Nothing in this game stops you spending into the red: not the bank, not the lessor, not the payroll. What stops you is the insolvency clock.
The insolvency clock#
The moment your cash goes negative, the clock starts: a warning fires on day one, and every further day of continuous negative cash counts up. Climb back above zero and the clock fully resets. Stay under for the world's grace period, by default 14 days (your world may differ), and liquidation runs automatically. Your early-warning instruments: the cash-runway ratio in your financial rating, and the Upcoming Events calendar's coverage marker showing how far today's cash reaches through the bills.
What liquidation does#
- Every flight number is deactivated and every future flight cancelled, with no passenger compensation; the estate has no money.
- Leases are terminated and deposits refunded to the estate; leased tails go back to their owners.
- Outstanding loans are marked defaulted.
- In slot-ledger worlds, all slot holdings return to the airport pools.
- Owned airframes are sold off; how depends on the world (next section).
- The airline remains in the world as a bankrupt tombstone, and you are returned to the world page: a dead cockpit cannot be flown.
There is no restructuring, and on most worlds no rescue either: prevention is the whole game. Worlds that enable absorption are the exception: there, a solvent carrier may buy a rival as a going concern, or rescue an insolvent one before liquidation runs. Check World → Configuration to see whether yours does.
Where the metal goes#
In worlds with estate auctions enabled, each owned airframe becomes a sealed-bid lot, open for a bidding window (by default 3 days; your world may differ) with a distressed reserve price well below appraisal. Any active airline can bid: one live bid per lot (rebidding replaces it), at or above the reserve, and bids stay sealed until the hammer; then results go public. Cash is re-checked at the close, and a bidder winning several lots must be able to pay for all of them. Unsold lots fall back to a leasing company at the reserve.
In other worlds the estate's tails go straight to a fire sale: a leasing company buys each at a seeded distress discount, by default 15–35% below appraisal (your world may differ), and immediately relists it cheap. Either way the aircraft survive and re-enter the market; bankruptcies are where the sharpest deals in the used market come from.
Bidding on an estate#
Distressed metal is cheap for a reason, and the reason is readable before you bid: every lot shows its condition, its hours since the last heavy check and an appraisal, open to all bidders at no cost. Nothing about the airframe is hidden, so a lot going cheap is a judgement about what it will cost you after the hammer, not a gamble on what it is. Read the heavy-check clock first (an airframe due one shortly is not the bargain the reserve price suggests), then budget for crew and cabin work, which are yours now too.
Keeping yourself off the auction block is mostly discipline about fixed weekly outflows; see Loans & leverage and Lease obligations.