Airport CEO

Airport CEO is a 2D Tycoon and management game in development for PC and Mac where you take the seat as a CEO of your own airport. You will build the airport’s infrastructure with everything from runways and taxiways, gates and tarmac to constructing terminals with check-in, security, restaurants and shopping. You will manage the business perspective of the airport by hiring employees and executives, making deals with airline companies and making sure that ends meet by keeping an eye on budget and resources.

You will have to cater to the passengers by keeping waiting time to a minimum, by having friendly and helpful staff around and by making passengers feel secure, keeping any potential criminals at bay; a happy passenger is a shopping passenger. Hopefully you won’t run into any problems such as employee or equipment breakdowns, bad weather causing massive delays or emergency landings. You will be responsible for when things go wrong and, of course, filthy rich when things go right.

Running an Airport

Your objective is to build and manage your airport to perfection by making strategic decisions, building an optimized airport and ultimately making sure that your passengers and airlines are satisfied. You will need to build the entire airport from scratch including terminal foundations with floors, walls, doors and items as well as the airport infrastructure including runways, taxiways, aprons and other necessary structures. Everything in Airport CEO is deeply simulated and so you need to manage its operations by making strategic decisions such as hiring the right staff, controlling expenditures and optimizing processes.

Airlines

Airlines and their travelers are an essential element of Airport CEO as they consist of the main source of your airport’s income, signing contracts with airlines bring cashflow and passengers to your airport which means opportunities for claiming an armada of different service fees as well as passenger consumption. Airlines come in different sizes and have different requirements on your airport and the services you offer, you are responsible for not only planning the flight schedule but also for meeting and maintaining the needs. For example, flights during rush hour could generate more income as airlines are prepared to pay more in fees but on the other hand late evening flights are normally less desirable and you might be forced to reduce the fees for flights operating at this hour. Occasionally you will need to handle emergencies and delays due to bad weather or accidents in the area, all which will put your management skills to the test.

Passengers

Passengers in Airport CEO are versatile humans with personalities, needs, a background story and most importantly; a flight to catch. Passengers are deeply simulated and their decisions, behaviors and opinions about your airport are affected by a number of different factors. Passengers in Airport CEO, just as passengers in real life, have to wait in lines, check in, pass security and then entertain themselves until their flight is ready for boarding. Arriving passengers must find their way out to the baggage claim, get a hold of their bags and pass customs before getting on their transport. Whether they’ll be able to actually catch their flight is up to you: Passengers might have a hard time finding their way around the airport so you build an information desk, passengers might get irritated because of the long security queue and waiting time so you extend its capacity, passengers might complain about the lack of fun things to do in the gate area so you build a duty-free shop, exclusive brand boutiques and business lounges.

Employees

Employees are those you rely on to keep your airport running. Just as passengers they are deeply simulated individuals who have minds of their own affected by a number of different factors. Employees have a number of different roles and it is your job to make sure that your airport has the right and necessary work force. From airport staff, janitors, ramp workers and mechanics, security and air traffic control operators to administrators and executives. The more you expand your airport, its range of facilities and its passenger capacity the more versatile and skilled your employees have to be. When employees interact with passengers they’ll have to be skilled at managing people and also stress resistant in order to avoid processing errors and letting the wrong people through.

Facilities & Buildings

Airports are complex mega-structures with a lot of different buildings and facilities. While a small airport might not need more than a simple grass runway and a terminal, as you grow your airport you will have to expand its facilities ranging from air control towers, fingers and aprons, taxiways and service paths to fire, weather, catering and fuel stations. As your airport grows your terminal grows, you will have to make sure that it is equipped with the necessary facilities that passengers are expecting. Building a terminal in Airport CEO is 100 percent custom: You decide its shape, its layout, its components such as the floors, the walls and the doors. Baggage needs to be processed and transported to the same flight as its owner and its all up to you when it comes to avoiding bottlenecks and designing the ultimate airport terminal.

Being a CEO

Data, data, data! As the acting CEO of your airport you need to be able to make difficult business decisions based on real intelligence. In Airport CEO you will ultimately be provided with huge amounts data from which you can draw conclusions and manage your airport. You will be provided with a set of different panels highlighting what you want to know, if you have invested in the right technology collecting it of course. As the CEO you will not only be responsible for the architecture of the airport but also for those working in it. Tired of screening every janitor you need to hire? Establish an HR department and let them do it for you! Tired of assessing the monthly budget balance? Create an accounting department, or even better, hire a CFO to make sure that you really make the best decisions.