Joining alliances actually is not worth it FINANCIALLY beyond the achievement...

[👻 HauntingTheNet 👻]

So... this might be a bug with the current version of the game, or maybe just everyone in the community have been tilting at windmills for years. I don't know which is the answer and I am too new to know whether things used to be different when guides were made before today.

There are dozens of guides and yt vids out there on the net claiming about how useful joining an alliance is due to codeshare. As of today, and for who knows how long before this, every one of them is completely wrong.

It turns out the "from codeshare" stat we see when sending out flights is not what people think it is. It is the donations you are making to your alliance, meaning less money coming in not extra money into your pockets.

Bold statement, right, especially from someone only just playing the game for a month. It completely slaps everyone in the face who has ever made a guide. But here is why I say it and how easy it is to test for yourself.

Create a very short route with a relatively low passenger demand count then stick a big plane on it so you can burn through that demand super fast. Send out a full flight on that route using as close to 100% rep as you can. You should have more or less a full plane with maybe something like a 1/1/1 code share at most, with the exact "from code share" number being the number of missing seats to have a full plane. Keep sending that plane out over and over until it burns out all of the demand. Every single time you will see those same small code share numbers... until you have burnt through the demand and send out a partial flight. Suddenly that code share will say something like 5/6/4 or whatever. But you're not done yet, keep sending the plane out with 0 demand. You will see that for flights of 0 demand you make $0 money but magically (tada!) your from codeshare value will raise significantly. (Funny enough, the fuel costs decrease because of empty planes which makes sense, but the co2 costs are almost completely gone - that has to be a bug!)

By itself that only means that the stat we see is not a sign of extra income but rather a sign of donations. But... the same person running at the same rep level but no alliance is going to get the exact same demand and (as far as I can tell through testing) the exact same passengers on each flight. Which means you don't earn any extra income from passengers due to your alliance membership. Since there is no members weekly / monthly etc. payout from the alliance for gifting it those passengers think of it like a passenger black hole. You see it going in but never have anything come back out.

You benefit your alliance, but it does not benefit you back. (At least in the current build of Airline Manager 4 in June/July of 2023.)

Edit: Changed the title to say "FINANCIALLY" because I am not saying that you get no social benefits.