It can feel like making passive income isn’t really worth the effort sometimes. Yesterday, I flew for five hours and with my twenty-one tier two planes, I made about eight million. But after paying for maintenance, wear and tear, and fuel, I only ended up with around two million. It also took a lot of my time to do all the maintenance and repairs on the planes, time I could have spent flying and making more money. I’m trying to save up for a Boeing 737 Max, but it’s a long and boring process.
I’m wondering if other players are experiencing something similar? Does anyone else find that their “passive” income requires a lot more active management than expected, and the profit margins end up being quite small after all the upkeep? Also, if anyone has any strategies for making the grind to a bigger aircraft like the 737 Max a bit less monotonous or more efficient, I’d love to hear them!
P.S. I dont know - its a bug - in screenshot should be 28.04.2024, but but for some reason the date is wrong.
Day 2 / 29 Apr.
Some aircraft were not included (now 256 instead of 261) in the calculation of passive income due to lack of maintenance, it is not visible on the screenshot, but some of the planes have reduced flight hours (apparently due to the fact that some of the planes is in disrepair state).
I got only 1.000.000 passive incomes, all my fleet must check-up and repaired.
So. I do full check and it cost for me about 140.000.000 (but this amount can be randomized, a week ago in the same exact conditions I spent about 400,000,000 on fleet repairs).
Apparently it depends on the specific breakdowns of each airplane (which of course are randomly calculated).
So in this case, I earned ~700.000.000 for 4 day (15h of each day flying).
Of course I’m not going to fly 15 hours every day, it’s just for experimental purposes
Hi, I have 94 planes of mixed origin. My CJ4’s - only 3 and my PC-24’s x 3, c408’s x 2, I leave on OFF and fly them near a mission. That way I earn the larger amount for a mission but save on maintenance. Otherwise I have loads of under 1,000,000 purchase price planes which I maintain about every 8-12 hrs. You can always expect, even in this scenario just as in LeBraconier’s example, to spend approximately half of your passive earnings on maintenance.
So pick the planes with the best price vs maintenance costs. These are the C172, Corvalis 400, G2 Jet, Pipistrel Virus, the TBM can just squeeze in and the Draco.
The more expensive your plane the more you will not have any left over for yourself.
Secondly, ask yourself why you want to buy the 737 max. It is hugely overpriced, and the maintenance of one engine will kill you. Have a look at the maintenance costs in the second hand section. Fly them in employee or free flight.
I have just recently earned enough to buy one after grinding the hard way and building up my companies, and I am asking myself - “what the hell for?”. Suddenly I feel I don’t want to throw that huge sum of credits at that, fairly broken plane, and will just sit on my cushion of Cr to fund other things like more OFF Cj4’s around the world or buy different planes when they eventually put more into Career mode. Even if I earned the huge amounts such as LB, which he has a plan for, what will I enjoy more about this sim. Just flying at FL320 or similar, never seeing the sights. Yes the challenge is good but that wears off after a while.
Anyway, you must find your journey, it is frustrating at times, but you will keep coming back to it!
While the PC-24 has served me well, my primary goal with the 737 was to generate passive income. Unfortunately, the frequent glitches and black screens on my Xbox setup – which interrupt around 80% of my flights – have made this incredibly difficult, costing me what must be hundreds of millions in lost earnings. However, as you mentioned, if the maintenance costs for a 737 are high, I might need to reconsider purchasing one, as 97 million is a significant investment for me.
Also, I forgot to mention, many xbox users are finding this a chore, I think after SU2 downloads this is expected to be better, But if it were me I would save in reality for a PC. The required FPS for large jets due to the increased speed they fly at, therefore scenery changes faster and needs more computing power, and also increased sim rates means often the sim can’t keep up and you get a crash. Just a thought!
I don’t know if you use sim rate but try flying at the normal rate if you do and see if that stops the crashes. Your passive hours build up and payouts are fine with that.
Wait. Just to clarify… you personally spent 15 hours in front of your simulator flying in one day?!? Or is that accelerated flight time (i.e. a 10 hour flight speeds up to 1 hour)?
Im just launch msfs2024 on my second pc, and fly long VIP mission (10h,12-30h). 2-3 missions is usually enough to make a 15-hour flight count (because time spent parking, taxiing doesn’t count, only time in the air).
are you saying you run MSFS on 2 PC’s simultaeously? Are you a real pilot, it seems you wear the uniform? Anyway, I remain impressed with your credit grinding method. You must have almost trillions by now!
A billion. Honestly, the freedom from these maintenance fees would be a superpower. As it stands, it feels less like a game and more like I’m constantly paying virtual bills. And the wear and tear on passive income is just insulting. It’s like the game is actively punishing me for trying to be efficient. Rude!
Honestly guys, let me tell you I’ve got 10 planes, 5 of them are 737 MAX and the profit margins are decent (flying around 3 hours a day brings in like 18M )
BUT the maintenance costs on those 737 MAXs are absolutely insane Replacing just one engine is 9M and they wear out super fast compared to the flight hours
Things got a bit more manageable since I bought two brand-new 737 MAXs Now the crew flies until the plane goes out of order And since replacing a component costs the same whether it’s 10% or 75% worn out, it doesn’t really matter, same cost either way
It’s really my first 3 MAXs that wrecked my budget (I bought them used literally all of the available ones, even the cheapest junk) and they’ve been bleeding me dry in maintenance
I did a quick calc this morning: I logged in with 13M CR, made 17M in PI, so 30M total Then after full maintenance on the whole fleet… boom, I was down to 9M again Had to replace an engine on one of the MAXs
So yeah… the math ain’t mathin’. If it worked like that in real life, airlines just wouldn’t exist
Now I’m doing 10M flights in 30 minutes by skipping the cruise part and just enjoying the fun stuff (takeoff, approach, and landing ) So I’ll keep buying 737 MAXs because it’s my guilty pleasure but yeah, not worth it financially. Just saying.
This game just loves to rub salt in the wound, doesn’t it? I finally scraped together enough cash for a shiny new Boeing 737, practically still had that new plane smell. Eager to try it out, I started a mission, and — bam! — hit with the infamous “mission failed due to crash” glitch. The kicker? I wasn’t even in the plane, and it hadn’t even started!
Back in my office, I was greeted by a cool $20 million in damages and a ridiculously inflated $600k inspection fee. Seriously, who charges that much for an inspection? In real life, it’d be more like $200k! The maintenance and inspection fees in this game are absolutely brutal and desperately need rebalancing, especially when the game’s this buggy. Now I’ve got to grind out 10 to 20 missions just to fix my plane, and even then, I’ll be flying on eggshells, terrified of another random crash. This game is really testing my patience!
I did the initial grind with a PC-12 cargo/vip missions. with that I created my passive income fleet of 40 planes - 6 x CJ4, 5 x ES 30 and the rest a mix of PC 12 and Cessna Grand Caravans. And I buy the cheapest insurance for all of them.
I used to maintain an excel sheet for last time I maintained each aircraft so that I could optimize the maintenance manually. Took me approx 40 minutes everyday just for maintenance.
After SU2 update the maintenance can be done to individual parts specifically which has reduced the checkup costs. I get about 6 mil passive income per hour. Since I manage 1 mission per day my flight time is about 1-2 hours. And I do selective maintenance once in 5 days.
Bought my first B737 about a week back and flying that has been quite profitable.
It takes 3hrs actual time with 4x sim rate for 25 mil payout from US to Europe. So 12 hour grind will get you another 737. Got my second one today. This is for insurance as I have broken the landing gear each time on my last 4 landings.
Target is to buy one 737 and keep in each continent but I am not grinding any more, just fly the route I actually feel like flying and I don’t use sim rate generally.
How is it some folk get crashes and others have great 737 experiences. I am so reluctant to buy one for fear of losing all that Cr you build up. I just keep buying cheaper planes. CJ4 is beyond a joke expensive now, so won’t be getting anymore of those. Pc24 doesn’t steer, pc12 dies a death from o2 and pressurisation issues. C408 used to have binding issues but this mighr be fixed. A person doesn’t know what to do anymore for fear of all the ctd s, the unfair dings etc etc.
You may try employee missions with the 737 from known large airports like KJFK. If you are able to do 5 missions well then I think it would be fine to buy the 737 and earn much higher.
PC 12 has no issues as long as you keep it below FL200. Only time you really need to go over that altitude is if you take a mission that goes over the Himalayas.
I always do employee missions with a new aircraft before buying it.
Hello!
Just a question
I try to understand the chart of passive income and today checked it
about 16:00
there are 248 flight / 1m 29d 12h / 1,342,020 Cr
and abut 19:00
there are *** 224 flight / 1m 21d 15h / 1,155,640 Cr ***
What happened, why decreassed the values
I could not upload my pictures but these the data
I dont understand at all… Someone mazbe
Thx Lipi
Have you maintained your planes? Some will not earn passive income if they are not in the green for “good”. So, if “needs maintenance” is orange this is why the plane does not fly.
This flights all were did today. How can there be fewer the number of flights in the evening than in the afternoon or less flying time? Something not work well
I’ve got 10 planes, 5 of them are 737 MAX 
and the profit margins are decent (flying around 3 hours a day brings in like 18M 
)
Replacing just one engine is 9M 
and they wear out super fast compared to the flight hours 
Now the crew flies until the plane goes out of order 
(I bought them used literally all of the available ones, even the cheapest junk) and they’ve been bleeding me dry in maintenance 
Then after full maintenance on the whole fleet… boom, I was down to 9M again 
Had to replace an engine on one of the MAXs 
) So I’ll keep buying 737 MAXs because it’s my guilty pleasure 
but yeah, not worth it financially. Just saying. 