Cargo and passengers

Cargo and passengers are the jobs you fly for money. Every airport in Pilops has some waiting; you pick them up in the Cargo step of Planning a flight and get paid when you deliver them.

The two kinds

Passengers: A group of people bound for one airport. A card reads "Group of … passengers to …". Groups are small at small airports (1 to 3 people), a bit larger at medium airports (1 to 5) and can reach 40 at large airports. Each passenger weighs between 120 and 200 lb and pays a per-head price. Passengers use the aircraft's seats and its weight.; Some groups belong to a special class that pays more and asks for a specific kind of aircraft. See Passenger classes.

Cargo: One item, shown as "Cargo with … to …" or as a "General package". It weighs anywhere from 50 to 1,350 lb and is paid by weight. Cargo only uses the aircraft's weight.

Passengers are more common than cargo: when a job is created there are 8 chances in 11 that it is a passenger group.

Where jobs come from

Airport demand: When you look at an airport with fewer than about twenty jobs available, Pilops generates new ones on the spot, bound for random airports nearby. How many depends on the size of both airports: a leg between two small airports yields a couple of jobs, a leg touching a large airport yields many more. These jobs expire after up to three days if nobody flies them. See Airport size and demand.

Routes: A route between two Stands generates jobs on a schedule, for the route's owner and, if the route is public, for everyone. Route jobs last three to seven days. A Route boost creates a batch immediately. See Routes and Route boost.

What a job pays

The payment printed on the card is what you receive for delivering it, before fees. Prices grow with distance, but very long legs are tapered: distance beyond 1,500 nm counts for less. Passenger prices also grow a little less than linearly with the size of the group.

At the end of the flight Pilops adds up the payment of every job delivered, applies your Flight streak bonus, and then takes the 10% flight fee. See Fees.

Loading jobs

Open the Cargo step and click Add. A job can be Blocked for one of three reasons, shown in a tooltip:

"Not enough seats available."
"Not enough cargo capacity remaining."
"This cargo is currently unavailable." The job is already on someone else's flight, or it belongs to a route whose jobs are reserved for another pilot or company.

Jobs are shared with every pilot at that airport. If someone else loads a job you had selected, Pilops tells you "Another pilot has already booked this job." and removes it from your plan. Once your flight has started in the simulator, the load is locked.

Stopovers

You do not have to fly a job straight to its destination. When you finish a flight at a different airport, the jobs that were not bound there are unloaded at that airport and wait for the next flight, yours or anyone's, for up to seven days. The tip in the app puts it this way: "If you finish a flight at an airport different from the expected destination of the job, your delivery will stay at the airport waiting for the next flight!"

Condition

While you fly, the Pilops Client shows Passengers happiness and Cargo condition as percentages. At the end of the flight each job is paid at its price times its condition. The flight's overall rating also averages the condition of the goods with the aircraft rating from flight alerts. See Landing score.