Every airline in the game — yours, other players', and the computer-run ones — has one million shares. The share price is simply the company value divided by those shares, and the company value is cash, plus the fleet at its written-down value, plus what the route network is worth. Fly well and the price rises on its own. There is no separate market sentiment to game.
You decide what share of your own company is available to buy, from 0% up to a maximum of 75%. This is your float, and it is the central decision on this screen.
Floating high brings in money. When someone buys your shares, the cash goes into your treasury — it is a new issue, not a trade between strangers. That is real capital you can spend on aircraft today.
Floating high also gives away votes, which is where it gets dangerous.
This is why you can float a meaningful part of the company and still control it. It is also why the danger is gradual rather than sudden: every share you sell moves votes from your side of the ledger to everyone else's.
You may hold up to 75% of any other airline, and you can only buy what its owner has floated. Buying is a new issue at the current price. Selling is a buyback: the airline buys its own shares back from you at 2% below the price, and only if it actually has the cash. If it does not, there is no buyer today — you hold.
Because your money goes into the target's treasury, buying shares raises that airline's value slightly, and selling lowers it. The market moves against your own trades, in the same direction real markets do.
Once you hold 30% of an airline, you may bid for all of it.
Count the votes: the owner's remaining A-shares at two votes each, against your B-shares at one vote each. If the owner still has more votes, the bid is voluntary — they accept or decline, and it lapses after seven days. If you have more votes, the bid is hostile: it cannot be declined and completes after 48 hours.
A hostile bid is only possible against an owner who has floated a great deal and sold most of it. That is the trade the float slider represents, and it is meant to be a real one: capital now, or control later.
If you are bought out, you keep the money. It follows you personally, not the company, and it is added to the starting capital of the next airline you found. Being taken over is a setback, not the end of your game.
Start your airline