Flying with different companies all over the world, inevitably makes you wonder: how intriguing or difficult could be to lead an airline? Until you’ll find that out you could try one of Facebook’s applications, that offers you the chance to create and manage your own company: Airline Manager.

You start off with a couple of million dollars and a Boieng (B737-800, to be more precise). It’s up to you to create your first route, there are plenty of airports all over the world. But first, make sure you select a couple of cities that have a demand of more than 90%. You can check the demand of the cities in the Flight section, at Find Routes. Re-order them decreasingly by demand each time you get here, in order to make your flights more profitable.

Keep in mind that each aircraft type has a different range and your destination should be within its range, or else you cannot create the route. Also, do not forget that the demand of the cities vary, they increase and decrease in time, so check your flights constantly – you should close the route when you have too much empty seats.

When buying new planes, order them by price. Don’t spend all of your money on purchasing a new aircraft, there is a fee for creating a new route and you also have to spend some money on fuel and advertising. Also, always choose the plane with the lowest fuel consumption, the biggest range and the largest passenger capacity.

Once you have set up your first routes, you have to manually start the flights, in order to make money. You’ll see that even if the demand on one of your routes is very high (97-99%), you’ll still have empty seats on your planes. That is because you have to advertise your routes in order to have your planes full. There are five types of advertising, the cross-country newspaper advertising and the billboards being the most efficient ones.

You’ll notice that the prices of advertising and fuel vary, as well. The lowest price for fuel I’ve seen is $400 per 1,000 lbs and the cheapest advertising I’ve purchased was $5,000 for billboards/day. In times like these, when you have the finances, buy as much fuel and advertising as you can!

If you buy a new plane, you’re automatically hiring new staff. They have wages, so make sure that at the end of the day, you have in you account balance their daily salary. Once your company grows, so will the financial expectations of your employees. If they will call on a strike, that will not affect your flights, only your balance. Make sure you give them a raise as soon as possible, since it is much more expensive to go on with a strike than paying the regular salary.

Depending on your performances, your stock rate will rise or drop. Make sure your balance is positive, you have profitable flights and that you don’t have any work protests to keep your rate growing. Also, if you have the money, invest in profitable companies and sell stock after a while, if you’re in need of money. It’s a great way to make money, playing as a broker. Check how you’re doing on the stock market in the overview section and from time to time promote your airline, to get more investors.

Obtaining achievments gets you money awards. In your first day of activity, when every dollar counts, you can easily obtain an achievement by choosing a hub and uploading a logo. Another way to get benefits for your company is by gathering pax points (calculated on the basis of the satisfaction of your passengers, the flights/incidents taken and a random factor).

Maybe the greatest tool you can use when playing AM is the one you can find it here. Using it is a real time saver, since you don’t have to search the most profitable destinations, you have them all there and you can easily sort them by demand.

If you’re already an user of the application and you have some other tips and tricks for all the newbies out there, share them here with us! Also, if you have any doubts or questions about the game, comment here and I will give you my advice. Good luck, managers!