Just a few quick updates from us and sharing some of our next plans for Aeroconomy!
FsHub User Survey 2025
Firstly, we just wanted to thank those of you who completed and submitted the recent FsHub User Survey that we published in our last blog post update. Whilst we’ve not yet had the time to look at the responses, we will be doing this very soon.
Aeroconomy “Pilots For Hire” test phase updates (and a new client build)
We’ve been in the “early access” (BETA) phase for our first official Aeroconomy feature – the “Pilots For Hire” job board and aside from a few hiccups this past week (job processing and incompatible airports for specific aircraft) it would seem that it has been a huge success and everyone has been having immense fun flying these jobs and ofcouse, earning money!
…we’ve been listening to all the feedback from our pilots and yesterday, we were pelased to annouce, on our Discord server that we released a new verion of the Pilots for Hire desktop app (v1.1.0) and the feedback has been awesome thus far – We’re really pleased that you’re enjoying all of the improved features and the polished UI!
As you may have noticed too, I have been adding many new customers and themed jobs each night this past week and will continue to do so over the next three weeks. We’re slowly ramping up more customers, jobs and aircraft types!
I think the only feedback that I’ve not addressed as yet is “Can you just group aircraft together and allow them to fly X job (eg. a B738 job should allow a B737, B378, B739 and B38M) – No! It’s not something that I want to do as the “Pilots For Hire job board” is a super-easy (arcade-mode-like) way for pilots to “make easy money” – the only thing that I’m asking of them is to fly the specific type of aircraft that is listed… that’s all, really! The pilot is being hired by a customer to fly a specific aircraft. For what it’s worth, those customer jobs mostly DO have the ability to spawn all other similar variations of that aircraft, so it’s just a case of waiting for “the perfect job” to be advertised (much like in the real world, I guess).
I would also quickly mention that I am aware that some of the jobs that are spawning are incompatible with some of the required aircraft – I’m addressing this (just been busy with all of the other updates) and for now, I would suggest just double-checking the departure and arrival airports before departing!
What’s the next (Aeroconomy) feature that’s being released, huh?
On September the 1st, I plan to roll out the next feature within Aeroconomy and, as with the “Pilots for Hire” feature, this will be “early access” for “premium” users for 4 weeks and then, released to everyone else (the “free” tier) afterwards – there’s gotta be some other benefits to helping and supporting the platform, right!
If you would like to get early access to Aeroconomy and the roll-out as we go (maybe you just can’t wait), feel free to donate and become a “Premium” member today!
So tell me already, how can I soon start spending my money??
For those of you who have been saving up your hard-earned Aeroconomy dollars – either by having flown the daily flight challenges for the past year or, more recently, flying the Aeroconomy PFH jobs- you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll soon be able to start spending this “hard-earned” virtual currency.
Residential property (or more specifically the “Property Portfolio” feature) is the next thing that will be released and will go into “early access” on September 1st – Our “premium members”, again, will gain early access to this feature and have four weeks to test, take advantage of, and enjoy this feature ahead of the “general availability” release to our “free tier” members.
So you’re probably wondering… “Residential property”? What’s that all about? What’s that got to do with flight simulation and why would I want to spend my virtual cash on buying property instead of waiting to buy aircraft, small airfields or transfering it to my favourite virtual airline for them to use it for leasing gates or cargo pods? And ofcourse, the many other things that you mentioned before that is possible in Aeroconomy? Well, let me explain…
Firstly, it’s important to know that the rollout of these features (in the order that I’m releasing them) has been carefully planned and enables us to test key and important features of the platform “as we go” – The recent release of the “Pilots For Hire” system has given us the ability to test and monitor the processing of flights from Aeroconomy (transfering of data from FsHub in real-time) and that Aeroncomy is processing that data correctly. This release also helped test “paying” pilots and the banking system as a whole. The release of the “Property Portfolio” will enable us to test the economic effect that property ownership has on the generation of PAX, cargo, and tourist demand in geographical areas (another major and critical feature of the economic physics of the platform).
Whilst some of you might want to hold out and continue to save to buy your “dream” GA aircraft or maybe even your own personal BizJet – ya high-roller you 😉…
Aeroconomy is more than just about buying up private airfields, aircraft and the all important leasing of airport gates or cargo pads (to enable you to build passenger and cargo routes) for your VA to fly. Aeroconomy aims to be more of a “tycoon” simulation too with many alternative ways (side-gigs/side-hustles) to “play the game” and the ownership of residential properties within the game, this can be an extremely lucrative way to “invest” and drives all kinds of other parallel ventures (when, maybe you cannot be “in the simulator” but still want to contribute in some way – managing your personal estate, for example) and ability to increase your wealth without having to fly at all!
So let me give you a few examples here, maybe some things that might excite you:-
- Building a property on your favourite island or another favourite part of the world that you’re fond of? Or finding a tiny island and building on all available “lots” to make that island truly yours – literally king or queen of your own island! – Richard Branson 😉
- Buy and put your real house or your real-world “dream house” on the map (and visible to other pilots through your Aeroconomy property portfolio profile)!
- Build and own a property in beautiful areas of the world – Building on the available “slots” and then “sitting on your investment” will likely lead to players, in the future, wanting to buy the property from you for a very generous price – supply and demand, right? – “a lot/slot” is a game mechanic that I have devised to ensure that only so many properties can exist in an area, and helps provide supply and demand/personal goals to reach outside of just aviation-related stuff.
- Building a property within 20 kilometres of an airport means that your personal “landing” and “hangarage” fees are totally free (as a “local resident” of the area). – It’s just a game mechanic thing and an additional benefit to owning a residential property or others that possibly fly from your local neighbourhood wanting to “rent” it off you!
- Building residential property (and then upgrading all-three-levels [house, mansion, hotel] to a “hotel” – yeah, just like in the board game, Monopoly 👍) will generate the highest amount of PAX to the surrounding airports within 20 kilometers – so, you might want to consider “influnencing the market” for your main (virtual airline) business, ensuring that more passengers are generating at airports that you have managed to lease gates or cargo pads from. – Some might call this “mafia tactics”, but it’s fair game!
- Other than aircraft, stocks and shares, side businesses and other airport related stuff… owning property such as your own “personal holiday home” or your “week-day city condo” (is cool, right? and you can show it off too on your profile and on the property map!), running it as a hotel or being able to “rent it out” to other users (so they can benefit from free landing and hangar fees or be able to influence [more] PAX to a specific airport) is a pretty cool way to invest your money (no more having to fly jobs to pay the landing fees for your personal GA/leisure flights etc – the passive income from you renting out your property would probably cover all of that!).
Interesting to know: When the “Property Portfolio” feature goes live (on the 1st of September), there will be zero domestic property in “the world” so being able to “buy off other players” will be impossible initially and so, everyone that wants to secure their favourite vanity locations or strategic [economic] property locations will have to “build” – building a property is a multiple part process in Aeroconomy which consists of requesting planning permission (choosing and validating an available real-world location for the property), choosing the size (house, mansion or hotel), customising the address and uploading a photo (because, hey, it’s cool to show off your property right!?) and finally paying the “build cost” – the “build cost” fluctuates based on the current economy and you can expect to pay the highest prices for land and construction near the busiest airports.
Want to learn more about the “Property Portfolio” feature, the mechanics and other useful information? Check out the Property Portfolio wiki page here.
So yes, the Property Portfoilio feature will be the next major feature to be released and to reiterate, these “features” have been specifically choosen to be released in order but, for those wanting to know “when can I buy aircraft” and have them persist their location within the world… that’ll be the next release after the “Property Portfolio” feature!
**Everyone now goes and start grinding to be able to afford and buy their favourite islands before others snatch them up first hahahaha!! 😂**
Quick tip: You can expect the price of *building* a house (the lowest level, residential property) to be between $50,000 at the lowest end, scaling all the way up to $400,000. Two examples showing the absolute lowest and the highest land/construction values as follows:-
1) Lowest cost ($50,000 minimum) – Very remote locations/where the country has minimal flight movements and no airports within 200km of the property location.
2) Highest cost ($400,000 maximum) – Located within 20km of the busiest airports (think Heathrow, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, etc.) and rightly so, as these properties would benefit both the airport operations, too!
These prices scale according to the economy, the economy being ultimately driven by the daily flight movements within FsHub to specific aiports, the country and many other factors.
Banking interest payments are being enabled too…
As part of our September release, personal bank accounts will also start paying out interest on money in your personal banking account (and shortly after, on business accounts too [virtual airlines]).
Based on the bank account you choose when you initially enrol your account, the bank will pay out their interest rate on the balance of your bank account weekly, and so, yes, also worth “saving money” too!
Again, as an additional perk to Premium members, they will benefit from an additional 10% on the bank’s interest rate (as a thank you for supporting the platform and making this “free” to the other non-premium members.