Every aircraft in the game is a real, individual airframe. The market page lists exact tail numbers, not catalogue entries: the plane you lease today has a history, and the plane you return will fly again for someone else.
Where aircraft come from#
| Channel | What you get | Cash up front |
|---|---|---|
| Lease from a lessor or airline | A specific listed tail, handed over where it stands | Deposit (12 weeks' rent by default) |
| Lease new from the factory | A factory-fresh tail on a long fixed term | Deposit (12 weeks' rent by default) |
| Buy used | A specific listed tail, full history and hours included | The ask price |
| Estate auction | Sealed-bid lot from a bankrupt airline (worlds with auctions) | Your winning bid |
| Order new | Factory-fresh aircraft on a delivery schedule | Deposit (40% of list by default) |
Most worlds spawn a handful of leasing companies at creation, each holding a finite fleet of real airframes of varying age and condition. Lessors are infrastructure: they never go bankrupt, they refurbish returned tails before re-listing them, and they slowly add young airframes and sell off old ones, so the used market breathes but never vanishes.
Reading a listing#
Every listing shows you the whole airframe: registration, type, age, total hours and cycles, cabin layout, location and owner, and alongside them the aircraft's condition, its time since heavy check, and an appraisal. Nothing about a listed tail is hidden and none of it costs anything to see: every buyer reads the same records the seller does, on sale listings, lease listings and estate lots alike.
That makes reading them the skill rather than buying them. Condition and the heavy-check clock tell you what the tail will cost you after you sign; the appraisal tells you whether the ask is fair. A cheap airframe with a heavy check falling due next month is not a bargain.
Demand is still fogged (see Market analysis under fog), but aircraft records are not part of that fog.
Leasing#
A lease charges rent weekly, plus a non-refundable maintenance reserve billed per flight hour to the lessor. Two contract shapes exist, and they are not interchangeable.
Used-market leases, from a leasing company or another airline, derive rent from the airframe's appraised value, so age and condition drive it, and the percentage climbs for older metal. Terms default to 52 weeks with auto-renew. Either side can end the lease: the tail goes home, your deposit comes back in full, and there is no condition penalty.
Factory leases, taken direct from the manufacturer, are enabled by default and priced differently: a fixed percentage of the list price, 0.32% per week by default, locked at signing rather than tracking condition. In exchange for that stability they run a 416-week minimum term, and breaking one early costs the remaining rent capped at 52 weeks (your world may differ). Treat a factory lease as an eight-year commitment, not a flexible one.
Whichever you sign, a leased tail is handed over where it currently parks, not at your base: budget a ferry flight to bring it home. And every hour you fly stays on the airframe forever. Full cost details in Lease obligations.
Buying and selling used#
You buy the exact listed tail at its asking price; unsold asks drift down over time, and the card flags a deal priced below appraisal. Bankruptcies feed the market too: fire-sale bargains with a warning badge, or sealed-bid estate auctions in worlds that enable them; see Bankruptcy & estates. Selling works in reverse: offload a tail to a lessor at appraisal minus a dealer margin, or list it yourself for other airlines. Your beaten-up ex-fleet can come back as a rival's bargain.
Ordering new#
The Manufacturers page both sells and leases anything currently in production. Buying means deposit now, balance due as each unit delivers. Lead times are deliberately short: by default 2 days for props and regional jets and 3 days for narrowbodies and widebodies, with multi-unit orders arriving one further unit per day (your world may differ). Factory-fresh aircraft arrive in a dense all-economy layout, so plan a refit; see Cabins.