v2.5.0
New Features
Cargo (FSC-3421)
FSCharter now carries more than passengers. Alongside them you'll find cabin cargo, which is the smaller stuff that rides in the cabin (mail bags, parcel sacks, crates and bales), and hold freight, which travels in the hold in real airline containers and pallets.
Cargo demand is built from real-world airport data, so each good is produced in some places and wanted in others. A mining region ships ore out and a farming region takes fertiliser in, and cargo flown in the direction trade naturally flows pays more than the same load on the return leg. Cabin cargo and freight are priced by weight and distance, and cargo pays its airport fees by weight too.
You can set how much of a shipper's budget your company charges for cargo and freight, with one setting covering the whole company. If you'd like different figures on different routes, the new Override route budget factors Premium feature lets you set them per route. Pricing strategies and route minimums work with cargo and freight as well.
This release needs plugin version 20.0.0. The plugin will ask you to update the first time you load it after the release.
VIPs and high-value charters
Charters can now carry VIP passengers and six high-value loads: Human Organs, AOG Aircraft Parts, Medical Supplies, Live Animals, Perishable Goods and Confidential Documents. These are charter-only and carry a much bigger charter bonus than passengers, starting at £10,000 per VIP and £20,000 per Human Organ compared with £1,000 per passenger.
Each of them comes with handling rules, such as a maximum g-force, a maximum bank angle or a minimum average speed, and breaking a rule cuts the pay for that delivery. The rules are shown on the job before you fly, you'll get warnings in flight, and any penalties show up in your company Finance.
VIPs will only sit in first class, so you need an aircraft with enough first-class seats to take them. A VIP charter also loses 75% of its fare if the VIPs have to share the aircraft with any other group.
The loadout screen
Before you accept a job, the loadout screen shows you where everything is going to go. Hover over a passenger group to see their bags in the hold, or over a stack in the hold to see whose bags are in it. You'll find it on the Job Marketplace, when you hire an aircraft, and on the job leg page.
Hiring an aircraft from Charter Aircraft for Hire now shows you this loadout to confirm before the job is created, rather than going straight to an "Are you sure?".
Checked baggage
Passengers now check bags, and those bags travel in the hold. How many bags a group checks and how heavy they are depends on their cabin class and how far they're flying.
Because bags are now weighed separately, each person now weighs 84 kg rather than 100 kg (the EASA standard for an adult with hand luggage).
Jobs created before this release, including the ones already sitting on the marketplace, carry no bags, so anything you're flying when the update goes out isn't affected.
What changes if you only fly passengers
A few parts of this release affect you even if you never touch cargo.
Weight now counts. Every job, passenger jobs included, is now checked against your aircraft's payload limit, counting people, the pilot, checked bags, cabin cargo and freight. Some aircraft that could take a full cabin before, mostly light aircraft, may no longer be offered for that job. The Weight Breakdown bar on the loadout screen shows how the weight adds up and how much room is left for fuel.
The exclusivity penalty counts groups, not passengers. A charter leg can now carry up to 10 separate groups before its fare starts to drop, where previously the penalty started above 40 passengers. The exclusivity factor in a charter's fare breakdown is now always shown, with a help icon explaining how it works.
The Operations Cockpit demand view has been reworked. Demand is grouped by route, the map has a toolbar and a legend, and you can sort and filter by revenue. The Create Charter panel now shows meters for seats, weight, cabin floor and hold, and tells you why a charter can't be released when something is in the way.
The Job Marketplace map can now weigh jobs by what they're worth instead of by the number of passengers.
The help centre is now part of FSCharter
The help centre has been redesigned and now lives at /help. The articles have been rewritten for this release, with new and updated articles covering cargo, hiring, partnerships, the Finance page, AOC levels, profile settings and the Premium plans. Any old help links you have will take you to the new pages.
Public API for third-party tools (FSC-4079)
FSCharter now has a public API at /api/v1 for anyone who wants to build their own tools. The new API Access tab on your profile lets you create personal access tokens with only the permissions you choose. Third-party apps can also ask to connect to your FSCharter account, and the sign-in screen tells you whether an app wants to make changes or just read your data. You can remove a connected app from API Access at any time.
Abandoned collaborative demand returns to the pool (FSC-4066)
Collaborative demand that has sat untouched for 28 days is now released to the public pool automatically, so another operator can fly it. The owning company gets a reminder three days beforehand, and a countdown shows on the Collaboration Dashboard. Any collaborative demand that is already older than 28 days is released when the update goes out, without a reminder.
Improvements
Max Shock removed from landing stats
The Max Shock badge has been removed from the landing stats on the job leg page, as plugin 20.0.0 no longer sends it. The rest of the landing stats are unchanged.
Bug Fixes
Pilots could be paid £0 after a profitable flight (FSC-4110)
If a company's balance was close to £0, its pilot could end up being paid nothing, because the pay went out a moment before the job's revenue arrived. The revenue now arrives first and the pilot is paid after it.
Some pricing strategy filters never applied at boarding (FSC-4067)
Pricing strategies that filtered on Waiting for days, Departure airport type or Arrival airport type looked right in the editor but were never applied when passengers boarded. They now apply, so if you use one of these filters its discount or markup takes effect with this release and fares on those routes may change.
Some networks lost all of their route demand (FSC-4078)
A failed weekly rebuild could leave a network with no demand at all, which meant every route job in it refused every aircraft with a misleading rank error. If a rebuild fails now, the previous data is kept.
Hiring at a rank that needs approval
Hiring an aircraft at a rank that needed the owner's approval used to create a job anyway. That job held on to the passengers, so you couldn't hire them again once you were approved. No job is created now. You apply for the rank, and once you're approved you hire the aircraft again.
Cabin upgrades followed passengers onto the next aircraft (FSC-4106)
Passengers upgraded on one leg could still show as first or business class after the next leg was handed to another operator or flown in a smaller aircraft. Manifests and seat counts now reflect the aircraft that's actually flying the leg.
Leaving a pilot roster
The roster button on My Work now says Leave instead of Resign. The confirmation no longer says your unpaid hours are forfeited, because they aren't. They stay on that rank and count towards your pay if you come back. Lifetime Stats also no longer double-counts hours and pending pay if you left and rejoined a company at the same rank.
Permission error when opening a job (FSC-4122)
Pilots flying for a company they don't own were getting a "You do not have permission to view the finances of this company" error when opening a job. That no longer happens.
Charter Aircraft for Hire kept the last aircraft's filters (FSC-4124)
Opening a route on one aircraft was carrying over the hire filters from the aircraft you'd looked at before, which could wrongly show "No demand instances". Each aircraft now uses its own filters.
A selected route faded on the Create Charter map
A route you'd selected in Create Charter faded almost out of sight when you hovered over its row. It now stays visible.
Persistent Pilot Mode and the Job Search Assistant
With Persistent Pilot Mode on, the From Last Location filter was being dropped whenever you used the Job Search Assistant. It now stays on.
Expanded dialogs didn't fill the screen (FSC-4117)
Expanding a dialog left it at its normal width, pinned to one side of the screen. Expanded dialogs now fill the screen.
Cancelling Premium with an ad blocker
If your ad blocker hid Paddle's cancellation window, the Cancel Premium button did nothing. It now cancels your subscription directly instead.
Wrong text on the Premium pages
The Free plan card said you were limited to 3 pilot contracts, but you can join as many company rosters as you like. The warning shown when you cancel Pro also said demand search goes back to a 200 nm radius, when it's actually 100 nm. Both are now correct.
Job details visible to other players
Another company's job revenue and fares are now only shown to people with the View Job Details privilege in that company.