AOG: Aircraft On Ground

About the Game

This is not an airline game. You do not sell tickets and you have no passengers to please. You run an ACMI operator: the company that airlines hire when they run short of aircraft. You bring the aircraft with its crew, its maintenance and its insurance (that is what ACMI stands for: Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance), and you are paid for every block hour, from the moment the doors close to the moment they open again.

Airlines need you all the time: a summer peak, a jet stuck in the hangar, a new route that opened too early. In AOG: Aircraft On Ground you start with one regional jet, a few crews and a small office on the top floor of a glass tower, and you grow from there.

What you do

• Sign contracts. Airlines send requests with their own timetables: a season on a city pair, a two-week substitution, an urgent call because one of their jets is grounded. Negotiate the rate, then sign.
  
• Plan the flying. The full-screen Planner has three tabs: Aircraft (which jet flies which contract), Crews (who flies which day) and Schedule (every flight on one zoomable time line). Flights run round the clock, and planning steps can be undone.
  
• Keep crews legal. Crews have duty limits, rest between days, days off after a working week and a home base to return to. Hire from a weekly market of named crews, pay them enough to stay, answer vacation requests. Break the rules and flights do not go.
  
• Keep aircraft flying. An A-check every 600 flight hours, a C-check every two years, booked ahead with a maintenance provider. Faults come in three levels, and you decide: repair now, or fly on within the allowed time. Order parts and watch the clock on every deferred fault. Miss a deadline and the aircraft stays on the ground. That is what AOG means: Aircraft On Ground, the call every operator dreads.
  
• Handle the bad days. Delays that break a crew's duty day, sick crews, bird strikes, hail at the stand. Repair and wait, or pay a partner airline to fly your passengers.

Learn as you go

• A guided start. Marta, your operations advisor, walks you through your first aircraft, your first crews and your first contract, then through a first week of small tasks. You can pause or skip her any time.
  
• Aviation words explained. Hover over MEL, block hour, rotation, A-check, IOSA and 20 more words, anywhere in the game, and a short note says what they mean.

Clients who remember you

• 185 client airlines, each with its own colours and its own opinion of you. Good work moves them from Cold up to Partner and brings more requests, better rates, renewals and, in the end, multi-year agreements.
  
• Punctuality counts. Each contract is judged monthly on its on-time record.
  
• Top-tier carriers ask for more. The big national airlines want experienced crews and aircraft that are not too old, and they notice when you send less.
  
• Audits. The biggest clients want an IOSA-audited operator: prepare, pass the visit, close the findings in time, renew before it lapses.

A real map of the world, a real office

• 274 airports in 11 parts of the world. Pick your home base, from Vilnius to Sydney, Toronto or Johannesburg, and watch your aircraft fly across the map as the clock runs.
  
• 19 aircraft types, from 70-seat turboprops to 500-seat giants, unlocked as your company grows.
  
• Insurance you choose yourself: pick an insurer and its deductible, set your liability cover, and see who pays when something breaks.
  
• Rival operators. Other ACMI operators compete for the same clients and crews. Switch the map to Rivals to see their bases and aircraft, read the Market table to see who is winning which country, and open ACMI Monthly, the market magazine that arrives on the first of each month. Every January the best operator of the year gets a trophy.
  
• An office floor that fills with people. Take rooms on the floor and staff them: Operations Control, Maintenance Control, Crew Control, HR, Sales, Marketing and more. Your people have levels, pay and mood, and they leave if you treat them badly.
  
• Calm sound. Quiet lo-fi music and soft interface sounds, with their own volume sliders.

A company that grows

• Seven company ranks, from start-up to market leader. Each asks for a real operator's step - your first long contract, your own control room, an IOSA audit passed - and opens new aircraft, new clients and bigger contracts. Earn its quality stars for the gold.
  
• A research tree of 31 steps. At first you plan every flight and every crew yourself. Research a department, take its room, hire its people, and they take over the routine. You choose how much they decide; the key decisions stay yours.
  
• Career or free play, on Easy, Normal, Hard or your own custom settings.

Made to be fair