Income is the fare multiple times the seats you fill, minus fuel that reprices every minute, maintenance, and anything you voluntarily spend on staff or research. Bankruptcy is the carrier ending when that balance is gone.
The million you start with
The opening balance is $1,000,000, plus the included airport and used jet. The first purchase is the second airport. In one recorded domestic setup, Kansas City was under $1.5 million, and a completed Atlanta–Kansas City hop on an older jet returned about $250,000. A later point in that same kind of session described about $100 million of company value with 8 aircraft and 10 airports. None of those numbers are a rate card. They show the order of magnitude of a short hop versus a network.
The HUD also shows a cash figure and a jet-fuel price per gallon. One official frame reads $2.58/gal with an up arrow and a cash balance of $26,125,507. That is a screenshot, not today's fuel price. Use the live gallon price on your own HUD.
How a full plane still loses money
- The fare multiple applies to every leg. At 1.00x you are on market value. At 0.80x, as on the official sample card, you are discounting.
- Fuel changes by the minute. A long or multi-stop line can depart in a cheap window and arrive in a spike.
- Used jets add repair bills. Paying the spike by skipping maintenance grounds the aircraft and cuts the income you needed.
- Staff funding prompts take cash on purpose. Declining them is how morale falls toward a strike.
- Research spends cash that does not come back if fuel spikes an hour later. No research price list is published.
The sample route card also shows the downside in one number: a worst trip of −$42,586 inside a 172-flight report whose average was still positive. One bad leg does not bankrupt you. A string of them, plus a grounded fleet, does.
Loans and the leaderboard
Banks offer commercial loans. Interest, limits, and the repayment clock are not published, so this guide does not treat debt as a required step. Organic fares are the path described for climbing net worth without a debt deduction.
Net worth used for the global top 100 counts cash, aircraft, and airports together, not tickets alone. A grounded jet still occupies the fleet while it earns zero. Keeping a reserve is slower than buying every cheap airport, and it is the documented way to absorb a fuel spike.
If the balance is healthy and the jets are idle, the blocker is usually crew or morale rather than fares. See pilots, morale, and strikes.