Steam Community :: Airline Founder

Store Page

Airline Founder

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Airline Founder

Store Page

1 in Group Chat

View Stats:

Global Achievements

1 in Group Chat |

View Stats

Global Achievements

Starting from a single base airport, build your own airline. Establish routes, and fine-tune your pricing and service strategies; manage flight schedules, your staff, your fleet, public reputation, and more. Ultimately, grow from a regional carrier into a global aviation network.

$9.99

Visit the Store Page

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops. Learn more.

Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

Airline Founder Is Now in Early Access!

8:04am

Thank you for your patience! Airline Founder is now available in Early Access on Steam. Continue building your airline with sandbox mode, Steam multiplayer, Workshop support, and more ways to grow your business over the long term.

Thank you to everyone who played the Demo, shared their experiences, and offered suggestions.

The Early Access version removes the Demo’s limits on operating time, fleet size, routes, and departure airports. Keep adding aircraft, expanding your hubs, and connecting regional routes into a global network.

As your company grows, explore stock investments, IPO financing, subsidiaries, and corporate groups to shape your airline’s future.

Play your way in Early Access:

Sandbox & Custom Scenarios: Set your own rules.
Steam Multiplayer: Create or join a room and invite friends to play.
Workshop & Mods: Subscribe to or create aircraft liveries, aircraft models, staff portraits, rival airlines, and more.

You can continue playing your existing Demo saves in Early Access.

To switch between the real and fictional aircraft catalogs, select your preferred catalog when starting a new game.

About Early Access

Throughout Early Access, we’ll use player feedback to refine gameplay balance, usability, and performance. We’ll share news about future updates through Steam announcements.

Let us know in the community what you’d most like to see improved.

Thank you for your support.

Nerowan

Airline Founder

Saving Games

I cant seem to make a save game when i want. Autosave doesn't seem to be working either

Rayalto

34 minutes ago

General Discussions

Airline Founder Demo v0.5 Update Coming Soon

Sep 5

Hello everyone,

A new update for the Airline Founder Demo will be released within the next few hours.

Demo v0.5 will include a number of improvements, fixes, and optimizations based on player feedback.

The Early Access build is ready for release and is currently awaiting an additional final review by Steam. I’ll release it as soon as the review is approved.

In the meantime, I’ll continue working on performance optimization, bug fixes, balancing, and other improvements.

Sorry about the wait, and thank you for your patience and support. I’ll continue to keep you updated on the latest developments in the Steam discussion hub. Once the game goes live, Steam will automatically notify players who have wishlisted it.

Update notes

Optimized new aircraft purchases, used aircraft pricing, aircraft age, and availability rules for different aircraft types.
Updated specifications, names, illustrations, and preview assets for selected real-world aircraft models.
Improved the game’s starting scenario system.
Improved the display of fleet statistics and aircraft information.
Improved differences between business and leisure markets, and adjusted demand in key cities and seasonal tourism patterns.
Optimized the calculation and display of ticket prices, load factors, operating costs, and route profitability.
Updated the route management interface with a more intuitive operations table, along with improved search, sorting, filtering, and access to route details.
Updated the Board Objectives interface.
Improved event-related decisions and interactions.
Added more operational risk warnings and improved financing, restructuring, lease reminders, and contract selection.
Corrected airport names, coordinates, operational status, and runway information for selected airports.
Added Turkish localization and improved translations for several existing languages.
Improved layouts and text display across different resolutions, window sizes, and UI scaling settings.
Reduced stuttering and improved overall game performance.
Improved page refreshing, list display, and other interface behavior, while also fixing a large number of issues reported by players.

Airline Founder

Demo v0.4.1 Update

Aug 30

Update Notes:

Added a mission system.
Added Brazilian Portuguese.
Optimized the economy system for small aircraft.
Improved and fixed music volume and sound effects.
Fixed incorrect information for some airports.
Added support for importing external background music.
Fixed several bugs.

Airline Founder

Positioning Flights

How come routes from my hub at LAX have passengers-but the returns are empty 'positioning' flights with 0 revenue?? :) Thanks!

Jay Michael

1 hour ago

General Discussions

20 people found this review helpful

Not Recommended

1.5 hrs on record

Posted: September 6

Product refunded

Early Access Review

In its' current state- there are too many things wrong with a realism airline sim- even for Early access.

Return revenue flights from the initial route require you to invest millions (even at regional airports) to return a profit on the return leg- not simply buying a gate slot- this makes regional operations (let alone mainline) impossible barring you starting yourself out with copious amounts of cash- but at that point why not just give yourself several billion to just paint lines on the map and win the game in an hour?

Point to point does not exist in this game as of now, only hub/spoke- which doesn't work when you can't bring PAX back to your hub.
No gate bidding (important later)
No opportunity for fuel hedging- any that I could find.

Bottom line- the regional concept to create your hub and spoke- the small flights make no profit margin- in fact its -30% or worse. This is of course the concept of a start up airline in airline founder.
I attempted to make an airline out of KMCI funnel PAX from various surrounding cities and create a hub that would develop my system.

The mechanics of the game do not allow for this- not just profit margin, but the inability to bid for gates at small airports so I can have return flights. Another interesting point the minimum distance for a route is 250nm......
What in the world kind of limitation is that on any aircraft- Let alone a regional aircraft. The game physically wouldn't allow me to do MCI-OMA due to this limitation.

For anyone with a real sense of the airline industry. You will be not just disappointed but borderline disgusted by the lack of polish- even in the early access state. If the game is corrected I will subsequently rebuy the game and play it if it fixes the glaring, and significant issues for an airline management game- and I hope it gets corrected.

Edit: If the above issues are resolved and Ner makes the game feel like a start up airline economically to the large mainline- I would have no choice but to recommend the game. As a current 121 US pilot- I simply cannot recommend the game in its' state- regardless of my hopes for this game. I would love nothing more than to change my review and repurchase this game.

A developer has responded to this review

Lionhardt

134 products in account

1 person found this review helpful

Not Recommended

0.4 hrs on record

Posted: September 6

Early Access Review

I’m struggling to write anything positive about this "game." To me, it feels like something generated almost entirely with ChatGPT. The overall quality comes across like a beginner project rather than a serious early‑access release, and it’s missing even the most basic polish.

When I raised concerns on the forums, the developer responded defensively and the thread was locked, which didn’t inspire confidence. I had hoped things would improve before release, but they haven’t.

The UI is clunky, unpolished, and visually uncomfortable. Dropdowns don’t highlight, colours clash, scaling feels off, and the whole interface looks like something thrown together without much care. It genuinely gave me a headache.

The game itself is full of bugs. Clicking random places on the map opens cities on the other side of the world, which seems related to the scaling issues. After 20 minutes of frustration, I requested a refund.

I cannot recommend this game. It feels like an AI‑generated project with no character, no polish, and no meaningful gameplay. I wish Steam had higher standards for what gets released.

Meh

1 person found this review helpful

Recommended

2.9 hrs on record

Posted: September 6

Early Access Review

There are a lot of nice features in this sophisticated airline game, too many to get into here or even fully understand yet.
And I'm not sure I have this game's mechanics figured out.
There appears to be no correlation between passenger loading on a route ........ and adjustments you make or profit on that route. Without that how do you know what changes are making a route more profitable ?
Routes can show a profit but this appears to be a random thing.
So far it's also been impossible for my airline to make a profit.
I'll give this game a thumbs up for now based on it's potential and see what happens.

gevans

how do start the game?

cant find where start the game when clicking start new game

SimulatorNerdGamer

1 hour ago

General Discussions

launch probliems

I have already login in steam, but the launch window shows that I have to login my steam account. Whats this problem, how to solve it?

Hudson

11 hours ago

General Discussions

Not enough information

Alot of the information that is highly valuable seems to be hidden away under what exactly? If it is even showed. I want to know how much my plane is being used, does it have more hour available per month. Where do I find this information? Also when I do cargo missions, what does 100t mean? Is it daily, weekly, monthly?...

Muno25

1 hour ago

General Discussions

See More Content

No more content. So sad.

You can help: share a screenshot, make a video, or start a new discussion!

Returning to where you were last on this page...

Cancel