Main Screen
After you create your company or log in, you will be taken to the screen in the above image. This is the main window for the game and contains a lot of very important features.
First of all, along the top of the screen, there are several informational items.
On the far left, we see two text fields. The left-most text field is labeled: "Funds" and contains the amount of money your company currently has to spend on things such as planes. This amount will increase with profits and with loans, but decrease if your company records a financial loss for the month. The text field to the right of the "Funds" is labeled: "Company Value". This field contains the total value of your company. The amount of money you are allowed to take out in loans is determined by your company value. You cannot leverage more than what you have. Taking out a loan does not increase your company's value. Purchasing planes and posting monthly profits will increase to the value of your company, while having monthly financial losses will decrease its value. Also, planes devalue over time, so your company value will be lower if your plane fleet is very old. Be warned: If your company value goes into the negative for six consecutive months, you will be forced to file for bankruptcy and your company will lose all of its assests (effectively meaning that you will have to restart).
In the middle of the top of the screen is a small text box which contains a date. This date represents the simulation's month and year.
To the right of the date text box is a progress bar. Whenever the game needs to do a long task (such as loading data or saving), this progress bar will activate and tell you what it is doing. When the progress bar finishes, the task it was performing is complete.
The last item, on the far right, is a small check box. When checked, brief information text is provided for each text box, button, ect. in the user interface when you hover your mouse over them. This text can be very helpful if you want to quickly know about a button or text field while using the user inteface, instead of revisiting the tutorial pages every time.
Along the left side of the screen is a list and a button. The list contains all of the different screens you can access to build and manage your airline. Sometimes when you visit a screen, you will receive a pop up message telling you to first visit a different screen. This happens because you are not able to properly use the screen until other aspects of your airline are sorted out. For example, you cannot create trips without first determining which airports you want to operate at. Below the list is a button named: "Save Changes". This button will save the changes you have made to your company. If you do not press this button, the only changes which will be saved are any updates you have done to your partnerships. When you first create your company, it is important to note that your company will not automatically be saved. You must press this button to finalize the initial creation of your company.
The last item on the screen is the middle area. When you select a screen on the list to the left, that screen will display in this section. When the game starts, the screen displayed is always the home screen.