Help centre · For airline staff

Market prices

Watch the video: Charters, curfews and market prices

With Market prices on, your airline's fuel costs and passengers follow the real world, the way they do for a real airline. The data is free and public, fetched once a day. It's all virtual money: nothing is paid.

Turn it on under Staff → Airline settings → Optional features → Market prices. It needs the finances on (Settings). It's off for every airline until staff turn it on.

What moves with the market

Fuel: each flight's fuel costs your own fuel price × the market's fuel factor. The factor is the real jet fuel price (the average of the last 5 market days before the flight was filed) divided by $2.30 a gallon, between ×0.50 and ×2.00. At $2.30 your own fuel costs count as they are; at $2.76 fuel costs 20% more. With Airline economy on, the factor applies to the fuel price of each region.
Ticket prices around you: with Seasonal fares on, the market fare your fare is compared with carries part of a fuel move (30% of it), as real airlines pass fuel costs on. With fuel 20% dearer, every airline's tickets are 6% dearer, so your demand holds if you raise your fares too.
Public holidays: a nationwide public holiday in the country of the departure or the arrival brings 12% more passengers, from two days before it to the day after.
Other airlines: each other Vaeroly airline with an active route between the same two airports (either way) takes 5% of the passengers, at most 25% in all.

What stays as you set it

Your fares, seasons, price changes and cabin classes, crew pay, landing and handling fees, leases, and aircraft wear and checks. Flights already booked keep their fuel cost and passengers, so an old flight never changes.

When the pilot's flight plan has passengers, those are the passengers paid for, as before.

Where the data comes from

Jet fuel: U.S. Gulf Coast kerosene-type jet fuel, the daily spot market figure published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, read from FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
Public holidays: Nager.Date, a free list of public holidays by country.

If a source can't be reached, the last copy is kept. Until the first fuel price arrives, fuel costs what you set (or the seasonal fares' fuel index, when you use it). Airline → Finances shows today's market fuel price and factor, and each flight's fuel line shows the factor it was booked with ("fuel index").