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Flagships: Double-Deckers & Supersonic
The A380, 747 family and Concorde in Tailwinds: seats, range, lease cost and economics of the game’s biggest and fastest aircraft — and when they actually pay.
These are the trophy aircraft of Tailwinds — the double-deck giants and the supersonic Concorde. Every player wants to fly them. Most players lose money the first time they try. This page is about flying them profitably.
Double-deckers live or die on one question: can the route fill 400 to 853 seats week after week? That only happens on the world's great trunk routes, usually between mega-hubs with strong feed on both ends. When it works, per-seat costs are excellent. When it doesn't, the weekly lease alone erases the profit of half your network.
Concorde is its own economy. Its fuel burn is extraordinary, but supersonic prestige commands a large ticket premium in-game, and on the right premium transatlantic-style pairing it can work as a halo aircraft — brand first, margin second.
How to choose
Honestly? Wait. Flagships belong in a mature network with established mega-hubs, deep cash reserves, and proven trunk routes bursting past the capacity of your largest twins. Then, and only then, they are glorious.
All 9 aircraft at a glance
Figures are the game's actual values. Fuel cost assumes the base fuel price of $1.45/litre — the live market price in your save drifts between roughly half and nearly double that, which is why fuel hedging matters. Lease and price are the classic-game market rates. Any type whose production line closed in 1976 or earlier is buy-only, because no lessor stocks it, so ignore its lease column. In an era game the calendar takes over: a type appears the year it entered service, lessors only take it from ten years after that (the war-surplus C-46, C-47 and DC-4 excepted), and prices shift with the year.
| Aircraft | Seats | Range | Cruise | Lease/wk | Price | Fuel/100km | Fuel/seat-km | Fuel rank | Lease/seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Concorde | 128 | 7,250 km at 100 seats (7,000 km at 128) | 2,180 km/h | $463K | $190M | 1491 L | 16.88¢ | 9 / 9 | $3,617 |
| Boeing 747SP | 400 | 10,800 km at 276 seats (9,600 km at 400) | 870 km/h | $43K | $22M | 1338 L | 4.85¢ | 8 / 9 | $108 |
| Boeing 747-200B | 550 | 12,700 km at 366 seats (11,400 km at 550) | 870 km/h | $40K | $20M | 1725 L | 4.55¢ | 6 / 9 | $73 |
| Boeing 747-100 | 550 | 9,800 km at 366 seats (8,500 km at 550) | 870 km/h | $31K | $16M | 1819 L | 4.79¢ | 7 / 9 | $56 |
| Boeing 747-400 | 605 | 13,445 km at 416 seats (12,000 km at 605) | 870 km/h | $109K | $55M | 1608 L | 3.85¢ | 4 / 9 | $180 |
| Boeing 747-8I | 605 | 14,816 km at 467 seats (13,600 km at 605) | 870 km/h | $186K | $80M | 1400 L | 3.36¢ | 2 / 9 | $307 |
| Boeing 747-300 | 605 | 11,700 km at 400 seats (10,300 km at 605) | 870 km/h | $64K | $32M | 1776 L | 4.26¢ | 5 / 9 | $106 |
| Boeing 747-400D | 660 | 3,700 km at 568 seats (3,000 km at 660) | 870 km/h | $109K | $55M | 1608 L | 3.53¢ | 3 / 9 | $165 |
| Airbus A380 | 853 | 15,200 km at 525 seats (12,900 km at 853) | 870 km/h | $740K | $305M | 1800 L | 3.06¢ | 1 / 9 | $868 |
Five flagships and the routes that justify them
Nine flagships are listed above, but most of the money is won or lost on five of them. What follows is not a ranking. It is five separate arguments about when a very large aeroplane earns its keep — from an old jumbo that only looks cheap to the one that charges 2.75 times the going fare and still has to fight for its margin.
Airbus A380 — the capacity champion
Nothing else in the game lifts 853 people at once, and that single number decides whether the A380 is a triumph or an anchor. Its 3.06 cents per seat-kilometre is the lowest figure on the table: across a 12,000 km sector that works out at roughly $367 of fuel per seat at the base $1.45 a litre, where a 747-400 on the same leg spends about $462. On the 605 seats both aircraft could sell, the Airbus keeps around $58,000 per departure — and then it sells 248 seats the Boeing never had. That gap compounds every rotation.
The trap is that the saving is per seat while the burn is per aircraft. Fly it 70 per cent full and you pay A380 fuel for a 747's payload, on top of a $740,000 lease and maintenance that starts at about $439,000 — the line has closed, so every frame arrives five years old — which is nearly $1.18M a week before the first litre. So it only works on genuine mega-hub pairs: heavy premium demand at one end, deep connecting feed at the other, and frequency high enough that travellers treat you as the default. Its 9,800 ft runway requirement is no worse than a 747-400's, so airports rarely rule it out. Demand does. Build the network first — see hub strategy — then let the A380 harvest it.
Boeing 747-400 — the default long-haul flagship
When you cannot yet name the exact route, this is the one to lease. 605 seats, 13,445 km of range and a $109,000 weekly lease put nearly every intercontinental trunk pair within reach for less rent than aircraft that do far less. It is not efficient — four engines make 3.85 cents per seat-kilometre, mid-table among these nine — but efficiency you cannot use is worth nothing, and range you can redeploy is worth a great deal. It arrives ten years old, so maintenance starts at $465,000, and you are holding it for $574,000 a week, or owning it outright for $55M.
The obvious upgrade is the 747-8I, and the arithmetic now favours it on a busy schedule. Same 605 passengers, 3.36 cents per seat-kilometre — about an eighth less fuel per seat — for $89,700 more every week once lease and maintenance are both counted (it arrives nine years old). Fuel is burned per aircraft, so the -8I saves about $3.02 on every kilometre it flies, full or not, and that covers the gap at roughly 30,000 km a week: about one maximum-range round trip. Fly it harder than that and the -8I is the cheaper aeroplane; fly it less and keep the -400. And if the sector runs past 14,816 km on thinner demand, the 400-seat 747SP stretches to 15,400 km and clears a 9,000 ft runway, the shortest of any long-range flagship here.
Boeing 747-400D — 55 seats for 9,745 kilometres
Take 9,745 km out of a 747-400 and the game hands back 55 seats. That is the entire bargain. Identical $109,000 lease, identical $55M price, identical $465,000 of maintenance (both arrive ten years old), identical 1,608 litres per 100 km — only now spread across 660 passengers instead of 605, which pulls fuel down to 3.53 cents per seat-kilometre from 3.85 cents. On an 1,800 km sector that is $63.54 of fuel per seat against $69.30, with 55 more seats to sell on top. It even needs less runway, 7,500 ft against 9,800. Anywhere inside 3,700 km, the -400D beats the -400 on every line of the accounts. There is no catch within its range.
The catch is the range. 3,700 km deletes every ocean and most of the markets where 660 seats of weekly demand actually exist, so this aircraft pays only where a short sector carries enormous, repeatable traffic — a dense domestic trunk between two large cities, flown several times a day rather than daily. Find one and it is the most productive jumbo you can hold. Miss and you are carrying a flagship that cannot be moved: when an AI carrier undercuts you on that one pair, the -400 parked beside it can be re-tasked to another continent and the D cannot. Optionality is what those 9,745 km were really buying.
Boeing 747-200B — the jumbo that only looks cheap
$40,000 a week is the smallest lease any lessor will write on a jumbo, and it is the smallest number on the invoice by a distance. The -200B arrives sixteen years old, so its maintenance starts at $627,000 every single week no matter how you schedule the aircraft, and holding it really costs $667,000 — the lease is barely a sixteenth of the bill. Players read the lease column, sign, and then meet a charge nearly sixteen times larger with no revenue attached to it. The 747-100 looks cheaper still and is worse: its line closed in 1976, so no lessor stocks it, and buying one gets you a twenty-year-old airframe with an $810,000 maintenance bill, 9,800 km of range and 4.79 cents per seat-kilometre.
Set against a 747-400, the old airframe loses everywhere. It costs $93,000 a week more to hold ($667,000 against $574,000), and it loses again on every kilometre flown: 4.55 cents across 550 seats is about $25.01 of fuel per kilometre, where the -400 burns $23.32 while carrying 55 more people. Its one advantage is capital — $20M to buy against $55M — and an owned -200B spends that $35M saving on $162,000 a week of extra maintenance in about 216 weeks, a gap that only widens as the airframe ages. If you want the cheapest jumbo to hold, it is the 747-300, at $555,000 a week for 605 seats; but it burns $2.43 more per kilometre than a -400, which wipes out its $18,800 saving after about 7,750 km a week. In practice, the -400 is the old jumbo worth flying.
Concorde — prestige, priced honestly
Concorde is not really an aircraft in this game; it is a fare multiplier with wings, and judged that way the case becomes arguable. Whatever fare you set, passengers are charged 2.75 times it — and they feel that price, so demand thins accordingly — which is the only reason 16.88 cents per seat-kilometre is even worth discussing. Divide the burn by the multiplier and you still need a baseline fare worth about 6.1 cents per kilometre simply to cover fuel — double the 3.06 cents an A380 has to clear, and above every other type here. Only a genuinely premium market pays that, and a 7,250 km range confines you to the shorter premium trunks in any case.
Then the fixed costs, which are savage across 128 seats: $463,000 of lease plus $320,000 of maintenance is $783,000 a week, about $6,100 of standing cost per seat, against roughly $1,380 per seat on an A380. Fuel volatility lands hardest here too, since the market can run to nearly double $1.45 a litre and the 2.75x multiplier applies to your fares, not your costs. It also wants 10,800 ft of runway, the longest requirement of any passenger aircraft in the game, which quietly rules out airports that would otherwise be ideal. Fly it when a mature network can absorb a flat week, on one short premium trunk, as the thing your airline is known for. Read route economics before you sign.
Every type in the category
Reference entries for all 9, in the same order as the table. The table above carries seats, range, cruise speed, lease, price and fuel; these add the runway each type needs and its base weekly maintenance bill. That base is for a factory-fresh frame: out-of-production types arrive second-hand, already years old, and their maintenance starts higher (the market screen in the game quotes the delivered figure).
Concorde
The supersonic icon. Mach 2 across the Atlantic in under 3.5 hours. Charges 2.5× fares but burns fuel like nothing else. Prestige over profit.
Boeing 747SP
The shortened long-ranger. Fewer seats than a standard 747 but extraordinary range. The first aircraft to operate true nonstop ultra-long-haul polar routes.
Boeing 747-200B
Classic first-generation jumbo. Very cheap to buy but extremely thirsty.
Boeing 747-100
The original Jumbo Jet that democratized long-haul travel in 1970.
Boeing 747-400
The Queen of the Skies. Placarded at the standard 605-seat 747 exit limit, cheap to acquire and able to reach almost anywhere — but four thirsty engines make it a high-density trunk aircraft rather than an efficient one.
Boeing 747-8I
Latest and longest 747 — but Boeing never re-certified the exit limit, so 5.6 m of extra fuselage buys not one seat over the -400. What it buys instead: a fifth less fuel per seat and 1,400 km more range.
Boeing 747-300
The stretched-upper-deck 747. Shares the -400 cabin and its 605-seat exit limit for a fraction of the price — older engines make it far thirstier and it gives up 1,700 km of range.
Boeing 747-400D
The domestic Jumbo. Built for high-frequency short sectors: strengthened for the cycles, stripped of its winglets and flown at a reduced max weight, which cuts its range to 3,700 km. In exchange it is the only 747 ever certified for the full 660-seat exit limit — 55 more than any other. Same price, same burn, same cabin as the -400; you are trading range for seats and nothing else.
Airbus A380
The double-decker superjumbo. Unmatched capacity on ultra-high-demand routes — and priced for it: the most airframe money can buy.