Career mode: how does passive income work?

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I’ve just bought my second plane for my company, a Draco, and I’ve activated the crew for the C172. Anyone knows how this works? Must I select missions for the C172 or it will generate income by itself? I will fly the Draco as primary aircraft.

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Tips based on my experience:

  1. Fly the plane with crew switched to ‘off’;
  2. Set other planes with crew ‘on’;
  3. Be sure to log off before 0000UTC
  4. When you log on again after 0000UTC, you should be able to see the passive income received based on the time you are flying freelancer missions and the crew plane’s pay rate
  • Income of a Plane = Pay Rate of the Plane × Time You Spend on Flying Freelancer Missions during the Last 24 Hours
  1. Perform Maintenance Regularly. I perform ‘Delegated Maintenance’ every 12 Hour Flight Time (24 may work as well).

A bit extra info and advice:

  • A Single Engine Sightseeing Plane (400k cost) generates around 8k cr. per hour (maintenance considered).
  • If you want to be a company guy, you may want to stay in the air as long as possible to maximise flight time.
  • I leave the sim running freelancer mission during my 8-hour work, my 50 sightseeing planes gives me around 4m this morning, which means ~25% profit and I could buy 10 more plane to expand my fleet. The maintenance is a headache and I am considering switching to more expansive planes afterward.
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Here are some additional advice on top from someone with 150 airplanes:

  • Dont perform delegated maintenance if expensive parts need maintenance, only if its landing gear, battery, bits and pieces. You will loose a ton of money, especially on more expensive aircraft. A couple clicks can save you hundreds of thousands as the delegated maintenance adds additional fees to the maintenance. If engine or hull/general or flight control surfaces need maintenance do it manually. A 200k engine repair will cost you 250k with delegated maintenance, and its only two clicks more.
  • Dont repair too early. Get a feeling of how much flight time a component can take. A 50% health component will cost the same to repair as 10% health, but you ran it much longer giving you more income per repair. The crew will not care about the status of the aircraft as long as nothing is “out of order”.

On long term:

  • Since the UI is aweful, if you want to expand your fleet the best is to get all the companies and have everywhere the cheaper planes. That way you will not have only a 100 robinson in your flightseeing company only, and then good luck to know where you are when you are maintaining. Also diversify your fleet, after a while you are raking in 10-20mil easy per day, so buy a bit more expensive ones as well (like beechcraft, beaver, draco).
  • Dont buy too expensive aircraft (2mil+) for passive income, as they dont bring that much more and the maintenance will drain much of its profit. A caravan will take 70hours of flight time to bring back its cost, while a 172 will bring it back in just 24h. Of course if you wish you can still do it, but don’t expect too much profit.
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yeah… sounds great… but this states how it should work… it does not state what to do when it doesnt… i have 200h in career, i tried everything, my passive income menu is just empty… i basically got 10h-15h a day in flights for the last 10 days… all varities of flights, as employee, as free lancer, with my own plane set to “crew off”… i tried with xbox app and without… i tried with live traffic and without… XD… it is not that i dit not spend the last 10 days trying to get it working… today is the day were i start spamming the community XD

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I am sorry to hear that. But have you been able to see the passive income table for once? What is the time zone you are currently in?

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i dit not see the table for once… all account menus regarding passive income are empty… showing 0 flights and 10 minutes of flying (what is a common issue seemingly…)… i am timezone utc+1… today will be the first day were i logoff at before 1am what should be 0000 utc… if this will not fix it i make a ticket… i think its an issue with the EFB not logging flights correctly and also the logbook transfer from EFB - LOGBOOK - CAREER LOGBOOK is broken… as the EFB is a mess… and independence of the mission, some flights are logged in general logbook and also in EFB logbook but not as career flights… cargo flights as free lancer arent logged in general… and the flights only will be logged when starting XBOX app before flight simulator… lol… idk if there are dependencies regarding if the plane is used or not… for this i will today buy my 6th small plane… a new one… lol… idk what to do ^^

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Although I normally log into the game at around 0200UTC, someone told me a 10 to 15 minutes time for the server to proceed should be enough, so you could log in again around 0015UTC to check your income. Just turn the game completely off then, I hope you could receive your payout next day^

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Why do you suggest to turn crew off for the plane you fly? I have crew on for all my planes, and it actually seems to get PI on all of them.

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In my experience switching aircraft is already buggy. For example yesterday it only calculated the flight time of one of my airplanes, but I flew hours on a second one as well. Sometimes it works perfectly. Another time I accidentally used a crewed on aircraft, and it reseted flight time for that aircraft so I got no passive income for it. Another time it worked okay. The system is just so buggy that we have no idea what is going. The flight hours sometimes are correct, but you get half the money you should for those hours. People also circulate that its enough to just sit in the cockpit to accumulate passive income, but I can vouch that this is not true, it will accumulate flight time and wear, but you will get only income for the hours you are in the air. I don’t think anyone knows better than others at the moment, especially with so many varying experiences. For some works, for some not.

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Screen Shot above is to prove that this works, Steps for making Passive Income:

  1. Have a Career Mode Company with at least 2 airplanes
  2. Have CREW ON which ever airplanes you want to generate passive income. (I keep CREW ON for every airplane that I own across 8 companies)
  3. Conduct Maintenance “Update Check Up” every 24 hours for each plane you want to generate passive income. (I’ll additionally conduct any maintenance for items showing “maintain”)
  4. Fly Freelancer missions in Career Mode (Your remaining airplanes with CREW ON will generate income for the flight time spent flying these missions)

Notes:
Flying missions at 0000z (1800 Central for me) will result in your passive income rolling over to the following day. You will still need to do your maintenance inspections to collect income for the next 24h period, and you will receive both days income the following day, as long as you don’t fly during 0000
My results for Income per Hour / Purchase Price. The Light Helicopters and C172/C400TT have the best bang for the buck.

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Hope this helps

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There are some serious airline tycoons here! :rofl: It’s nice!

I just want to create a small domestic company that generates enough expenses to buy the next level aircraft. Passing from the Draco to the C208 for cargo missions means 3m+ credits, and that’s a lot of money. At a 120k rate per mission I would need to deliver a lot of packs before I can buy the Caravan, not to say the PC-12…

That’s why I’ve created a Charter VIP company, whose missions are best paid and I can fly a Cirrus Vision. Putting them all in crew mode is a good advice: I can fly both and get some passive income from them also, if I have understood it well…

Thanks!

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Does this mean if I were to just leave the game running while on the tarmac I would make money?

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I would advise to try it carefully though. For me it does not work if I am not actually flying. For me it accumulated flight hours and wear, but the payout was only for the time I was in the air actually (so I was at a loss because of the wear). I am unsure if its a bug with me or it works like that. However you can put it in cruise and lower the sim rate, then it can fly ages without needing any intervention, that worked for me.

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Has anyone received any passive income over the past 2 days for some reason Ive havent got any passive income or any insurance bill. my last passive income was on the 26th,

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Hey Andy. Have you been flying at 00:00 UTC?

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What happens if you press P while flying?
Is passive income time paused as well?

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Yes it is.

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No im usally off at 10pm :laughing: funny thing is it was working fine daily, now nothing for the past 2 days even checked to see if the AI broke the planes but they are in good condition

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I have not run into any issues on my end…as of yet…lol

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Are you in UTC Timezone? 00:00 UTC might be very different from your local 00:00. https://www.utctime.net/