Management sims borrow vocabulary from real transport and from each other. Here are the terms you will meet most often on this site and in the games, in plain language.
Editorial team ·
Network terms
Hub
An airport or station where you concentrate routes, so passengers and goods can connect. Airline Club's about page describes turning a quiet real-world airport into a major hub.
Route
A regular service from one place to another. In most of these games you create it, assign vehicles and set a schedule or frequency.
Frequency
How often a route runs in a given period. Airline Club plans routes by flights per week.
Chain schedule
A Rail Nation term for linked deliveries — raw material to factory, product to town — so trains carry something on more legs of the journey.
Empty run
A trip with no paying load. Every tycoon game punishes too many of them.
Traffic rights
Permission to fly to and from certain countries or airports. AirlineSim models them on the real world, which limits where you can expand.
Money terms
Load factor
The share of seats or capacity actually filled. A route can be busy and still lose money if the load factor is low and the vehicle is large.
Margin
What is left after costs. REALISM modes in the Trophy Games titles exist mainly to make margins matter.
Depreciation
The value a vehicle loses as it ages. Some games list it as a cost on each route.
IPO
Initial public offering: listing your company on an in-game stock market. AirlineSim covers it in its handbook; the Trophy Games titles let you put your company on the stock market.
Holding and subsidiary
In AirlineSim, the parent company and the airlines it owns. Credits are charged per holding in each game world.
Playing with others
Alliance
A group of player companies that cooperate. All the airline games here have them; in Rail Nation the equivalent is an association.
Association
Rail Nation's player group. Associations work together to grow a city and compete in the endgame.
Codeshare
Selling seats on a partner's flight under your own flight code, so two airlines' networks act as one. Airline Club supports it inside alliances.
Interlining
An agreement that lets passengers connect from one airline's flight to another's on one journey. A feature of AirlineSim.
Leasing
Renting aircraft to or from another company instead of buying them. AirlineSim players can lease aircraft to each other.
Time and structure
Game world
A separate copy of the game with its own players and its own clock. You may play several at once. Also called a server.
Round
A game world with a beginning and an end. Rail Nation rounds pass through six eras and finish with an endgame.
Era
A stage in Rail Nation's timeline with its own locomotives and research.
Season
A fixed stretch of play after which the game starts over. Airlines Manager's Quick mode runs in seasons.
Real time
The game clock matches the real clock. In AirlineSim, seven real hours are seven game hours.
Idle progress
Earnings that continue while you are offline. Airline Manager offers it.
EASY and REALISM
The two difficulty modes in the Trophy Games titles. REALISM adds small real-world costs such as fuel prices, taxes, runway lengths or canal fees.
Paying terms
Free to start
You can sign up and play without paying. Most games on this site use this model with optional in-game purchases.
Premium currency
A currency bought with real money, separate from the in-game cash your company earns. Rail Nation's is called Gold.
Credits
AirlineSim's unit of play time, charged per day for each active game world.
Donation
A voluntary payment that buys nothing in the game. Airline Club is funded this way.