News

A new Beginner's World #1 scenario is now open!

Join here: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=304#game304

AirwaySim has always two concurrent Beginner's World scenarios running (BW#1 and BW#2). They both use the same settings and same time frame.

Our beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. Duration of one scenario is always approximately 60 real days. The scenario runs for ~10 game years with a speed of 25 minutes per day, and all of AirwaySim's main features are included in these scenarios.

When a BW scenario ends, a new one will start within a few days. The two scenarios are running in parallel so that there is always one BW scenario start every month.

North America Challenge game world is now open!

» Join here!

This shorter scenario is part of our series to bring more variety and more frequent launches of new scenarios for all you airline simulation fans out there! This particular game focuses on running the airline in USA, Canada, Mexico or any other Central American region's state. No longhaul traffic is available.

Settings of this scenario:

• Time span: 2010 - 2025, at 25 minutes per game day.
• Normal difficulty level / Shorth length scenario.
• All aircraft models included.
• Airports only from the North American region.
• Free basing - no political restrictions on where your airline can open new base airports.
• The overall play duration of this game is about 3 months.

Game play related settings specific for this scenario:

• Fuel prices are fully customized and will not follow the real historical developments at any stage.
• Additional base airports are customized: You may expand your airline to any available airport in the game (no political limitations). The maximum 10 bases per airline limit is valid.
• Alliances are available to be formed from the first day.
• Cargo with City Based Demand system included (the passenger demand model still follows the older more static model).
• The aircraft production rates and amount of airport slots are higher compared to the standard "realworld" setting.
• The airport slot numbers follow the new and updated slot system with slot releases happening only when the airport expands (apart from the first game year). Slot setting factor is at x1.75 compared to standard AWS slot model.

If it has been a while since you started at early stages in a major AirwaySim games, here are a few reminders and tips:

• The game clock is paused for the first day and will start moving after 24 hrs. The used aircraft market will refresh several times during the first static 24 hour day (but you can only make two orders for aircraft during the first day).
• There are plenty of used aircraft available to begin with, but the used aircraft market will soon become limited and the popular aircraft types are sold/leased very quickly. Take care when picking the aircraft you plan to use.
• New aircraft ordering will be available after the time starts to move (= from day 2 of the simulation), but it is of course always recommended to lease several used aircraft to begin with.
• Be patient with the route sales figures since your Route Image grows slowly. Do not spend all your cash on planes at once, remember to leave a good reserve. It takes time to gain profits and there might be unexpected early problems..
• Some popular airports will for sure become limited on airport slots soon. This is normal and you should use larger aircraft or other airports in that case. Please remember that slots are only available when the airport infrastructure expands.
• The passenger demand will grow steadily during the course of the game, and is rather low at the very beginning.
• Consider joining an alliance from early stages of the game, they are great resources for improving your game play (tips and help from fellow players).
• The system has about 10500 pre-generated aircraft that will be released to the used aircraft market in random intervals. The most numerous fleets at the start of the game world are: Airbus A318/A319/A320/A321 (24%), Boeing 737-600/700/800/900/MAX (14%), McDonnell Douglas MD-80 / MD-90 / B717 (10%), Boeing 737-300/400/500 (8%). By sizeclass the aircraft spread is: Large (63%), Very Large (23%), Medium (9%), Small (5%).

Head over to the Game Area and join the new game. Welcome onboard!

The next AirwaySim's airline simulation scenario, called North America Challenge, opens on Saturday September 14th.

This shorter scenario is part of our series to bring more variety and more frequent launches of new scenarios for all you airline simulation fans out there! This particular game focuses on running the airline in USA, Canada, Mexico or any other Central American region's state. No longhaul traffic is available.

The basic settings are:

• Time span: 2010 - 2025, at 25 minutes per game day.
• Normal difficulty level / Shorth length scenario.
• All aircraft models included.
• Airports only from the North American region.
• The overall play duration of this game is about 3 months.

This scenario will open at approximately 15 UTC on Saturday September 14th. Click on the link to pre-join this game now!

Due to new payment regulations in Europe our credit card payment flow has been slightly updated.

The additional customer authentication step has been added to the payment flow when using credit cards (per the new Strong Consumer Authentication (SCA) regulations by EU). This is also know as the "3D Secure" authentication, and branded by card issuers such as Verified by Visa, MasterCard SecureCode or Amex SafeKey.

You will see a new pop-up window appearing after you press "Confirm - Pay the order" button at AirwaySim's website. This pop-up window takes you to the website of your card issuer or local bank for additional cardholder identity verification. How it works depends on your card and bank. For example in the case of our local bank, the system ask to input a key passphrase from our banking solution to verify the payment.

After this quick step is done the pop-up closes and the normal AirwaySim payment flow resumes and Credits are added to your account instantly like before. If the verification fails the payment won't continue - in such cases please try again, or be in touch with us in order for us to take a closer look.

The additional authentication will pop up only if your card issuer requires that and if your card supports that method (does not happen for all users). If you have done online shopping with your card elsewhere this should be already a familiar process. This change for multi-factor authentication in credit card payments is done in order to decrease the risks of payment frauds and is mandated by the new European regulations.

A couple of screenshots are attached to the announcement posted at our forums to show an example of the payment flow.

A new Beginner's World #2 scenario is now open!

Join here: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=302#game302

AirwaySim has always two concurrent Beginner's World scenarios running (BW#1 and BW#2). They both use the same settings and same time frame.

Our beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. Duration of one scenario is always approximately 60 real days. The scenario runs for ~10 game years with a speed of 25 minutes per day, and all of AirwaySim's main features are included in these scenarios.

When a BW scenario ends, a new one will start within a few days. The two scenarios are running in parallel so that there is always one BW scenario start every month.

If you ever wonder if AirwaySim's server is unreachable or slow from your location, you should check our uptime status page. It tells you if we are actually live or down for some reason.

System is provided by a third-party monitoring service, and they check the status of our server every minute from various locations around the world. Besides of the simple "up or down" status also the average page response times are shown.

http://uptime.airwaysim.com

The Modern Times game world is now open!

» Join here!

This game world focuses on managing the airlines in the present and future era and is our most popular game world. This is also the first scenario of our new and restructured game format (read more of that here).Settings of this scenario:

• Time span: 1998 - 2030, at 30 minutes per game day.
• Normal difficulty level / Medium length scenario.
• The overall play duration of this game is about 8 months.

Game play related settings specific for this scenario:

• Fuel prices are customized and may, or may not, follow the real historical developments.
• All airports globally and all aircraft models included. The "non-realistic" prototype aircraft are also available.
• Additional base airports follow the standard rules, max 10 bases per airline, and the amount of planes based outside HQ will grow over time.
• Alliances are available to be formed from the first day.
• Cargo with City Based Demand system included (the passenger demand model still follows the older more static model).
• The aircraft production rates and amount of airport slots are higher compared to the standard "realworld" setting.
• The airport slot numbers follow the new and updated slot system with slot releases happening only when the airport expands (apart from the first game year). Details can be found from the changelog. Slot setting factor is at x2.0 compared to standard AWS slot model.

If it has been a while since you started at early stages in a major AirwaySim games, here are a few reminders and tips:

• The game clock is paused for the first day and will start moving after 24 hrs. The used aircraft market will refresh several times during the first static 24 hour day (but you can only make two orders for aircraft during the first day).
• There are plenty of used aircraft available to begin with, but the used aircraft market will soon become limited and the popular aircraft types are sold/leased very quickly. Take care when picking the aircraft you plan to use.
• New aircraft ordering will be available after the time starts to move (= from day 2 of the simulation), but it is of course always recommended to lease several used aircraft to begin with.
• Be patient with the route sales figures since your Route Image grows slowly. Do not spend all your cash on planes at once, remember to leave a good reserve. It takes time to gain profits and there might be unexpected early problems..
• Some popular airports will for sure become limited on airport slots soon. This is normal and you should use larger aircraft or other airports in that case. Please remember that slots are only available when the airport infrastructure expands.
• The passenger demand will usually grow steadily during the course of the game, apart from some periods of global recession (the rate of the growth models well what has happened in real history and when the market started to grow rapidly). Be prepared to major events like 9/11.
• Consider joining an alliance from early stages of the game, they are great resources for improving your game play (tips and help from fellow players).
• The system has about 23000 pre-generated aircraft that will be released to the used aircraft market in random intervals. The most numerous fleets at the start of the game world are: Airbus A318/A319/A320/A321 (13%), McDonnell Douglas MD-80 (10%), Boeing 737-300/400/500 (9%), McDonnell Douglas DC-9 (8%), Boeing 727 (6%), Boeing 767 (6%) and Airbus A300/A310 (5%).

That's it! Ready for takeoff!

Now go ahead and click on to the Game Area and join the new game. Enjoy!

AirwaySim's official Discord chat server has been opened.

Join the community at http://discord.gg/GrVGDsz

The server is opened on trial basis and we'll see how popular and useful it is after a few months.

Discord is not replacing our forums as the primary means of communication, but the AWS Discord server will serve as an additional place to share thoughts and information. (Forums are preferred way of communication since the messages are stored there and viewable by other members who are seeking for help and information later on.)

Please take a look at the #rules channel on the server when you join. We shall follow the same guidelines in the Discord as in the public forums.

Please also remember that even though AWS admin will be present at Discord, all contacts related to your user account or billing related matters are done via our "contact us" page (a.k.a. support ticket system), and all game issue reports (bug reports) shall be still posted to the forums.

The Discord app works with desktop and mobile platforms, or just via web browser.

Welcome!

The next AirwaySim's airline simulation scenario, called The Modern Times, opens on Friday August 2nd at approximately 16 UTC.

This game world focuses on managing the airlines in the present and future era and is our most popular game world. The basic settings are:

• Time span: 1998 - 2030, at 30 minutes per game day.
• Normal difficulty level / Medium length scenario.
• All airports globally, all aircraft models included.
• The overall play duration of this game is about 8 months.

This scenario will open at approximately 16 UTC on Friday August 2nd. Click on the link to pre-join this game now!

After careful planning we're happy to announce the new game world structure at AirwaySim Online Airline Simulation.

We have felt that our users would like to have more variety in the types of games, and more frequent starts of new simulation scenarios. Our new game world structure will bring AirwaySim partly back to its roots and will give you more choices and more predictable schedules of new games.

Three main types of games

In the future we shall deliver frequent launches of new game worlds in three different categories, defined by their overall duration. The main types of game worlds by length are designated as SHORT, MEDIUM and EPIC.

• The Epic scenarios are the current three main game worlds that last for about 1.5 years in total.
  
  • They have been previously called Game Worlds #1, #2 (etc.) but are today renamed as game worlds Airline Generations, History and the Future and The Age of Flight.
  • All three of these main scenarios are always running in parallel with a new game world starting approximately every 6 months.
  • Each of these games will follow the same time span from 1955 to 2035.
• The Medium length scenarios have a duration of about 7-9 months in total and are a new class of recurring games at our simulations.
  
  • These new games closely follow what the "original" AirwaySim scenarios used to be about 10 years ago.
  • With this change we shall bring back the original game world names such as The Modern Times (1998-2030), Dawn of the Millennium (1975-2007) and The Jet Age (1960-1992) as the main name of the scenario. (n.b. the game years are approximate and may still change)
  • There will always be two of these medium-length scenarios running and a new scenario is expected approximately every 3 months.
• The Short scenarios are special theme-games which may have a limited world area or special set of rules.
  
  • These are called the Challenge scenarios and they will run for about 3 months each.
  • There will be usually one of these scenarios running at any given time and a new Challenge world can be expected to start every 3-4 months.
  • The themes in these short scenarios will rotate according to our predetermined plan, and types of games include for example North America Challenge, Long Haul Challenge and Regional Challenge.
  • These games will be played in the modern era (2010-2025).
• Lastly the well-known Beginner's World theme world shall continue in the same way as before.
  
  • The two different scenarios, with overall duration of 2 months, will run in parallel and restart with the same settings every month.
  • This is also the free 7-day trial mode of our simulation.

Announced well in advance

Each of the game worlds due to start will be announced well before the planned launch, and our preliminary game rotation plan goes currently all the way to 2022. Users will have the possibility to pre-join the scenarios well in advance, and the aim is to introduce soon an always up-to-date schedule plan of all game world launches at our public website.

The main idea of this change is to provide three different types of game play, and clear information that a new scenario can be always expected prior/just after the end of the previous one. And in some categories you have several different scenarios to choose from.


Notes

Some notes to consider if you are playing in the current game worlds:

• There are no changes in the settings or data of the existing game worlds, apart from the name. All current game worlds will be of course fully supported and the three main/long games will stay as the top product.
• The old names (Game World #1, #2 ...) will be displayed for reference at the game selection screen for the next month.
• The game icon (round airplane logo) of the main scenarios will change according to the era the scenario is in. The additional time/era designator (i.e. "Early Days" or "The Jet Age") will not be shown anymore with these main scenarios. All other scenarios have a fixed icon as the game designator.
• The Credits price structure will also remain the same as before.
• The scenarios have also now a difficulty designator for reference. This means how the scenario has been set up and what kind of economic and financial environment can be expected. Note that it does not consider the amount of competition, available routes or aircraft in the game or at particular airports. All our standard scenarios are of NORMAL difficulty.

Join The Modern Times game

The first new game world of the new structure will be launched on Friday August 2nd 2019.

This is The Modern Times - a popular scenario starting just before year 2000 and continuing way into the future. The launch announcement of this game will follow soon but you may already pre-join this scenario here: Game Area - The Modern Times

The next Challenge game world is expected to start in September. Followed by a Medium length scenario (either The Jet Age or Dawn of the Millennium) at the start of November.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to post at our forums.

The modern era Game World #3 ended today and here are the final statistics!

The next longer scenario will start later in the summer as we're spreading out the starting times of the main game worlds a bit. Meanwhile take a look at the Game Worlds #1, #2 and #4 for your new airline.

A new series of shorter and recurring game worlds will also be announced soon, and that is the next game to start. Stay tuned for details posted at our website, email newsletter and Facebook!

A new Beginner's World #1 scenario is now open!

Join here: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=300#game300

AirwaySim has always two concurrent Beginner's World scenarios running (BW#1 and BW#2). They both use the same settings and same time frame.

Our beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. Duration of one scenario is always approximately 60 real days. The scenario runs for ~10 game years with a speed of 25 minutes per day, and all of AirwaySim's main features are included in these scenarios.

When a BW scenario ends, a new one will start within a few days. The two scenarios are running in parallel so that there is always one BW scenario start every month.

AirwaySim's Credit prices have been slightly updated today. Our previous price check was made in December 2015, and today we're making small (~2-3%) adjustments to the prices due to changes in our payment system costs. The price of the 'standard' 10 Cr pack is 5.5 eur, and remember that even up 20% discount is available when making a larger purchase.

If you have not subscribed to our e-mail newsletter you'd probably also like to know of our discount code for the next two weeks:

"The JULY19 discount code gives you a 10% discount from the total price of your next AirwaySim Credits purchase. This code is valid until July 14th 23.59 UTC."

Here are some of the highlights on the updates made to the AirwaySim software during May and June. For always up-to-date information and full list of all changes please see the announcement forums and the AirwaySim Changelog.

Updates

• Airport slot system updated:
• The airport Infrastructure Level is now the basis of all slot numbers. Amount of slots grow only when the infrastructure level grows by airport expansion (apart from game's first years / start-up phase).
• New slots will appear only when the aiport expansion project has been completed. All of them are available at the day of completion of the expansion. If the airport is slot-limited, the completion of expansion project will trigger a slot-quota mechanism at that airport.
• The calcuation of slot costs has been also updated.
• New global wind model:
• A new and highly realistic & accurate wind model has been taken into use with the AirwaySim Aircraft Performance Model.
• The whole world has been divided into areas of 1 degree latitude/longitude and each area has a defined wind speed and direction. The actual wind component of a route is calculated based on the great circle route and the system checks which of these world areas the route intersects with.
• The wind model is based on real historical wind data samples around the world and data is taken from each month for the period of 5 years. This data has been used to calculate the average statistical wind to each area.
• The wind model also takes into account the aircraft cruising altitude. For a short route, or for aircraft with low cruising altitudes (such as unpressurized prop aircraft) the winds are not so strong as in high altitudes.
• This update is live with all games started from early June onwards.
• Several interface updates
• New "mass actions" at My Aircraft page: scrap multiple aircraft, remove multiple aircraft from long-term storage.
• Hushkit upgrades can be now directly installed upon aircraft purchase from used a/c market.
• Additional C/D checks can be now performed when removing aircraft from long-term storage.
• Aircraft can be scrapped or put into storage when it is being sold in the used a/c market (this removes the plane from the market too).
• Improved the mouseover tooltips about aircraft range.
• Added new "notification settings" tab to Settings page.
• Aircraft updates (AirwaySim Aircraft Performance Model v2):
• Aircraft performance data update for Convair 880 / 990 series. Added Convair 880M and Convair 990A models.
• Aircraft performance data update for Boeing 707 fleet. Also new engine variants and other changes.
• Aircraft performance data update for Douglas DC-8 fleet. Also new engine variants and new DC-8-12 model added.
• Avro Canada C102 Jetliner data added.
• Added 23 new aircraft retrofit upgrade options for Boeing and Airbus (winglet/sharklet upgrades).

There are plenty of other smaller updates and many bugfixes too (refer to changelog for details).

A new Beginner's World #2 scenario is now open!

Join here: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=299#game299

AirwaySim has always two concurrent Beginner's World scenarios running (BW#1 and BW#2). They both use the same settings and same time frame.

Our beginner game series is aimed for all newbies and other players wishing to test different playing styles in an easier environment. Duration of one scenario is always approximately 60 real days. The scenario runs for ~10 game years with a speed of 25 minutes per day, and all of AirwaySim's main features are included in these scenarios.

When a BW scenario ends, a new one will start within a few days. The two scenarios are running in parallel so that there is always one BW scenario start every month.