Flights and Passengers

On the Schedule tab, click the small window icon on a flight under the pointer, double-click the flight, or right-click it and choose Flight Details…, to open it in a panel under the schedule. Or type FLIGHT UE101 in the console, adding the day for another day’s: FLIGHT UE101 09JAN. The panel stays open as the clock runs; close it with Esc. On a screen at least 1920 wide, two flights open side by side, and Tab moves between them; a third replaces the one opened first. The panel your keys go to has FLIGHT in a solid block at the top and a double-line frame; the others have a single line.

What it shows

Status and aircraft: Whether it’s scheduled, boarding, closed up ready to go, in the air, landed or cancelled; the aircraft flying it, and whether you’ve pinned it there; and the service it’s flown from.
At stand: When boarding started and the doors closed, as the station has said. On the Schedule, a flight boarding has a yellow band of diagonal stripes across its top, cross-hatched once its doors are closed.
Times: Off-blocks and on-blocks, scheduled against actual, with how late or early. While it’s in the air, the arrival shown with ≈ is expected. Point at a time to see it in local time.
Passengers: Each cabin class’s seats, the passengers booked, those moved onto it from a cancelled flight, and the seats still free.
Costs: Once it has landed, its fuel and landing fees, as counted in the operating report.

Bookings

Passengers book each flight as it goes on sale, about a week ahead. Economy fills fuller than the premium cabins. A new service takes a week to sell up, so its first flights carry fewer passengers; cancelling one of those costs less.

Delaying a flight

Press D in the flight’s panel, right-click it and choose Delay…, or type DELAY UE101. Type the new off-blocks time, in UTC, or press ↑ and ↓ to change it five minutes at a time; the dialog shows when it will be on blocks and how late that is. ← and → choose the aircraft: whichever is free, or one you pick, which moves the flight there and pins it. Enter delays it.

On the Schedule tab, drag a flight along the timeline to delay it, and onto another aircraft’s row as well to tail swap it too. Or type it in the console:

DELAY UE101 1030
DELAY UE101 +45
DELAY UE101 09JAN 1030 G-ABCD

The timetable time stays as passengers booked it, and the flight counts as late from it. It can be delayed by up to 12 hours, and put back to its timetable time with Back to on its menu. Its passengers keep their seats. A flight that isn’t pinned goes back to the planner at its new time, which may give it another aircraft.

Delay codes

When a flight leaves late, the Alerts, its panel and the schedule say what held it up, with the minutes each cause added and its standard airline delay code. A flight can also leave a few minutes before its time, most often at smaller airports, unless it has been retimed.

How long a problem on the ground holds a flight depends on the problem: cabin cleaning runs over by less than fuelling can. Any of them holds a flight by at most 30% of its scheduled block time.

15 (PH): Boarding.
18 (PB): Baggage.
35 (GC): Cabin cleaning.
36 (GF): Fuelling.
37 (GB): Catering.
42 (TM): Aircraft late from maintenance.
89 (AM) Z: Runway queue at the airport of departure: ATC capacity.
93 (RA): Aircraft late in from its previous flight. With a sub-code when it came in behind schedule, by what cost that flight the most time: Z a departure delay at the previous station, Y an en-route delay, W high demand at the destination station, U technical reasons. Without one, it came in on time and the time on the ground was too short.
96 (RO): Retimed by dispatch.
99 (MX): Aircraft not yet in service.

The full list is in the Glossary.

Cancelling a flight

Press C in the flight’s panel, right-click it and choose Cancel Flight…, or type CANCEL UE101, then press Enter to confirm, or Esc to keep it.

Its passengers are told, and over the next three hours each chooses for themselves:

A later flight of yours on the same route, leaving at least 45 minutes after they choose and no more than a day after the cancelled one: the soonest with a seat free in their class. Most passengers would rather have this. It costs nothing, but fills seats, and those who choose first get the sooner flights.
Another airline: a seat bought for them on the day, at one and a half times the fare. Most of those who find your later flights full go this way.
A refund of their fare.

A cancelled flight stays on its aircraft’s row in red for a day. Its panel shows how many have chosen each way, how many are still deciding, and what it has cost so far. When everyone has chosen, the Alerts say where they went. Refunds and other airlines’ seats count in the operating report’s costs, under passengers, when each passenger chooses.

A flight still without an aircraft when it’s due is cancelled for you, as are the flights of a service taken off the timetable; their passengers choose in the same way.

Fares go by distance and class. Compensation, meals and hotels for stranded passengers, and passengers lost to the airline, are on the way.