If you can ship a plane, why not airline a ship? Yeah, that's the way, I need to start myself a flying firm for financial fortune. And because my mom is badgering me to finally get off my ass and invest that million I got from dear old grandpa 'insurance fraud'. Hey, if you can fake a disability and fill out a form, you can run an airline! The game is a simplified view on an airline industry, but it has all the essential cogs and gears: Personnel management, plane buying and maintenance, fuel management (you can buy it on the cheap if you don't ask what war-torn country it came from), route or individual fare management, last minute torus and freight transport, terrorist financing (no, really), bank and stock market browsing, airport boss badgering, duty free shops (yes!), early going home from work (YES!!), bathroom management simulator (don't ask), media advertising and soda machine abusing (a very electrifying experience). The tone of the game is very charming and humorous, and the visuals try to match that. Everything is laid back and fits neatly into a caricature of itself. The meat of the game, the actual airline management, is straightforward, organized and easily understood. Well, there are some minor issues where you might scratch your head and get little feedback as to how to proceed, but overall the experience is very newbie friendly. Your top priority is to transport passengers and cargo and thus acquire money for more and better planes, routes, and to enhance your company's reputation. You can also get shafted in all sorts of ways by your friendly neighborhood saboteur (behind a fake wall, no less), but you can also use him to annoy the competition, so it's all good in the end! I regard the game as being one of my all time favorites, with just a slight tarnish to the shine. While you can have loads of fun in the early stages, moving into the mid or even late game gets very repetitive very fast. But I always come back for more!
