What is capital expenditures and why did it charge me 3x more than usual

[Rapa26]

So i was saving up for planes that i ordered. i had nearly 5mil in cash, and a possible 29mil loan while i need 38mil when the planes arrive. Now i come and find my cash reserves obliterated back to 400k and loan allowance to 23.5mil. I dont get it. Last month i got charged 3x amount of what i normally would be charged on that capital expenditures tab. Why is this so random and what even changed to drop it down by so much? Its kind of annoying just having a stream of some steady funds be obliterated out of nowhere...

[schro]

Need more information to validate rant to determine justifiability....

[knobbygb]

As schro says - more info please - post a screenshot of your income statement and cash flow statement (with the capital expenditure tab expanded).

But probably I'd say it is heavy maintenance - C checks or D-checks?  That's the main thing that will cause a large chunk of cash to vanish without any action from you.

If the amount has gone on 'Capital Expenditures' then it's almost certainly a D-Check.  Capital Expenditure is anything you buy that is 'tangible' - things that have actual value, so basically aircraft, slots etc. Fixed assets are generally actual objects such as aircraft whereas slots are intangible assets - they don't physically exist but still have a set value. Because of how accounting works, a heavy D-Check is considered as capital expenditure because it is adding considerable value to a fixed asset (the aircraft) and the cost of that maintenance (along with the aircraft itself) is then written down over several years.

I could explain in more details but it's not really relevant to where your cash has actually gone.  Post the screen shots please.

[Rapa26]

But wouldn't maintenance checks show up on regular maintenance tab? My maintenance fees were fairly regular, not 3mil more than usual, or do c/d checks count separately? Oh and i had 4mil at the start of the month not 5mil appearently, although i could swear that i saw 4.9mil earlier that real day but whatever. To fisnish up, current in-game month no capital expenditure showed up at all and my loan allowance up again, to 25.5mil, so i'm really confused now..

[Rapa26]

Grabbing the more expanded window of cash flow, hopefully fits into 200kb

[knobbygb]

No, a D-check doesn't show up like that on your regular maintenance. A, B and C checks are considered, for tax purposes, as just regular day-to-day expenditure so they DO appear there. But a D-Check, because it is much bigger and adds considerable value to the aircraft, is considered capital expenditure. This is actually for your benefit - well, it would be in real life anyway. It allows a company to spread the tax advantage of such a large 'purchase' over several years, often decreasing overall tax liability and at least making the accounts more realistic.  You can probably find a better explanation online than I can give.  In real life the situation would be a lot more complicated. The different types of expense involved would appear in different places on the accounts - person-hours to do the work, actual parts for the aircraft, consumables such as oil etc., paper-filing costs with the authorities, even notional loss-of-income while the aircraft was out of use. The game just has the simplification that a C-Check is "small" and a D-Check is "BIG" and so is capital expenditure.

You don't have column and row headings on the table you posted, but I think that $3,729,100 figure in the first one is capital expenditure right?  If you click the little green 'down arrow' next to that, it will break the figure down into three sub-categories - Purchased Aircraft, Aircraft Lease Fees, and Long-term Aircraft Maintenance.  I'm guessing your money is in the third category.

I'm assuming the aircraft that was checked was leased. If you OWNED the aircraft then you would have noticed that it's value increased by some amount (possibly a bit less than the cost of the check) and thus your overall company value would have stayed about the same. The cash would still be gone but you wouldn't have 'lost' anything - the cash is just converted to another type of asset.  If it is LEASED then the value of that money is lost forever and the leasing company now owns a somewhat more valuable aircraft. The lesson is - NEVER D-Check a leased aircraft.

[Rapa26]

ohh alright, makes sense now. I did not know about the ability to spread out the sheets even more and did not even check aircraft(i own my fleet) value but some were definitely near D term so at least now i know what it was. Thanks! Really gratefull!