EVERYTHING ABOUT AM4.

Hi everyone,
I decided to make a guide and include every feature in this game, hence the length;
this is everything you need to know.

-Planes
-Routes
-Maintenance
-Staff
-Marketing
-Fuel and CO2
-The Stock Market
-Training
-Bonus Points
-Hubs
-More Features

Doc for easier reading:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rOzmo1jc6xYN79fDC495yrl_Jod5i1f0KCkswyAEsDU

1. PLANES
This is the most important thing in the game. No planes = no profit. For the
profit-oriented players, it can be quite confusing to pick the correct planes as
there are more than 400 planes in AM4. Here are some factors you should consider
when buying planes:

Basics (PAX)
-1 Business Class seat (J-Class) takes the space of 2 Economy Class seats (Y-Class)
-1 First Class seat (F-Class) takes the space of 3 Economy Class seats (Y-Class)

Basics (Cargo)
-A plane with 100% large load configuration will have 70% of the original capacity
(If the original capacity is 100,000lbs, 100% Large Load will have 70,000lbs
capacity)
-Large Load is more profitable than Heavy Load
-Cargo demand is based on PAX demand: Large Load demand = Y-Class demand x 500;
Heavy Load demand = J-Class demand x 1000.

a) Price
This one is quite obvious, as new players can’t afford the most expensive planes,
however, there are few things to consider here: Multiple cheaper planes will be
more profitable than one expensive one. The DC-10-10 with 250 seats – more than the
90 seats of the DC-9-10 – will be more profitable than 1 DC-9-10, but since you can
buy 10 DC-9s for the price of 1 DC-10-10 (which will carry 900 pax!!), you will
make more money using the DC-9.

b) Capacity
Easy: More passengers/more cargo = more profit. Not much to say here.

c) Speed
Yes. This is more important than fuel and co2 efficiency. Higher speed = more
profit: You can cover more distance in the same time.
But higher speed can also cause problems, if the range is low so you can only
operate short flights while you can’t be online all the time, so you can’t depart
them all the time.

d) Efficiency
If you have default tanks, this is actually quite important as you can’t get your
fuel at $300 all the time.
Fuel consumption is measured in lbs/km; if the consumption is 20lbs/km that means
for every km flown the plane needs 20lbs of fuel. If you operate a 5,000km route,
your plane would consume 20x10,000=200,000lbs of fuel, at a fuel price of $600 it
will cost you $120,000.
CO² emission is measured in kg/pax/km for pax and kg/1k/km for cargo(1k refers to
1000lbs cargo), that means every passenger pollutes x kg per km, so the formula is
Consumption x (Y class pax + J class pax x 2 + F class pax x 3) x route distance
for pax Consumption x Cargo Onboard / 1000 x route distance for cargo. However as
there’s a random factor, this is not the exact formula. If the consumption is
0.2/pax/km with 300 pax onboard, the plane will roughly need 0.2x300x5000=300,000
quotas, at a price of $130 it will cost you $39,000

e) Good Planes (PAX)

It’s commonly known that these planes are the best at every stage:
Starter:
-DC-9-10
-BAe 146-300
2nd Stage:
-MC-21-400
-DC-10-10
Mid game:
-IL-96-400
-B747SP
End game:
-B747-8
-A380-800

f) Good Planes (Cargo)

Start with cargo:
-A400M
-B757-200F
2nd stage:
-IL-96T
-A330-200F
3rd stage:
-B747-400F
-B747-8F
End game:
-A380-800F
-An225
The An-124 is not more profitable than the 747-8F because it’s so slow.

2. ROUTES
This part is player and plane specific, as the flight duration should match your
sleep pattern. If you can depart your planes frequently, go for short haul routes
as they earn more than long haul routes due to the Ax + B ticket formula. If you
can’t depart your planes every 2 hours to keep flying, go for long haul routes, as
planes that don’t fly won’t earn anything.

Demand
Every route has a maximum amount of pax per day. If you have a plane with 250 Y-
Class capacity and fly on a route with 1000Y/300J/150F demand, you will deplete the
demand after 5 flights; but you can configure your plane with J and F-class seats
so you don’t drain the Y-demand that much. Look for routes with enough demand so
you won’t have to ground your plane due to low demand.

Stopovers
You can create a stopover to increase the range of your aircraft. But be aware,
that:
1. You will lose money with longer routes, due to the Ax + B ticket price formula
that makes short routes more profitable.
2. Stopovers are only refueling stops, they don’t affect the demand or pax onboard.
3. Unlike the previous versions of AM, the direct distance between departure and
destination airport matters – not the flight distance. So you should keep your
flight path as straight as possible to avoid unnecessary detour.

Ticket prices
PAX: Multiply the auto-price by 1.1 for Y-Class, 1.08 for J-Class and 1.06 for F-
Class. Round down to 1.
Cargo: Multiply the auto-price by 1.1 for Large Load and 1.08 for Heavy Load. Round
down to 0.01

3. MAINTENANCE
There are two kinds of maintenance: A-Checks and wear.
A-Check
Every plane needs an A-Check after a certain amount of flight hours, mostly 350-500
hours. It’s very important to do A-Checks as you might audited if you don’t do A-
Checks. Keep in mind that your plane has to be at a hub or at your base in order to
do A-Checks.

Wear
As A-Checks include wear, you will probably never have to do any wear repairs. If
you reach 50% wear, the plane won’t contribute to your alliance anymore. If you
reach 90% wear, the game forces you to do a repair as you can’t depart your plane
then.

4. MARKETING
You will probably notice that your planes are only half full. This is because your
standard reputation is 49%. Without marketing, it’s not possible to increase your
reputation above 49%; Yes, you have to buy it again and again.
As you are probably starting with small regional aircrafts like the DC-9 or Bae
146-300, it’s recommended to buy the eco campaign, but not the airline reputation
campaign (the more expensive one). When you start to buy better planes, such as the
MC-21 or the DC-10, you should start buying the reputation campaign as well; the
best option is the 4th one, however as this can be quite risky (you can end up with
18% reputation!!) you can also buy the 3rd campaign.

5. FUEL AND CO2

Fuel is very important for your airline – your planes can’t fly without fuel. Try
to buy fuel as cheap as possible, buying cheap fuel is very important, especially
if you have inefficient planes such like the IL-96. Fuel prices will fluctuate
between $300/1000lbs and $3000/1000lbs and will change every 30 minutes. If your
tank is small, buying it below $1000 is already quite good. But if you have a big
tank with enough storage for days, you can also try to buy it below $500 or even
below $400. Occasionally there are events called ‘fuel bonanzas’ which will let the
price drop below $300.

CO2 is not as important as fuel, but don’t let it go into the negatives! Otherwise
your reputation will drop by 10% and you won’t be able to use the eco friendly
campaign to increase your reputation by another 10%. Quotas seem to be cheap – but
actually, they aren’t. 1 quota is way cheaper than 1lbs of fuel, but as you need
way more quotas than fuel, you will have to pay a fortune for that. CO2 quota
prices will fluctuate between $100/1000 quotas and $200/1000 quotas; it’s
considered as cheap if it’s below $120. CO2 bonanzas can occur as well.

6. STAFF
Like in the real world, your airline has employees – pilots, flight attendants,
engineers and technicians. You should keep their moral high to avoid losing
passengers, as low morale will result in less passengers onboard. But before you
say that increasing the salary all the time will let you go bankrupt somewhen,
lemme tell you a way to decrease your salary: “The Million Dollar Tip”.
1. Complete management training
2. Issue paycuts until it says “Salary cannot be lowered if morale is below 50%”.
3. Increase their salary until you reach 100% morale.
4. Repeat 2. and 3. until you reached the minimum salary.
5. Voila! You successfully decreased your salary!

7. THE STOCK MARKET

You can access to the stock market once you performed IPO (Initial Public
Offering). You will be able to buy shares of other companies and other companies
will be able to buy your shares.
-The value of shares is determined by the share value (what a coincidence!). If the
share value (‘SV’) of a company is $200, one share is worth $200. If the share
value is $550, one share will cost you $550.
-And this is how you make money: Buy low, sell high. If you buy 10000 shares of a
company when their share value was $1 and sell those shares when their share value
is $1000, you paid $10000 and got $10,000,000 – that means you made $9,990,000
profit.
-You don’t earn anything if someone else buys your shares.
-You can buy 20k shares in a single company and 100k shares in total.
-You can increase your own shares in the bonus section, it’ll cost you 300 points.
However it’s not recommended to do that as there’s no benefit of having many shares
to sell.

It’s quite hard and time consuming to earn a lot in the stock market and you will
probably earn more if you buy planes with your money.

8. TRAINING
You can train your staff to unlock special abilities which will save you money. The
training options are:
Management Training
-Completing this is necessary to decrease your staff salary with the method
explained earlier.

Operation Training
-Reduce A/C wear
-Reduce repair costs
-Reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emission

Event Training
-Unlocks events

Service Training
-Increase Fleet Limit
-Unlock Catering

Cargo Training
Will be unlocked once you unlock cargo in the bonus section
-Increase Cargo Fleet Limit
-Increases Load Capacity by 6%

-You need one training point every time. You will get them through leveling up; you
will level up through departing your planes.
-If you completed all training options and have training points over, you can do
nothing with them. Perhaps the developer will add more training options in the
future.
It’s recommended to finish fleet manager training first, as you can buy 28
additional planes then.

9. BONUS POINTS
Bonus points (or ‘BP’) are a special currency of AM4 which are used to buy ‘power-
ups’ and things like that. The most important functions are:
-Buying hubs; each hub will cost you 20 points.
-Increasing your fuel and CO2 tank; it will cost you 400 points to increase your
fuel tank by 2,500,000lbs and 300 points to increase your CO2 tank by 2,500,000
quotas.
-Unlocking Cargo operations; this will cost you 450 points.

How to get points:

-Completing achievements; each achievement will give you some points. Some will
give you 5 points, while others can give you 50 points.
-You can randomly receive 1-4 points while departing your planes.
-Am3 bonus code; if you played AM3 prior to the release of AM4, you will have a
bonus code in your profile there.
-And of course you can support the developer and buy the points in the bonus shop.

10. HUBS
As you progress in the game, you will buy more and more planes… and planes need
routes. Somewhen you will probably run out of good routes, so you think about
buying a new hub. Here are some good hubs:
Asia
-Seoul Incheon, South Korea, ICN/RKSI
-Singapore, Singapore, SIN/WSSS
-Hong Kong, Hong Kong/China, HKG/VHHH
-New Delhi, India, DEL/VIDP
-Dubai, UAE, DXB/OMDB
-Manama, Bahrain, BAH/OBBI

Australia
-Sydney intl, Australia, SYD/YSSY
-Canberra, Australia, CBR/YSCB
-Nadi, Fiji, NAN/NFFN (only good for long haul)

Europe
-London Heathrow, UK, LHR/EGLL
-Amsterdam Shiphol, Netherlands, AMS/EHAM
-Frankfurt intl, Germany, FRA/EDDF
-Paris Charles de Gaulle, France, CDG/LFPG

North America
-New York John F. Kennedy, USA, JFK/KJFK
-Dallas Fort-Worth, USA, DFW/KDFW
-Chicago O’Hare, USA, ORD/KORD
-Los Angeles, USA, LAX/KLAX

South America
-Sao Paolo Guarulhos, Brazil, GRU/SBGR
-Santiago de Chile, Chile, SCL/SCEL
-Caracas, Venezuela, CCS/SVMI
-Buenos Aires int, Argentina, EZE/SAEZ

Africa
-Tunis, Tunisia, TUN/DTTA
-Luanda, Angola, LAD/FNLU
-Dakar L.S. Senghor, Senegal, DKR/DOOY

11. OTHER FEATURES

Banking
Once you reach level 10, you will unlock banking. You will be able to create
different bank accounts and deposit money there. Sounds good, right? But it is not
good: The bank will charge a 2% deposit fee and won’t give you interest. So it
makes no sense to deposit your money.

Catering
You can unlock Catering in the training section. After unlocking it, you can go to
“hubs” -> select a hub -> Click “Add Catering” -> Select meal type and duration ->
Click “Purchase”. The meals will be sold on outbound flights of this hub.
-If you sold all meals, you have to wait until the contract ends to buy more meals.
-You will not sell meals on inbound flights.
-Catering is not very profitable, so it’s recommended to train the other features
first.
-Catering might increase the chance of randomly receiving BP.

Loyalty Points
You will earn Loyalty Points (or LP) if you upvote a post (+1) or if someone else
upvotes your post (+2). You will lose Loyalty Points if someone downvotes your post
(-4). According to the FAQ you can receive bonus points if you gather enough
Loyalty Points, but this feature isn’t available yet.

You made it! This is basically everything that is useful to know, I hope this will
help you to grow your airline. If you have more questions and you can’t find the
answer in the FAQ or with the board search feature, feel free to ask on the boards!

:)