A free multiplayer airline management game in your browser
Chief Airline Officer is a multiplayer airline management game. You found a carrier, open routes, and compete with human rivals for passengers who start in real cities and regions, then choose an airport by travel time.
What this kind of game asks you to decide
An airline management game is a strategy game about running a carrier: fleet, routes, fares, and cash. The interesting decision is not painting a line on a map that already has demand waiting at both ends. It is whether a traveler will use your flight at all. That depends on the fare, how long it takes to reach the airport, the service on board, and whether a connection is actually better than a nonstop someone else is flying.
Chief Airline Officer is free to play in a modern browser. There is nothing to install, on a desk or on a phone. Optional credits are $5 each, or four for $15. One credit unlocks one tool: route analysis, the livery studio, or founding an alliance. Joining an alliance that already exists stays free. Credits do not add cash or aircraft, and they do not change how passengers choose. Core competition does not require a purchase.
Stuart Fischer built the game. He runs Hampton Cove RV & Boat Storage in Alabama. The changelog is the public list of player-visible fixes, including the work that keeps each airline's cash, fleet, and routes on that airline.
How passenger demand is built
Demand is built from 21,000+ real cities and regions worldwide (all 3,222 US counties from Census data). Canada uses census divisions, Mexico uses municipios, and the rest of the world uses GeoNames cities plus leftover admin-1 regions. Travelers choose among nearby airports by travel time. The model uses real-world location and economic data. It does not copy real-world passenger counts onto the current airline network, so you can build a hub where today's real carriers do not have one.
Each origin can choose among up to 10 nearby airports. Travel time is a straight-line estimate, great-circle distance turned into minutes, and it is capped at about 165 minutes. Business, leisure, and visiting-friends-and-relatives travelers weigh that time differently. A leisure traveler will accept a longer trip to the airport when the fare justifies it. A business traveler is less willing to spend the extra time.
The itinerary they book is a whole offer: origin airport, airline, fare, schedule, and stops. A one-stop is published only when two real nonstop flights meet at a hub, on the same airline or between alliance partners. A fake connection is not offered. That is why frequency, a second bank of flights, and an alliance partner can change who wins a city pair even when you do not fly it nonstop yourself.
A shared world, and a clock you can leave
Players share a world. You are bidding for the same passengers, and airport capacity is shared too. Gates and slots are finite. A new airline starts with $25 million on the current game date. Joining later does not rewind the calendar and does not grant extra starter cash. You can order new aircraft, buy from the used market, lease, or finance. Used asking prices step down while a listing sits unsold. Older airframes cost more to operate and are less reliable, and they retire at 40 years.
One in-game day advances about every 45 real minutes. A game month is 30 game days, about 22.5 real hours. The clock keeps moving between sessions, so a schedule you filed in the morning is still selling seats that evening. Fuel prices and interest rates move. The economy can also deliver a fuel spike, a pandemic, or a war. If cash cannot cover lease or finance payments, payroll, and gate fees, a 90-game-day insolvency clock starts. A corporate loan desk is available when you still fit the terms.
Culture and on-time performance are scored per airline from that airline's own choices. The scoring rules are the same for everyone. Founding an alliance costs one credit. Membership after that is a normal part of the network, and a partner's flight can complete a connection a solo carrier cannot publish.
How to read the comparison
The table lines Chief Airline Officer up with Airline Club, MyFly Club, AirlineSim, AirwaySim, Airline Manager 4, Headwinds, and SkyMogul. Every cell that is not about Chief Airline Officer is something that game's own public page said on October 18, 2026. Where a page did not state a price or a clock, the cell says so. This is not a benchmark we ran, and it is not a ranking. A longer roundup gives each game its own section in the same spirit.
| Game | Where it runs | Price, as published | Who you play with | Demand, as published | Clock, as published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chief Airline Officer | Web browser. Nothing to install. | Free. Optional credits are $5 each, or four for $15. One credit unlocks route analysis, the livery studio, or founding an alliance. Joining an alliance is free. Credits do not add cash or aircraft. | Shared worlds with other human airlines. | Demand is built from 21,000+ real cities and regions worldwide (all 3,222 US counties from Census data). Travelers choose among nearby airports by travel time. | One game day advances about every 45 real minutes, including while you are away. A game month is 30 game days. |
| Airline Club | Played at airline-club.com. | The about page says the game is 100% free, with no ads, and that every feature is available without a donation. It also says the project is open source and that Patreon donations help keep the servers running. | The about page describes rivals, alliances, flight code sharing, in-game chat, and forums, and says there are hundreds of active players. | The about page says the world was created from real data such as income, country relationships, and population. A virtual passenger traveling from airport A to airport B is checked against possible routes, with preferences for price, flight quality, brand loyalty, and lounge. | The about page calls it a perpetual sandbox. It does not state how many real minutes make a game day. |
| MyFly Club | The homepage says the game runs in your browser. | The homepage title describes it as a free airline simulation. | The homepage describes a persistent world, hundreds of active players, and alliances. The public GitHub repository myflyclub/airline states that the project is forked from Airline Club. | The homepage says passenger demand is not static. It lists route alternatives, pricing, service quality, airport congestion, oil prices, and events such as the Olympics, and says the world is inspired by income, population, and political relationships. | The homepage describes a persistent world. It does not state how many real minutes make a game day. |
| AirlineSim | Online, at airlinesim.aero. | The homepage says AirlineSim is pay to play, using prepaid credits and no ongoing subscription, and that you can try it for free. It also says the game rejects pay-to-win and that everyone plays for the same price. | The homepage describes virtual passengers booking your flights and your competitors' flights, plus alliances, interline agreements, aircraft leasing between players, and terminal capacity. | The homepage says the reservation system generates billions of connections and that the game has over 300 aircraft types and about 4,000 destinations. | The homepage says 7 hours in reality are 7 hours in the game. |
| AirwaySim | The homepage says no software installation is required and that the game works in a web browser. | The public homepage does not state a price. | The homepage calls it a massively multiplayer game in which you compete with other airline managers and can form alliances. | The homepage describes fleet, routes, staff, fuel prices, recessions, and an aircraft database covering commercial types since the 1940s, including historical scenarios. It does not describe where a passenger's trip starts. | The homepage lists game worlds with their own year ranges. It does not state how many real minutes make a game day. |
| Airline Manager 4 | The Apple App Store listing (title: Airline Manager - 2026) calls it a mobile game for iPhone and iPad. Google Play lists it for Android. | The App Store listing says Free, with in-app purchases. Trophy Games' own page calls it a free airline management game. Google Play lists in-game purchases. | The App Store listing says you compete with friends and other managers on leaderboards, and that you can build or join alliances. | The App Store listing describes more than 360 real plane types and connections between 4,000 real airports. Google Play's listing says 400+ real airplane models and an airport collection of 4,000+. | airlinemanager.com says you can profit from idle progress while offline. The listings above do not state a real-minutes-per-game-day ratio. |
| Headwinds | The play page says the game runs entirely in the browser and that there is nothing to download. | The play page says it is free to play and that there is nothing to pay. | The play page says a world holds up to 50 airlines, every one of them a person, and that there are no AI carriers. On a shared city pair, passengers split by fare, frequency, and quality. | The play page says you found an airline at any airport and lists 1,500+ real airports and 100+ real aircraft. It describes passengers on a city pair, not a separate city-of-residence model. | The play page says one game week passes every hour or few, around the clock, whether or not you are logged in. A world runs about 50 game years. |
| SkyMogul | The homepage says the game runs entirely in the browser, with no download and no installation. | The homepage says there is no cost and calls it a free browser game. | The homepage says every airline shares one world and that you compete with other players for demand and slots. | The homepage says flights use real airports with their codes, coordinates, and runways, and that there are more than 60 aircraft types. It also describes buying or leasing, cabins, staff, cargo, alliances, loans, and a stock market. It does not describe city-of-residence demand. | The homepage says the world keeps running in real time while you are logged out, and that flights settle in real time. It does not state a faster-than-real-time day length. |
Checked October 18, 2026against each game's own pages. A cell that says a page does not state something is an absence, not a guess. Sources: Airline Club about page, MyFly Club, MyFly Club source repository, AirlineSim, AirwaySim, Airline Manager on the App Store, Airline Manager on Google Play, Airline Manager site, Trophy Games — Airline Manager, Headwinds play page, SkyMogul.
What is actually different, on our side
Airline Club's about page describes a virtual passenger going from airport A to airport B, checked against possible routes, in a world built from income, country relationships, and population. MyFly Club's homepage, which the project's public repository describes as a fork of Airline Club, says demand is not static and lists pricing, quality, congestion, oil, and events. Chief Airline Officer starts the passenger in a city or region and lets travel time to nearby airports enter the choice before a flight is even on the table.
AirlineSim publishes a 1:1 clock, seven real hours to seven game hours, and describes itself as pay to play with prepaid credits, a free try, and no pay-to-win. AirwaySim says it is a browser multiplayer game with alliances, staff, fuel, recessions, and aircraft going back to the 1940s, and its homepage does not state a price. Chief Airline Officer is also a management sim — fleet, leases, loans, cabins, alliances — with a day that moves in about 45 real minutes so a session can be a check-in rather than a sitting.
Airline Manager 4 is the mobile title whose store listing is Airline Manager - 2026. That listing calls it free with in-app purchases, and airlinemanager.com talks about idle progress while you are offline. Headwinds' play page says the browser game is free, with up to 50 human airlines per world, no AI carriers, and about one game week per real hour. SkyMogul's homepage says the browser game is free, uses real airports, and keeps running in real time while you are logged out. Chief Airline Officer sits in that browser-multiplayer group. The demand fact on our side is the city and region layer: travelers start there and choose an airport by travel time.
Start an airline, or keep reading
Register, join a world, and found a carrier with the same $25 million as everyone else. The feature list, how the clock and the first routes work, and the FAQ are the longer versions of the rules on this page. If you are still choosing which airline game to learn, the roundup keeps the other titles in view.