2026-10-17
article
A Day in Operations ControlThe rotation board, the red line, and the disruptions rail: how a session on PlaneSim's live ops surface runs, and what the board deliberately will not tell you.
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2026-10-14
article
Image Is Earned per ClassPassengers judge comfort and service against what their own cabin expects, and some will not consider your product at all. Standing with economy travellers buys nothing in the business cabin.
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2026-10-10
article
Reading the live mapThe map's three lenses and two layers, what a rival's overlay actually tells you, and why the fare-war pulse is the fastest competitive read in the game.
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2026-10-07
article
Two clocksSome PlaneSim worlds run at real time; others run an accelerated clock that keeps moving while you sleep. What a 4x world does to a player's week, and why the engine never lets game time and wall time touch.
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2026-10-03
article
Earning ExactnessMarket Analysis shows every carrier's shelf but never a market's size. Exact demand numbers exist in two places only: studies you pay for and routes you fly yourself.
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2026-09-30
article
Flight numbers, pairs, and a tail's weekWhat a flight number contains, why round trips are directional pairs validated as one rotation, and how Operations Control renders an aircraft's actual day.
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2026-09-26
article
Fog of war is the productPlaneSim players know what a real airline would know. Own data is exact, rival internals are hidden or vague, and the boundary is enforced server-side, where no client mod can reach it.
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2026-09-23
article
The server computes every numberIn PlaneSim the client renders and the engine calculates. Every simulation figure on screen was computed server-side, and missing data shows as a dash, never as a flattering default.
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2026-09-22
bulletin
ThePlaneSim crosses 3 Digit users!Thank You!
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2026-09-19
article
Every move is journaledEvery state change in a PlaneSim world is a journaled command, and every world must replay byte-identically from that journal. This is the contract that keeps the economy honest, and the foundation the permanent archive stands on.
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2026-09-16
article
Rivals That Play by Your RulesPlaneSim's AI carriers compete through the same command pipeline players use: five business models, real ledgers, real bankruptcies, and every move visible in world news.
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2026-09-12
article
Cabin Geometry Is the BusinessCapacity in PlaneSim is not a spec-sheet number. Every tail carries its own layout inside a fixed floor-space budget, and where you spend that floor decides what the airframe earns.
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2026-09-09
article
No Two Worlds Play AlikeCustom world sizes, custom game speeds, custom rulesets: every PlaneSim world is a separate persistent economy built to its own recipe, fixed at creation and printed in full on the World Configuration screen.
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2026-09-05
article
The First World, 295 days: a historyPlaneSim's first world ran 295 game days with 52 carriers and closed in August 2026. Its complete record is public. This is the short version of what happened in it, and what it taught us.
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2026-09-02
article
Premium economy, the cabin this genre keeps skippingReal airlines have spent two decades making premium economy their highest margin cabin. Airline sims still mostly stop at three classes. PlaneSim models W as a first class citizen: its own passengers, its own fares, its own share of the floor.
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2026-08-30
article
Heavy Checks and Honest DowntimeMaintenance in PlaneSim is one policy slider, a condition number per tail, and a heavy-check clock that runs on flight hours. None of it pretends the hangar time away.
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2026-08-29
article
What the scheduler checksThe seven operational gates every schedule is checked against, live and with exact reasons: traffic rights, range, runway, slots, curfew, rotation, and the maintenance window.
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2026-08-28
article
Reading the LedgerEvery cent in PlaneSim is a ledger entry you can audit, and the three finance pages are three views of the same record. How to read the journal, the chart of accounts, and the weekly income statement.
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2026-08-27
article
The Reserve AircraftA reserve earns nothing until the day it saves a rotation. How the substitution engine picks a replacement, what happens to bumped passengers, and when the idle tail pays for itself.
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2026-08-27
article
What a Lease Really CostsThe entry price on a lease is low by design. An accounting of everything else in the contract: deposits, maintenance reserves, auto-renewal, the eight-year factory commitment, and the cost of getting out.
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2026-08-26
article
Debt Is a Tool Until It Is NotThe loan desk never says no; it just prices you. How leverage sets your rate, what the weekly annuity does to your cash, and what overextension actually looks like from the inside.
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2026-08-25
article
Interlining BasicsWhat an interline agreement actually changes in the booking engine, how the distance prorate splits the fare, and why it is usually a small network's first signature.
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2026-08-24
article
How Airlines DieNothing in PlaneSim stops you spending into the red except the insolvency clock. What the countdown measures, what liquidation actually does, and why the network dies while the metal survives.
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2026-08-24
article
Tails With HistoriesPlaneSim's used market lists registrations, not catalogue entries: finite lessor fleets, open records on every airframe, and estate sales that turn one airline's end into another's bargain.
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2026-08-23
article
Slots are a ledgerPlaneSim models airport capacity twice: an hourly movement count every world enforces, and on slot-ledger worlds a property register of quarter-hour holdings with named owners, seasonal rollovers, and a secondary market.
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2026-08-22
article
Connection banks and the MCT windowHow PlaneSim decides whether two flights connect (per-airport MCT up to a six-hour maximum), and how to build hub banks the connection score rewards.
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2026-08-21
article
The Rules of Fair PlayOne account per person, no self-dealing, no exploits, no bots: what PlaneSim enforces, how moderation reviews evidence, and how appeals work.
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2026-08-20
article
How a Booking Actually HappensBetween publishing a schedule and watching passengers board sits a daily pipeline: demand pools, itinerary assembly, a ranked shelf of options, and a choice model in which not flying at all is always on the table.
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2026-08-20
article
Pricing for Nine Kinds of PassengerEvery cabin on every leg resolves to a fare, touched or not. On the other side of that fare sit nine customer types with nine budgets, and no single number clears them all.
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2026-08-19
article
Reading Your Loads HonestlyInventory shows one route in exact depth; Load Monitoring interrogates the whole network for flights breaking a load condition. Reading them well means keeping booked and flown numbers apart.
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2026-08-18
article
Lease, Buy, or OrderFive acquisition channels put the same metal on your roster at very different prices and commitments. What each one costs you up front, per week, and on the way out.
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2026-08-17
article
Choosing an airline management sim in 2026The genre has one long-running incumbent and a handful of challengers, and the differences that matter are structural, not cosmetic. A guide to the questions worth asking, with honest answers about where PlaneSim stands.
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2026-08-17
release
World 3 is liveWorld3 Global is live, playing 1x speed and a new demand pool
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2026-08-17
article
Your First Thirty DaysEvery founder gets the same capital and the same empty fleet. A field guide to the founding form, the first lease, the first rotation, and the mistakes that separate airlines a month in.
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2026-08-16
article
How passenger demand actually works in PlaneSimNo spawned passengers, no fixed route values. Demand is a gravity model over origin and destination markets, recalculated daily, spent by nine customer types who compare everything you fly against everything else, including staying home.
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2026-08-14
bulletin
New Dashboard WidgetsJust launched a new Dashboard widget feature, customize, resize and make your dashboard personal!
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2026-08-14
article
What happens when a world endsMost persistent games delete their history when a server closes. PlaneSim seals it, publishes it, and keeps it readable forever. Here is the machinery behind that promise, and the first world that already went through it.
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2026-08-13
bulletin
World1 Pre-Alpha ended.World1 has ended after a successful pre-alpha test. The summary and archive is available at data.theplanesim.com.
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news · notes
releases describe what shipped; bulletins are world notices: openings, posted seasons, closures into the archive; articles are the long reads on how the engine works.