• Update of all game worlds to the “Meigs-level” patch will take place on Wednesday, May 2nd.
• Changes in demand may lead to varying booking levels!

Now that the urgent performance problems with the game worlds Nicosia* and Croydon have been resolved, we are ready to introduce the changes made in the Meigs patch to the existing game worlds. The upgrade has been scheduled for May 2nd 2012 and will contain several technical changes and adjustments to the core data, as follows.

The successful adjustment of the traffic flow – ie through regions such as the Hawaiian islands, Alaska, etc., but also demand for the so far ignored Iraq -, as demonstrated on Meigs, will be applied to the existing game worlds. The patch will also introduce the AGEX business cycle index, which will introduce more dynamics into the game. Both features will have an influence on the booking behaviour! It is recommended to build up some cash reserves before the patch is applied, in order to handle any possible negative developments. In addition, the new credit guidelines will find their way to the existing game worlds. They are designed to eliminate the leverage effect for recently founded (new) companies.

The start of the Meigs game world saw the introduction of ArlineSim in Chinese and we are happy to announce that there will also be a completed French translation ready tol be rolled out to all existing game worlds with the upgrade. At this point, we would like to thank all those who volunteered for their hard work, making it possible to have AirlineSim in five languages now. Despite the continuous growth, German and English will remain the official languages used by AirlineSim as of now.

A few details regarding the data changes: Besides the introduction of new aircraft types, such as the Antonov 148, ATR 42/72-600, Boeing 747-8 and 787-8, RUAG DO228NG and the Sukhoi Superjet, an adjustment will also be made to some existing aircraft types in order to bring their fuel consumption more in line with competing aircraft types. Specifically, this concerns the Bombardier CRJ-1000 and the Embraer jets from the EMB170-195 series.

In addition, the purchase price for some of the Boeing 777 types as well as the Airbus A380 will be reduced, bringing them in line with comparable aircraft from the same manufacturer. Contrary to the fuel consumption changes, these changes will only take effect for new orders. Existing aircraft will retain their original value.

Last but not least, there have also been additional changes to the airport data. Besides the already announced changes, Oceania has now received its overhaul, in which the database has been updated and corrected with current data, such as runway lengths or the absolute demand. Some new airports have also been added. Further information is available in the Development Logbook, which can be found on the forums.

* Nicosia will probably see the recently announced move to new hardware some time this week.

* For more information concerning the crash, the data loss and the re-launch, please refer to the forums and the portal page.

We are incredibly sorry to let you know that our newest game world – Meigs – has experienced a full data loss in yesterday’s downtime. Please find more information and statements concerning the further proceedings below.

What has happened?

In the evening of April 17th, a hardware outage in one of our provider’s data centers had rendered one of our machines – the one which hosts the two game worlds Kaitak and Meigs – inaccessible. Following a standard procedure, the server was rebooted to see whether it would come back up again. For reasons which are unknown to us, this reboot must have caught the server in an unfortunate moment and thereby corrupted the database files of the game worlds.

Are there backups?

Apparently, the hardware failure also corrupted the back-up process which was in progress for Meigs while the outage occurred. We tried to rescue data from the server’s SSDs but so far have only been successful in recovering Kaitak’s data. Long story short: We have a complete data loss and are unable to restore the Meigs game world.

What will happen to Meigs?

Being just about 3 weeks old, Meigs will be restarted just like a regular new game world as soon as possible. The settings will be the same as for the original launch and we will take additional measures against the enormous IPO cheating that was plaguing the server in its third week.

What happens to the credits on the game world?

The credit purchases are collected in a central account management tool, so your credit balance remains unaffected.

Will there be any compensations?

Yes, there will be appropriate compensations. Most importantly, all credits that have been spent on the Meigs game world will be refunded. As such, playing on Meigs will have been essentially free of charge. On top of this we will add 30% additional free credits. This way players which were active for a longer period of time will receive a higher compensation than those who just snuck a peek.

What will be done to prevent this in the future?

Even though this was a classic sequence of unfortunate events we will definitely have to rethink and restructure our processes to keep something like this from happening. We will have to ensure that the failure of a single server cannot cause a complete data loss like it did in this case and we will take measures to spread our backups across more machines and different data centers.

Current Status

Kaitak is running but has a long backlog. It also runs on regular hard disks right now instead of the faster SSDs it had before, so it will be picking up slower than usual. This will probably be fixed tomorrow, inducing another short downtime. Meigs will be restarted as soon as we have sorted out a compensation plan and all technical issues have been resolved.

Final words

A combination of technical issues in the data center and human error on our side have caused this disaster and we are aware that the loss of the affected player’s airlines hurts a lot. We are extremely sorry about all of this, but unfortunately we will have to accept the situation as it is. As such we can only beg your pardon and hope that you will stick with us either way. Thank you very much for your understanding and loyalty. We promise to work hard on avoiding such a problem in the future.

Meigs is the first game world to offer a Chinese translation and as such finally makes the game more accessible to many players from Asia. Among the various smaller changes and bugfixes, a new economic index finds its way into the game, adding a new dynamic component to this key aviation business factor. Traffic flows have been reviewed and are now more realistic in many parts of the simulated world. Last but not least, a number of new aircraft types, including the bleeding-edge B787 and the refreshed B747-8 have been added.

For the project’s 10th anniversary, AirlineSim’s development team have made some bold plans and a lot of interesting new features can be expected to arrive this year. But first, the birthday has to be properly celebrated: This summer, the community will gather on the Balearic island of Mallorca from September 22nd to look back at 10 years of AirlineSim history – and to take a look at the project’s future.

• The AGEX economic index that will add a additional dynamic component to the game
• A traditional Chinese translation of the game
• A reworked traffic model featuring more up-to-date and realistic traffic flows
• Long-awaited new aircraft types including the B787 and B747-8 as well as several adjusted existing models
• New measures against the initial flood of used aircraft at server start (i.e. adjusted rules for loans, slower availability of used aircraft)
• Every account will be restricted to a single holding (for now, only in the new game world)
• Several other smaller changes and bugfixes

The game world will probably be operational sometime in the morning, Central European Time. The name of the game world will be announced tomorrow.

In three categories we will be handing out a total of nine prizes. Besides fame and glory for you airline and yourself, the prizes comprise piles of free credits!

Any player currently running at least one airline on any of our game worlds is eligible to participate in the contest. The logo or design needs to be your own work and may not infringe the rights of others. Any pornographic, insulting or otherwise illegal content is prohibited.

The precise rules of the competition as well as details about the deadlines and prizes can be found on the forums.

Have fun any may the best design succeed!

The AirlineSim Team

It’s been 10 years since that first milestone, and the small idea has grown into a large project, allowing thousands of players to run the airline of their dreams – and around which a lively and active community has formed.

To celebrate, this year we want to put on a really special event. On September 22nd, 2012, we will join former team members – and our fans – in one of the most beautiful regions of Mallorca for a look back at 10 years of AirlineSim!

Join us!

All the information you’ll need to take part in this unique event can be found on this special website:

en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012

We are looking forward to meet you on Mallorca!

Another year is coming to an end, and we’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us in 2011. Thanks to all our true fans who – both financially and with their valuable feedback – have enabled us to proceed in our endeavour to make AirlineSim the best airline simulation game on the internet, and who stuck with us even when things didn’t go perfectly. Thanks to all the supporters who helped keep the project operational by taking care of our servers, providing user support, doing data research or just being there to look after things when the situation required it – free of charge! Thanks to the translators, who just recently started to put a lot of voluntary effort into making the game available to more people around the globe, with translations to Dutch, Chinese, Spanish and French finished or in progress.

AirlineSim remains a semi-professional, community-supported project and all of the things we have achieved – and will achieve – in the future wouldn’t have been possible if not for all the people mentioned above – and many more too numerous to name individually!

We will be taking a few days off to spend some time with friends and family, and we hope you are able to do the same! In case you decide to spend a few cosy winter days playing AirlineSim, rest assured that we will be available for urgent support issues and that we will keep an eye on our servers even during the holidays.

Last but not least, our little Christmas present for you: On your next credit purchase, use voucher code CHRISTMAS11 to receive 30 free credits. The code is valid until December 26th.

Happy Holidays!

Development Status
As most active players have doubtlessly notices, we didn’t make as much development progress as we’d like to have made. The prime reason for this is that we need to finish another (non-game) project which is taking far more time than planned. Nonetheless, more of these side projects will be required in the future as we didn’t succeed in shaping AirlineSim into a viable business over the past two years since its internationalization.

Of course, development and operation of AS will continue, even though we will need to make some adjustments to our development process. That said we will move away from the classic patchday model towards a continuous update strategy. Small and medium-sized changes will be deployed as soon they are ready and tested. This allows for a far more flexibility during development and a better utilization of our limited time budget. Larger features – like the new aircraft configurator scheduled for 1.6 – will be broken down in as many sub-features as possible and integrated piece by piece. To some extend this should prevent endless waiting periods in which no new new features are released due to a lack of resources.

We’ve been living this new approach for a few weeks now and you can follow and comment on our progress on the development logbook board.

AirlinSim becoming even more international
For some time now, AirlineSim has been available in Dutch. Although the game has been built with localization in mind from day one, this is the first new translation to be introduced since we launched in English two years ago. But now we got three additional translations in the makings which should be ready for release in a few months time: Chinese, Spanish and French. A big thank goes out to the voluntary supporters who have chosen to tackle this immense amount of work free of charge!

Christmas meet-up in Salzburg
This is a final reminder that this years Christmas meet-up is coming up! The event will take place on December 17th in the beautiful Austrian city of Salzburg. All details can be found non the respective board. The Christmas meet-ups are traditionally geared towards being more family-friendly and less aviation-focused. The two main parts of the program are strolling the traditional Christmas market and enjoying local cuisine in cosy atmosphere. To make long things short: The ideal way of getting to know your fellow alliance member or your biggest opponents!

Events 2012
Important information for anybody who wants to book early or has to make arrangements with his employer: The dates for next year’s community event are out! Since 2012 marks the 10th anniversary of AirlineSim, special emphasis should be put on the special birthday event on Mallorca.

• International Meet-Up, Dublin: June 9th and 10th 2012
• 10th Anniversary Convention, Mallorca: September 22nd and 23rd 2012
• Christmas Meet-Up, Location will be determined in Salzburg, Dezember 15th 2012

Further information and details on the particular events follow. As always, feel free to discuss the new events on our forums!

UPDATE II: All game worlds have been patched. Please note that some have accumulated quite a bit of backlog due to the rather long downtimes.

UPDATE: For technical reasons we were only able to upgrade Idlewild and Croydon. The other game worlds will follow tomorrow. Thank you for your understanding!

Finally, after a regrettably long period of relative silence, we are able to announce a patchday: Today we will upgrade all game worlds to version 1.5.8. This is a maintenance release, primarily, largely consisting of small new features, bugfixes and various performance- and stability-optimizations. As usual, you can find a complete change-log at the end of this post.

A few words about the course of action: We will upgrade Kaitak and Idlewild first. If all goes to plan, the other machines will follow right afterwards. Please be aware that – due to changes to our statistics database – the upgrade process can take several hours during which the game worlds will be inaccesible. Thank you for your patience and your understanding!

And here goes the change-log:

• Defect #1213: Deletion of enterprises with long names may cause blocker
• Defect #1218: No partial leasing rate for cancelled leasing contracts on enterprise liquidation
• Defect #1219: Headline IGM – Lessee ‘{0}’ files for bankruptcy
• Defect #1221: Novation of leasing contract fails when provider is deleted
• Defect #1225: Fix and optimize relation statistics collection
• Defect #1230: Generation of weekly transport stats is skipped under high load
• Defect #1241: Aircraft naming with more than 40 characters
• Defect #1295: Interlining within holding structure
• Feature #1202: Add paging to flight numbers page
• Feature #1240: Delete Accounts on a gameworld on liquidation of last holding
• Feature #1262: Load Monitoring – Additional Filter “Load factor greater than or equal X”
• Feature #1282: Finder for free flight numbers
• Change #1088: Rework company reset/delete page
• Change #1179: English Translation – Signing IPO
• Change #1200: Replace remaining in-game links to 4players pages
• Change #1206: Truncate statistics after about 30 weeks
• Change #1239: New phrase for Office Transfer Statistics widget
• Change #1242: Multiple airline deletions by accident
• Change #1245: HTML-Code in Text
• Change #1321: Change in text small logo upload