Aircraft must have been delivered to the airline >30 days ago. Available after 1st Jan 1992.)

You can view your Achievements from the My Account page: http://www.airwaysim.com/Profile/#profileAchievements

A new Beginner's World #1 scenario is now open again according to our normal scenario rotation schedule.

This Beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. The two beginner scenarios follow always the standard easy settings and same time frame as the previous beginner scenarios, and they restart about once every month.

Our server upgrade has been now completed and all systems and simulations have been moved to the new server hardware.

Please report if you encounter any problems!

Note that you might need to:

• Clear your browser cache and cookies
• Login again to the site

There might be still some occasional issues in the systems but we'll try to make everything perfect during the following days :)

Like previously announced a major server hardware upgrade has been in plans at AirwaySim.

We are now beginning to switch the services to the new hardware and due to this there will be a maintenance break during which all services will be closed for a few hours.

The starting time is set for this Thursday, 28th of June and the maintenance will start at approximately 09 UTC. Estimated duration is 2-3 hours, depending on how well everything works out (there may be some unexpected issues that will extend it but we'll keep you informed).

During this time the game worlds will be closed (and time paused). The website and forums are also temporarily closed, and there may be short periods where the whole website is unreachable.

This upgrade is planned because the old hardware needs to be retired already and at the same time we will get a very noticeable boost to the performance and calculation capability of our servers.

The new Beginner's World #2 scenario has been just opened.

This game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. The two beginner scenarios follow always the standard easy settings and same time frame as the previous beginner scenarios, and they restart about once every month.

AirwaySim's web server system will be upgraded soon. Our current setup has served us well and since it has been in use from winter 2013 it is already good time to retire that hardware. This upgrade allows us to give you the best possible service and to develop better features in the future too (by increasing the calculation capacity).

At the same time we will also switch our ISP (service provider) since the support and services from current ISP (Nebula) have not been satisfactory. Our new servers will still be located in Finland (like already currently), and we will continue to use own dedicated hardware for best capacity and configurability.

Since some of the testing and setup work is still in progress no exact time / date has been set for the upgrade but plans are to do it by the end of this month.

During the upgrade all games will be paused and website will be unaccessible for approximately 2-4 hours. We will inform you all a few days prior of the exact time of this maintenance window.

This is a pure hardware upgrade so there will not be any feature changes or updates. All of the background systems like database engines and other such sofware will be updated but these are not visible to users.

The next new game worlds (apart from normal rotation of Beginner's World) will begin after this upgrade is complete.

As part of our planned server upgrades, we are updating the list of supported devices/browsers to be in line with modern design and security requirements.

The oldest compatible clients will be: Firefox 27+ [released 2014], Chrome 30+ [2013], any MS Edge [2015], Opera 17+ [2013], Safari 9+ [desktop, 2015], iOS 7+ [mobile, 2013], Android 4.4.2 [mobile, 2013], IE 11+ on Windows 7 or higher [2013].

The limits on this compatibility list are determined by either the software design or the server systems (such as the SSL connection security requirements).

Based on our usage analytics from last 6 months none of our active users are affected by this change. In other words, there have been occasional hits to the site with older devices but for example IE 8 was registered on only 0.01% of all sessions during last 6 months, and Windows XP in 0.3% of the sessions, and are thus negligible. (note; Windows XP itself is still supported as the operating system makes no difference, but the combination of XP and old IE browser is not supported due to modern SSL connection requirements. With WinXP you should use Chrome or Firefox.)

Due to new legislation coming into force shortly we, like many other businesses, have updated our Privacy Policy. The updated policy is written to include more information compared to the previous version, as required by the new rules, but in practice our data and privacy policies remain mostly similar than before since we have already previously operated very respectfully towards user privacy and protecting the data.

If you have already opted in to receive our newsletter you do not separately need to opt in again due to these legal changes.

A new Beginner's World #1 scenario is now open again according to our normal scenario rotation schedule.

This Beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. The two beginner scenarios follow always the standard easy settings and same time frame as the previous beginner scenarios, and they restart about once every month.