I was wondering what everyone’s favourite in-game airport is and why. What is your style of gameplay and what makes the different airports suitable for your way to play and how so? Which airport do you not like to play as much?
I try to quickly handle my own fleet. At every airport I have just enough planes of every size to serve my connecting partners. For me, the most fun of the game is to watch the airport bustling with a realistic and colourful selection of various airlines. I like to dedicate terminals and apron sections to the main airline of the hub, to alliances or to low cost carriers.
I think I have to say that overall SAN is the airport I like to play most. Mainly due to its short taxiways it’s easy to get a nicely looking and diverse number of aircraft at the gates simultaneously. The taxiways do not cause that much blockage and it’s easy to keep the starting/landing queues managed.
I admit, a downside is the limited number of L stands. That makes it slower to earn money and build a fleet.
Place two and three in my ranking go to IAD and BRI (too close a call to say which is #2). In BRI it’s similarly easy to handle smoothly running operations (despite the annoying fact that planes wait until the previous plane has left the apron before entering it - which can take a while). It’s nice to be able to see all the action in one view, large enough to see all the details.
The two runways in IAD create a nice and steady flow of aircraft, a large number of stands offer a wide and colourful selection of XL and L planes (and even M and S). The design of the airport terminals is a bit boring, though.
I was really looking forward to playing MCT but the large taxi durations leave almost the entire airport empty (similar to PRG). As I love the Oman Air livery I’d like to see that huge terminal lined with planes in green and gold simultaneously. That would be a nice sight!
INN is fun to play for a few minutes, but the short taxiway between the apron and runway cause a quick jam with planes queuing to take-off. That leads me to leaving and re-entering the game frequently to clear the queue. NGO is probably the airport I play the least. The selection of destinations is a bit too limited for my liking. The taxiing algorithm leads to lots of long waiting times at taxiway intersections.
I’d really like to hear your opinions and your ways to play. Maybe I will try out some of your suggestions.
I’m trying to increase my fleet, but it’s to difficult achieve golden planes to unlock a L airplane (I want to have an A332 in my fleet, but i only have 15 golden planes), my fleet is made up of 6CRJ-700 (3 at IAD, 1 at PRG, 1 at BRI, 1 at INN), 1 B757 (At IAD), 2 Embraer E-190 (1 at INN, 1 at BRI) and 3 Airbus A320 (1 at BRI, 1 at PRG, 1 at NGO)
At every airport i have an “Organization” of which airline is ubbicated in which gate and terminal. Sometimes is difficult to handle this “Organization” because when i’m going to speed up the arrivals don’t appear the “Airline or Airplane” that i expected.
I consider that BRI is in the ranking of my favorite airports because it have short taxiways and it’s easy to handle the operations. Also it have a lot of options of M destinations, the airplanes don’t spend a lot of time in the airport. In this airport i have a little organization that i use to try see it more realistic, Ryanair, Alitalia, Air Dolomiti, Oman Air, TUI Airways, Czech Airlines and Jet2 handle the stands 101-108 and the rest of stands are handle by other airlines as Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, SAS, Easy Jet, S7, Aeroflot, Wizz Air, Air Baltic, Iberia, Austrian, KLM, LOT, Finnair, Iceland AIr, Aer Lingus, Transavia, Brussels AIrlines, TAP, El AL, MEA, Tunisair and Smartwings.
I grew my golden planes numbers by investing in as many small and medium planes as possible, running them into the ground whilst also completing as many connections as that allowed.
Once the golden planes start coming in it kind of snowballs, and they come quicker and quicker.
Stick with it and you will soon have enough to get the larger aircraft!
There are plenty of factors. Inn to Prague for example, yep, you’re not grinding the GPS in this instance, but if you have a good partner you can do two or three rotations per day and quickly get the two.
It’s definitely a quicker way to achieve initial gold planes.
Running the longer routes soon builds up tho and the golden planes start rolling in.
It’s all about finding what works for you I guess.
I’ve got a system that works, I’ve got dozens of planes on maintenance D which I’m holding on to and earning cash with. Once a new airport is released, I can then cash this golden planes in to get a head start.
Hi, I know I am late to the party but this topic doest seem to be “version” dependent.
So I really appreciate when its possible to see all the stands from one camera or at least most of it.
Second thing I value a lot is the “flow” of the traffic which is the best on IAD due to having two runways, however the camera positions are weird and overall the airport is boring.
Currently my most fav airport is Prague, well I am czech so patriotic aspect kinda playing a role. But it has some very nice camera angles for pictures (the sunset and pics with “Prague” sign are +++) and its rather easy to orientate myself here. The airport itself is pretty with nice distribution of terminal stands and “parking lot” style stands. As a big plus it can handle quite a huge number of M planes. The downside is very common traffic jam on the take off taxi. I found out that if I set the ratio to 3:1, camera on the apron with zoom in on the runway entry (follow/focus camera turned off) and after ever 1-2 landings I immediatelly manually press “line up” the traffic jam is manageable without any significant taxi jams. Its a bit hectic this method and requires constant attention but it made my experience on PRG much smoother.