Is air cargo worth it?

[Capitán Alatriste]

Haven't seen much need for it unless a city/factory is extremely isolated. The volume transported is quite low for the running costs of an airline, and the price of airports.

[Huperspace]

profit wise is air cargo OP. but because of the low throughput only for under 400 rate chains recommended.

[Capitán Alatriste]

Originally posted by Huperspace:

profit wise is air cargo OP. but because of the low throughput only for under 400 rate chains recommended.

huh interesting, for what start date would this work best?

[Metssr]

I found air-cargo quit profitable but only on very large maps. Just try to get the plains loaded full and your line will pay off.
I once had a line with those planes the can carry goods as passengers as well.
I placed two air-stations nex to each other on the same air-field. The field where the cargo was to be loaded, cam the cargo stop first, then the passenger station. All plaines were moestly full loaded, with goods and passengers. At the air-field in the other town was also the goods-stop the first in the line to unload the goods en then at the pessenger=stop always got the plain full with passengers on the way back.

[larry_roberts]

https://youtu.be/6jPkAtlduaA

[Tsubame ⭐]

Air can be quite profitable, both for cargo and passengers, as long as the line is long enough so that planes spend a significant amount of time at cruising speed.

They shine on experimental maps.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Metssr:

I found air-cargo quit profitable but only on very large maps. Just try to get the plains loaded full and your line will pay off.

You really don't need to be playing on a big map to get air lines to pay out well. For example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2869279326
That's the third-most-profitable air line (the two more profitable air lines are longer but have roughly half the capacity due to a lack of demand for anything more and so only outperform this line by ~1-2 million; it's also the fourth-most-profitable line overall) on a Small Tropical Medium-difficulty map that I wrapped up a while ago.

Longer lines are better, obviously, and difficulty settings will also have an impact, but to say that air only works over long distances isn't entirely true.

Originally posted by Capitán Alatriste:

huh interesting, for what start date would this work best?

1950 or later (preferably later). You really need to have large aircraft to hit moderate to high line rates (well, "high" as airlines go, which as Huperspace suggests probably shouldn't go above a line rate of 400, at least with vanilla or vanilla-balanced aircraft), which means you need the larger of the two vanilla airports; a second runway (available from 1980 at the larger of the vanilla airports) helps a lot, as well.

To hit a line rate of 200, you need:
- A Vickers Victoria (available from 1922) arriving every ~29 seconds
- A Junkers Ju-52 (available from 1933) or Douglas C-49 Skytrain (available from 1942) arriving every ~36 seconds
- A Short 330 (available from 1976) arriving every ~44 seconds
- A Bristol Freighter (available from 1946) arriving every ~50 seconds
- A Lockheed Super Constellation (available from 1952) arriving every ~65 seconds
- A Boeing 737-200C (available from 1962), British Aerospace 146 (available from 1978), or Boeing 737-700C (available from 1998) arriving every ~73 seconds
- A Bombardier DHC-8-402PF (available from 2000) arriving every ~80 seconds
- A Lockheed L-100 Hercules (available from 1962) arriving every ~87 seconds
- A Canadair CL-44 (available from 1959) arriving every ~99 seconds
- A Boeing 757 (available from 1984) arriving every ~186 seconds
- A Tupolev Tu-200C (available from 1995) arriving every ~197 seconds

The Canadair CL-44 and the Lockheed L-100 are probably the first two aircraft that can practically hit a line rate of 200 on a single runway, and even that's likely pushing it pretty hard because at one plane arriving every 90 seconds each plane can only reserve the runway for about 45 seconds as there's a departure for every arrival; line rates above 200 aren't very practical in the unmodded game until the large airport's second runway becomes available in 1980.

[Capitán Alatriste]

Thanks guys very helpful! Thanks for tips and recommendations. Didn't realise the potential for air cargo. For my next game with more isolated settlements to play with it, any good seeds for say mountainous maps?