Airline Executive is an airline management simulation without ads and without premium currency. Build an aviation empire across decades of history.
Start your airline in any era from 1950 to 2020. Begin with propeller-driven aircraft in the golden age of aviation, enter the jet age with the first commercial jets, or jump into the modern era of widebody aircraft and low-cost carriers. Every era plays differently.
Choose your headquarters from over 2,000 real-world airports and plan your network. Analyze route demand, set frequencies, configure seating layouts, and monitor load factors as markets evolve. Your hub is the heart of your operation, and every route decision shapes your airline's future.
Build your fleet from over 100 historically accurate aircraft types. Order new from the manufacturer and wait for delivery, lease to grow fast without the upfront cost, or find deals on the second-hand market. Each aircraft has specific engines, range, capacity, and operating costs that change how your airline performs.
Time advances week by week. Set ticket prices, maintain your fleet through MRO providers, design cabin layouts with premium seating and amenities, manage cargo operations, and watch your airline grow from a small regional carrier into a global network.
FEATURES
No ads, no premium currency. The game is entirely free for the first 5 in-game years or 25 aircraft. One-time purchase to unlock unlimited play. No timers, no energy systems, no pay-to-win.
Historical depth. Start in the 1950s with DC-3s and Constellations, or in 2020 with A350s and 787s. Aircraft, engines, airports, and market conditions are all era-appropriate.
Deep route planning. Connect airports across the globe. Analyze demand, set frequencies, choose aircraft, and configure seating. Build a hub-and-spoke network where connecting passengers multiply your revenue.
Fleet management. Over 100 aircraft types with real specifications. Buy, lease, or find second-hand deals. Customize cabin layouts with economy, business, and first class seating, IFE systems, and premium amenities.
Financial simulation. Manage cash flow, take loans, set ticket prices, and track revenue and expenses down to individual routes. Grow sustainably or gamble on rapid expansion.
Cargo operations. Earn additional revenue from belly cargo on passenger flights, or operate dedicated freighters on high-demand freight routes.
Competition. Compete against AI airlines modeled after real-world carriers, or turn competitors off entirely and build at your own pace.
This game/sim is really in depth and complicated and I love that. While there are a few bugs, over all it’s really fun. Also it’s nice that you don’t have to pay a subscription for extra stuff and just a one time fee of $5. Again, overall, would recommend if you like figuring stuff out.
Waste of $5
darain123
Huge waste of $5. You can’t even schedule individual aircraft, you have to schedule from your bulk aircraft groups. And half the time it glitches anyways. For example, it wouldn’t even let me schedule Chicago-LAX round trip twice in one day because it said the aircraft wasn’t available. I even tried to just order 1 aircraft to see if it was trying to use the second aircraft for it, and it wouldn’t work, even when I made the second round trip fit with several hours of a turnaround.
decent
Izarblx1
it's good and fun and very in depth into the experience but there's a loophole where you can raise cargo price and it'll give u lots of money also my saves got deleted so I lost my 5 hour game
Developer Response
Hi! Thank you for playing the game and leaving a detailed review. I apologize for the lost save files. I will work on making save games more resilient to app updates. I will also look into the cargo prices loophole. You can expect both of these fixes in v1.23 later this week, with some exciting route-management improvements!
MRO’s
I5h331
Love the new update…..Would love if we could have subsidiaries use the parent airline’s MRO facilities that way they can have it at a cheaper price compared to AI…..ps,why do I have a lot of AI airlines with planes but no routes???
Developer Response
Thank you for the kind words and feedback. I really like the idea and will add it to the roadmap!
A big update focused on running a group of airlines.
- Group Codeshare: every airline in your group now codeshares with every other automatically. Bulk apply routes between parent and subsidiaries, or between subsidiaries, filtered by hub or domestic/international.
- Reduce departures on a route without rebuilding it. Swipe a route, tap Reduce, pick the flights to drop. The route keeps its maturity.
- Remove a hub or dissolve a subsidiary from the Management screen. Aircraft and remaining cash transfer back to the parent.
- Subsidiary bailouts: when a subsidiary runs out of cash the parent now covers the shortfall each month with a clear running tally.
- Globe view draws flights as real great-circle arcs, so New York to Tokyo now bows over the pole the way a real flight plan does.
- Aircraft delivery follows historical production rates per type, so an A320 in 1995 delivers slowly and an A320neo in 2024 delivers fast.
- Plus a fix for a year-end crash that could hit long-running games where too many AI competitors had quietly gone bankrupt, and a long list of smaller polish.
Coming next: 1.27 is a major design refresh. Cleaner, more consistent screens across the whole app, with proper light and dark mode support. No new mechanics, just a much better-looking game.
Thanks for playing, and keep emailing me when something's broken.
Version 1.26
The developer, Kjell Verschuren, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
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Information
Seller
Kjell Verschuren
Size
106.2 MB
Category
Simulation
Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.