I recently found out about this addon via a forum post which lead me to a few YouTube videos. For those who dont know about it, OnAir is described as "It is a persistent world in which you, as your company's CEO, manage your own airline." I have to disagree about that claim as well as the actual product name as being a bit misleading. When one thinks of "Airline" they tend to think more about routed service by an airline carrier as to where OnAir is more if not totally geared towards Pilot for Hire, Charter Ops. My best way to describe it is FSEconomy on steroids', FSPassengers added in with sprinkles of AirHauler. Basically taking the best of those addons features and creating an all in one subscription based product.

Speaking of those two great addons, I am a long time active member on FSE and was a beta tester on FSpassengers so when I started doing some digging as to what OnAir is about, I was excited to see the developers have found a nice balance of being feature rich but not so overly done as its too complicated for long time use enjoyment. So many features I have long to wish for in FSE are possible in OnAir and to add to that, the flight progression is monitored to provide more realistic wear and tear on the plane based on how it was flown which is something FSPax offered.

OnAir offers a free trial which allowed me to see what its like at which I'll be honest, coming from FSE my first reaction was that it was going to be weighted more towards logistical day to day boring stuff eating up too much of my hobby time then I was willing to invest. Kinda like the feeling I got from AirHauler of which I only used for a bit before not returning to it. So I dabbled a little bit into it to see the likes and dislikes. After some time I found that there wasnt anything to really dislike and the amount of things I liked about it were advocating. 

To start, there are four different worlds to jump in and out of. A more open sandbox then just having one way of play. That in its own is a great start to allowing the user to find the style of play they find best suits their needs. Jimmy from FSEconomy once showed me his vision of what FSEv2.0 could of looked like. It offered so many great features and rewrote the way of play to better reflect the features so many users have asked for. OnAir has incorporated so many of those ideas that I actually looked up the developers and some of the history of OnAir as to when it came about to see if basically someone had taken his ideas and is selling them as an addon. It just seems that was not the case but it is nice to see them actually in play.

So to start, the service is subscription based with various package plans based on months and years with a lower per month rate for the longer the user subscribes. This once again is a new way of doing this kind of addon as to where the user prior had the only options of freeware or payware products. I subscribe to PilotEdge and find the subscription based model the best for support and feedback. Unlike freeware which is based on a voluntary system or payware which seems to start off strong at release but loose support and feature improvements over time, the subscription base seems to offer the best option for long time use. Additionally, the client which interfaces the sims (all major sims are supported including the new MSFS) is designed to receive continued updates, fixes and new features effortlessly when the user connects at the start of each session.

Once I created my "pilot' persona I started poking around to actually see how it works first had. I love immersion and realism when simming. I use PilotEdge, have my Garmin Pilot App that I use when I fly in RL as so all the tools I have in my sim I bring in real flying allowing me to stay current with how all my pilot tools work. That said, some of the major features that drew me to OnAir was being able to break up cargo jobs in multiple legs, being able to hire employees for a long term goal, the fact that planes age both in airframe and engine, more real life checks like annual checkrides, annual aircraft checks in addition to the 100 hour ones, plus repairs and equipment items take time to preform making the plane unavailable during that time. Thats a feature of enabling Survival Mode and is automatically enabled in the more realistic game rooms of Struts and Thunder. The other two game worlds are way more forgiving on restrictions but all the user to turn those features on and off to their likings.

Some other features of realism that I like is how fuel prices vary dramatically in some places reflective of what I've seen in real life as so better flight planning will saving the user in funds, that rented planes need to be checked out with a renting bond and if the plane is not returned to the place of origin that it will cost the user funds when they cancel the rent based on the cost it would take to fly the plane back via another pilot. Land fees apply as well as overnight parking fees giving merit to offer hangar space and tiedown spots as part of an FBO. The whole FBO ownership is more feature rich then what I've come from in FSE. Just all in all, as said before, OnAir is very much like FSE on steroids. 

I have no plans on leaving FSE but over the years have streamline my footprint there to be able to run a hands off profitable small 3 FBO business that sees daily activity as well as a commuter air service that I bulk up funds in the winter time when I'm inside out of the cold to carry me through the warmer summer months when I dont fly the sim. So I wanted to use OnAir to offer something different from my FSE operation. I came up with the idea to have my pilot be a fresh to the work force out of pilot school pilot for hire building time as a freight dog in a rented plane based out of Fresno KFAT, flying the valley area. The long term plan is to some day own a small network of FBOs at locations I can not in FSE to provide charter services with a fleet consisting of helos, business jets and small GA planes ran by a small group of employees that I manage. When I say long term I mean I look forward to taking my time building the funds and Experience Points needed to grow the company to allow all those services.

In summary, OnAir was a great find that I discovered thanks to a forum member and also a YouTube user Kiwi Mace who has made some great videos showing it in use. It was released in July of 2019 and I seem to have gotten in on it at the right time as it seems they are seeing massive growth in membership use and fine tuning the game play with features. Just wanted to share my enthusiasm with this addon in case others hadnt heard about it.  

18 hours ago, Ident said:

It offered so many great features and rewrote the way of play to better reflect the features so many users have asked for. OnAir has incorporated so many of those ideas that I actually looked up the developers and some of the history of OnAir as to when it came about to see if basically someone had taken his ideas and is selling them as an addon. It just seems that was not the case but it is nice to see them actually in play.

I can show you documents on my drive that are 21 years old and describe what onAir is now. At that time Antoine and I wrote the concept but it was simply not viable at that moment. It needed a more mature online element and as we have seen, a new simulator because the release of MFS was really what pushed OnAir to the current status with over 10.000 paying users.

 

4 hours ago, Mathijs Aerosoft said:

I can show you documents on my drive that are 21 years old and describe what onAir is now. At that time Antoine and I wrote the concept but it was simply not viable at that moment. It needed a more mature online element and as we have seen, a new simulator because the release of MFS was really what pushed OnAir to the current status with over 10.000 paying users.

Kudos to the team that has found the perfect balance of immersion, realism, challenges and rewards along with the use of its UI/client delivery system that makes this product shine so bright. This is exactly what the sim world needs as an option for long term goal building platform to give purpose to flight simming as an option. When I first started reading the manual and read about AI needing to rest and things like that I was wary of if features like that were needed in a way that its more involved that it needs to be. However, once I realized that all these features are future bridges for me to cross when the time is right, I will have fine tuned my game play and will be ready for the next level up when I get there and not needed to be achieved on day one.

The Experience Points/Skill Tree is a well designed and thought out feature for long term use. For myself coming from FSE where over the 13 years of being a member there I have seen 1st hand burnout when trying to build cash over takes the reason I sim. So not to repeats those mistakes I developed a long term roll for my character pilot and the use of the skill tree/XP will be highly useful in doing so. I will not fly the Mission jobs which build my XP points rapidly and allow me to quickly develop my Pilot and options of ownership and management (FBOs, Planes, Staff).  Instead I will earn my XP's by building my flight hours. The skill tree is perfectly designed as flow method in the stages of the how a real pilot might develop.

So I will start off flying only freight. In doing so I in theory would develop a relationship with local FBOs and airport managers as I fly in and out of them and so the 1st thing I would do is look for ways to save money by asking for favors or deals in parking fees and finding places I can park to save me money. After which I would try to get a deal on landing fees. As my funds build I would then consider buying my own plane which bank loans and aircraft ownership would play a part. Now owning a plane I would consider growing my operations with opening up a Fixed Based Operation and consider growing my fleet to offer other services. With that would come the need for employees and finally as my network and team grow, also comes the needs to hire better trained staff. So as you can see, I am following your skill tree layout almost to a tee. An extremely well thought out system, if done right and not rushed to reach the end goal but enjoy the ride there, thanks to the skill tree.

As mentioned prior, I'm now a huge advocate for OnAir and looking forward to being a life time member of the service.

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by Ident

I joined OnAir yesterday because of this thread, congratulations for luring me in. However, I encountered so many problems that I decided to write this off. If anyone else is considering OnAir: make sure you take advantage of the trial period to see whether this is for you or not.

Peter

3 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

I encountered so many problems that I decided to write this off. 

Peter

Peter,

I have zero to do with the company, just a happy new user coming from FSE for the same purpose of use. Just curious as to what you meant by encountering so many problems as I have had none using XPlane as my sim so far. I do plane to later use MSFS but that is way into next year when I feel MSFS is more mature. At least you gave it a try and if you decided to revisit it while you still are within your trial period, They have an active discord channel as to which I leaned on for a few questions that quick replies.

Nathan

1 hour ago, Ident said:

Just curious as to what you meant by encountering so many problems as I have had none using XPlane

Hi Nathan,

well, I had plenty of problems with P3D v4.5, but as I said, I only tried it for 24 hours, it might just have been me. Having said that, here is what I didn't like.

- The tutorial. It forced me to use a (default, i.e., sub-standard) airplane that I didn't know on a route that I didn't know. I spent some time getting fuel and timing right (why don't they just tell me the cruise speed and hourly fuel burn of a Mooney Bravo in the tutorial?), and when I was in the air, I noticed that OnAir did not connect to P3D but expected MSFS. I am fairly sure I set the simulator to P3D before the flight, but maybe I made a mistake. I am fairly certain that OnAir jumped back from P3D to MSFS more than once, though.

- I then decided to skip the tutorial and try to rent the Milviz King Air 350. OnAir insisted that I should do a 20 minute flight to verify the airplane. I am not a fan of check rides since I spend a lot of time familiarizing myself with airplanes, and I probably have 100-200 hours in the KA350i, but what can you do. So I complete this flight and all is fine until I shut down the engines. Then, at the very last second, OnAir states that there is a problem with the flight and I have to repeat it.

- I then reinstalled the airplane because I had made some minor modifications on the fuel capacity to make it compatible with FSEconomy. Then, OnAIr was offering me a livery of the airplane, but not the one I had loaded.

Again, I didn't spend a lot of time on getting into the details of OnAIr, but what I am looking for is an economic simulation that just lets me fly my favorite airplanes without too many hoops to jump through.  OnAir seems not to be it.

 >> if you decided to revisit it while you still are within your trial period

Unfortunately, I used up my trial period a year ago. Back then, OnAir was way too close to Air Hauler (which I own but never used much, really not my cup of tea), so I gave up after 10 minutes. So, yes, I now spent some money on this renewed experience 😕. It's OK, though, it wasn't a fortune.

>> They have an active discord channel

I looked at it, but I never liked Discord. I tried to contact OnAir using their support system, but I found that incredibly confusing. You have an account on OnAir, but you cannot login with that account in the support system. Why? I managed to send a message to their support explaining one of my problems, but I cannot find anymore where I submitted this message.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I wasted some money and, more importantly, time on something that isn't made for me. Others may form their own opinion with the trial version. I appreciate that OnAir offers this, even though I couldn't use it again, but that is completely on me.

Peter

 

6 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

Hi Nathan,

Peter

 

I feel ya. I skipped the tutorial as well and to be honest had a more "prove it to me Im going to like it so its gonna need to grow on me" approach to some degree. I used a custom livery Carenado C210 and later realized it would just be easier for now to go with a default one. Luckily the C210 doesnt require a check ride so I didnt have to go through that. My understanding is you wont know if you passed or failed until the ride is completely over and no notes on what was done wrong. Having a PPL I look forward to any check rides when the time comes to add aircraft to my characters fleet as I feel its just good practice for staying focused in real life but yeah without some "areas of concern" that would cause me to fail, feel there needs to be that as an added feature and hopes its in place or something along those lines by the time I go to my check rides just incase it ends up being something that is not so easily identified. Lastly, same here on not being a big Discord user, I prefer forums better.

Nathan