A reserve is an aircraft you deliberately hold out of the schedule as insurance. It sits parked, earning nothing, until a rotation breaks and it saves your week.

Holding a reserve#

On an aircraft's page you can place it in reserve. A reserve is unscheduled by definition: the game won't let you flag a tail that still has flights assigned, and a reserve stays put until it's needed or you release it. The Fleet page counts your reserves, and the Operations board tags them so you always know where your spares sit.

What triggers a rescue#

A reserve steps in when a flight is about to be lost:

  • Technical failure: a poorly maintained aircraft fails its departure; see Maintenance & heavy checks.
  • Aircraft out of position: the assigned tail isn't where the flight departs.
  • Excessive delay: a delay long enough that the flight would be scrapped.
  • Heavy check: a hangar visit is about to ground a tail with flights still on its schedule.

In every case the reserve must be parked at the right airport, healthy, and free of its own schedule. If no reserve qualifies, the normal bad outcome happens: cancellation, passenger compensation, and an image hit.

Some worlds relax the parked-at-the-right-airport rule for planned heavy checks: because the hangar date is known in advance, a spare parked at another airport can position in on a non-revenue ferry, as long as it can land and complete its turnaround before the first affected departure. The ferry burns real fuel, and each tail gets at most one positioning move per day. Sudden failures still need a spare on site: there's no lead time when the flight is leaving now.

How the substitute is chosen#

Worlds that enable full substitution (it's off by default; your world may differ) run a capacity-fit match. By default only the same aircraft type qualifies, with a total seat count between 80% and 130% of the broken tail's cabin; worlds and policies can widen the net to the same family, the same size category, or any type at all. Every candidate must actually be able to fly all the affected legs, range and runway length included. Among qualifiers, the game picks the one that bumps the fewest passengers, then the closest cabin size, then the closest relative, then the best condition.

The swap is a genuine role swap, not a loan: the reserve takes over the entire rotation and becomes the line aircraft, while the broken tail becomes your new reserve, emerging from its heavy check healthy, or waiting where it stands. A heavy check covered this way cancels nothing and pays no compensation.

In worlds without full substitution, a same-type reserve parked at the departure airport can still rescue an individual flight that would otherwise cancel; heavy checks, however, simply cancel the flights they overlap.

Denied boarding#

If the substitute is smaller, it flies anyway, and the overflow is bumped, class by class, with no reshuffling between cabins. Bumped passengers get their money back plus a compensation premium on top (20% by default), and only they hold it against your image; everyone who does fly rates the trip normally. Overflow cargo is refunded at face value. A rescued flight departs on time, so it won't appear in your disruptions list. The bill surfaces as passenger compensation on your ledger instead; see Ledger & income statement.

Worlds with cabin reaccommodation enabled soften this: before anyone is denied boarding, overflow passengers re-seat across the substitute's cabins. Economy overflow rides up front for free: a happy op-up that costs you nothing. Premium passengers squeezed out of their cabin move down instead: they still fly, you keep their fare, but you reimburse part of it (half by default) and they remember the downgrade, a milder image hit than a bump. Only passengers who fit nowhere at all are bumped.

Is a spare worth it?#

A reserve is idle capital: lease payments and upkeep with zero revenue. Weigh that against what one grounded rotation costs in refunds, compensation, and reputation. Fleets built around one type get far more from their spares: a single reserve can cover every tail of that type at its airport; see Cabins for why matching cabin sizes matters.