Staff & HR

6.1 Employees

Your own staff and your Virtual Airline's appear in the same list. The server returns them merged, so this is expected rather than a defect: a cyan VA badge marks the ones belonging to the other company (its code sits in the tooltip), and the VA filter switches between own only, VA only, or both.

Header

• Sort (strips) and the Strips / Table toggle share the same column sort.
• Management opens the dedicated screen (training, transports, history). Export CSV writes the current list, assigned routes and crew groups included; Refresh reloads the roster.
• Three cards with a recent-history sparkline: Total, Avg Hours, Total Hours.

Filters & selection

• Text matches employee and company name. Category / Status / Base / Location are faceted selects, shown only when several values exist. Contract: Employee / Freelance / Owner.
• Skill keeps everyone at or below 2/5, 3/5 or 4/5 on Punctuality or Comfort — the training shortlist. Not trained keeps those still at zero on either skill.
• Conflicts (with Flight Duty on) keeps only crew whose day is exhausted or clashes with their route assignments, and counts them next to the label.
• Clear filters resets every facet. Select all adds the filtered rows to the bulk selection, additively across filter changes.

A row

• A fixed accent strip gives the role — blue PILOT, cyan CREW, orange MECH. A gold star marks your own avatar, and its row is tinted blue.
• Contract: Owner, Employee (green) or Freelance (orange) with its expiry date, in red under 6 h.
• Location: in flight, an aircraft icon and FROM → TO with clickable ICAOs; on the ground, the current airport.
• Status: the status badge, an ETA in flight, a rest / duty timer on the ground, and a red mark when the crew day cannot cover the assigned routes.
• Assigned and Groups: regular routes and crew-group memberships as clickable chips. The dispatch crew picker mirrors them, so an employee already taken shows up as such.

Drawer & bulk actions

The drawer holds identity, skills, dates and routes with rename, train, transport, relocate, rest and fire; Open full management jumps to that employee's own screen. Select at least one row and the bottom bar offers the batch operations (rename pattern, training sign-up, transport scheduling); Clear empties the selection.

6.2 Employee Management

Per-employee operations hub. The left sidebar lists your staff; the right panel shows the selected employee's identity, contract, skills, certifications, assigned routes, crew groups and actions.

Header & sidebar

• Strips / Table toggle, Back to ... for the calling page, List view for the Employees list, Refresh.
• Hire opens the Crew Market. Both hiring flows there — the bulk dialog and the one-click evaluation panel — now name the company that will be billed, with its code: when you work as a Virtual Airline, the bill goes to the company you are operating as, not necessarily the one you founded.
• Search, category tabs (All / Pilots / Crew / Mech.) and a sort dropdown with direction — name, status, total hours or home base; the two skills join in when a single category is selected.
• Each row carries the role accent, the contract badge (Freelance turns red within 6 h of expiry), status, busy-until ETA, current ICAO, home base and total hours. Staff hired by your Virtual Airline rather than by your own company are marked as such, on the identity card and in both list layouts.

Identity, skills and links

• Identity card: avatar, birthdate and age, flight hours (total and in company), location, home base, status with busy-until and duty-day detail, hire or freelance-since date. The contract block details Owner (no salary), Freelance (since / until plus pay per flight hour) or Employee (per hour plus weekly guaranteed).
• Skills: two bars out of 5, colour-graded. Pilot — Punctuality / Stress Resistance; Crew — Pax Care / Effectiveness; Mechanic — Precision / Effectiveness. For your own avatar, landings, level and XP replace them.
• Certifications: aircraft-class badges with the last exam date on hover. Assigned routes and Crew Groups are clickable; the group dropdown adds the employee to a free seat in another group, and the × removes the current role.

Actions

Most are disabled while the employee is busy — flying, resting, in transport or in training.

• Rename, Change base, and Transport to another ICAO. Change base asks you to confirm: the home base changes at once and nobody is moved; for your own avatar the dialog adds that level missions you already have keep starting from the previous base — regenerate them from Pending Jobs to start from the new one. The Transport dialog quotes distance, duration, ETA and cost before starting (your own avatar travels three times faster).
• Class training and Skills training — both hidden for the player, and for freelancers outside Tycoon mode — quote price and duration first; a green note replaces the button once both skills are maxed.
• Rest now forces the configured rest and shows the wake-up time. Fire (permanent staff only) shows remaining salary and severance first; freelancers cannot be fired, so wait for the contract to end or renew it on the Crew Market.
• Checkride (your avatar only) points to Fleet → Manage → Checkride, and is open to everyone.

6.3 Crew Groups

The Crew Groups page saves reusable crew presets — a named bundle of one pilot, an optional copilot, any number of cabin crew, and optionally a preferred aircraft. At dispatch, loading a group fills every crew slot in a single click.

This data lives only on your device. Nothing is sent to the OnAir server, and groups are scoped per company — separate companies and Virtual Airlines keep separate lists.

Manage Crew Groups (left)

• Group — the name you chose; Pilots — pilot + copilot (0, 1 or 2); Cabin Crew — how many members; Aircraft — the preferred aircraft, or a dash if none.
• An amber missing badge appears when a member has been fired or no longer exists.
• A filter box above the list narrows it by group name; the × in it clears the box.

New Crew Group (right, top)

Type a name and click Create. Left blank, the group is created as New Crew Group and can be renamed from the Manage panel. It starts empty and is selected straight away so you can fill it in below.

Manage Selected Group (right, bottom)

• Rename the group (saved when the field loses focus).
• Pick the pilot and copilot from your pilot pool, and add any number of cabin crew.
• Set a preferred aircraft — it filters the groups proposed at dispatch and on Custom Routes.
• Transport this group… sends every available member to one airport in one go, with an estimated total. Each member is billed for their own trip; anyone who cannot travel — not available, already there, no longer on the roster — is listed and left out, and anyone the server refuses is named in the result.
• Delete the group, with a confirmation dialog.

Loading a group at dispatch

A group is only useful if the crew is where the aircraft is. Members who are not at the departure airport are now left out of the load, and a notice names them instead of letting them slip in silently — previously they were written into the form, stayed invisible in the crew selects, and the flight was refused by the server. The picker rows flag off-airport members before you pick, and Manage groups… in the dropdown opens this page.

Saving under a name that already exists offers to replace that group rather than stacking a duplicate.

Warnings (non-blocking)

The panel shows validation chips when something looks off — pilot not at the aircraft's airport, missing copilot for an aircraft that requires one, class certification mismatch, orphan members. These are warnings only: dispatch still works, and the OnAir server is the final validator.

Work Orders also load these presets. Loading a group does not certify or transport its members. Read the persistent warning naming any omitted members, then check pilot, copilot and cabin crew on the target order.

6.4 Crew Market

The Crew Market is OnAir's virtual labour market: every candidate available for hire in your world — pilots, cabin crew and mechanics. Each has their own skills, certifications and salary, and the weekly salary is a fixed cost even when the employee is idle. The list reloads whenever you switch to another company or virtual airline.

Category tabs

• Pilots (blue) — Commanders and co-pilots. Skills: Punctuality and Stress Resistance.
• Attendants (green) — Cabin crew. Skills: Pax Care and Effectiveness.
• Mechanics (orange) — Maintenance technicians. Skills: Precision and Effectiveness.

Each tab carries a badge with the number of candidates in that category.

Strips and list views

Strips gives one row per candidate with a large avatar; List is a compact table whose headers sort, a second click reversing the order. Both draw the same certification grid — one column per aircraft class in canonical order, a missing certification leaving its slot blank — so a class always sits under the same class from one row to the next.

Filters

• Aircraft Class — Keep only candidates certified on one class (SEPL, MEPL, SETL, Helicopter, Jet, Heavy Jet…).
• Min skill — Keep only those whose two skills both reach 3/5 or 4/5.
• Max weekly — Cap the guaranteed weekly salary.
• Name search, plus the sort controls in strips view — two selectors marked 1 and 2: the first orders the list, the second breaks its ties, each with its own ▲/▼ button (hover any of them for the exact wording). In the table, a click on a header sorts, and a Shift+click on a second one adds it — the headers then carry the rank, ▲1 and ▼2. A live counter shows how many candidates match.

Columns

Currency columns show Cr. Flight Hours records pre-hire hours; skill bars show a score out of 5. Per Week is the guaranteed minimum, prorated for the payment period. Per Hour is the permanent employee’s hourly rate: pay is the higher of that minimum and unpaid flight hours × hourly rate, not their sum. Wages is the freelance hourly rate, with a three-hour minimum per payment, not a share of mission revenue. C counts certified classes.

Evaluate and hiring

Click Evaluate (or the row itself in strips view) for the detail panel: avatar, age, full certification list with per-class hours and landings, skill breakdown, weekly cost and the Hire button. The panel names the company that will pay — the virtual airline, in the VA colour, while you are working as it — so you can still change your mind. Hiring takes you straight to the new employee's management page.

Bulk hire

Tick the checkbox on each row (or Select all in the filter bar) to build a selection. A sticky bar at the bottom shows the count and a Hire button; the dialog names the paying company, asks for a common home base (ICAO), then hires everyone in one pass with a progress bar. Failures come back in a toast listing the server's reasons.

6.5 Skills Tree

The Skills Tree holds the 22 company skills you can unlock, spread over four branches. Each one improves a part of the game or opens a feature outright. Points are earned as your company gains levels.

Reading the tree

• While you have points to spend, a large banner at the top of the page shows how many.
• The number in a node's corner is its cost in points; the dots underneath show the levels already bought out of the maximum.
• Nodes are chained. A skill stays dimmed and cannot be bought until the one it branches from is acquired, and the connecting line lights up once that happens.

Finance branch

• Bank Loans — opens the Loans page. Everything else in this branch grows from it.
• Better Interest Rates (3 levels) — lowers loan interest step by step.
• Parking Fees (2 levels) and Landing Fees (2 levels) — cut airport charges.
• Ownership Costs (3 levels) — cuts the weekly cost of owning aircraft.

FBO branch

• FBOs Agreement (5 levels) — unlocks FBO construction and provides 1, 3, 5, 8, then 10 logistic query slots per FBO; it does not set a company-wide FBO count.
• Workshops (2 levels) — unlocks and upgrades maintenance workshops.
• Mechanics (3 levels, requires Workshops) — the advertised speed improvement is not applied by the current server calculation. Do not budget a maintenance-time saving from this skill.
• Fuel Seller — lets your FBOs sell fuel.
• Workshop Selling — lets you sell workshop services to other companies (needs Workshops).
• Enhanced Queries (3 levels) — better results from the FBO Query Assistant.

Jobs branch

• Passengers Licence — unlocks paid passenger transport, and gates the three below it.
• Last Minute Jobs, Medical Flights, Dangerous Goods — each unlocks that kind of mission.

Until a licence is unlocked, jobs that need it show a padlock in the job lists and cannot be accepted, so a locked mission can never be taken by mistake.

AI and hiring branch

• Hiring — unlocks hiring AI pilots; the rest of the branch depends on it.
• Training Facilities and Better Instructors (3 levels each) — better and faster training.
• Aircraft Condition, Fuel Efficiency, Better Transport, Better Processes (3 levels each) — AI fuel efficiency, faster employee transport and company flight XP. The advertised Aircraft Condition wear reduction is not applied by the current server calculation, but the skill remains a prerequisite for Better Processes. The XP multiplier depends on the server’s XP-impact list; Realistic Sim Procedures are not required for every XP bonus.

Saving

Click + on a node to raise its level. The banner is replaced by a bar with Save and Cancel, and nothing reaches the server until you save. Cancel restores the last saved state, and leaving the page with unsaved changes asks for confirmation first.

Reset Skill Tree

Reset Skill Tree, at the top right, gives every point back so you can spend them differently. A dialog explains the conditions, then the app sends you to the Aviation Quiz: you need at least 75%, and the result only counts if the quiz was taken in the last 10 minutes. The reset exam can be started once every 7 days per company, pass or fail. Your company level is untouched, and the number of resets you have used is listed in Company Details on the Dashboard.

6.6 Pilot Ranks

Pilot Ranks is one of the two tabs of the Ranks page, and the one it opens on. It tracks your rank for every aircraft class you have flown. The other tab, Routes Ranks, is a different idea entirely: progression per airline. Here progression is by technical aircraft family — SEPL, JET, HELO and so on. Refresh in the page header reloads the tab you are on.

The totals follow your account, not the company you are in. Ranks are kept per player, so the hours and landings add up the flights of all your companies, on every world — a brand-new company opens with the ranks you already earned. Reset ranks clears them for all of those companies at once; your flights stay in the Flight Logs.

Class cards

• Class badge — the short code, in that class's colour.
• Rank — Trainee, Junior Officer, Flight Officer, First Officer, Captain.
• Hours — flight hours accumulated in this class.
• Landings — flights completed in this class.
• Progress bar — how far you are inside the current rank, with the hours still needed for the next one.

Cards are ordered by aircraft class, then by hours flown.

Rank thresholds

The thresholds depend on the class family:

• Light aircraft (SEPS, SEPL, MEPL, MEPS, ULM, GLD, HELO): 0 / 20 / 50 / 100 / 300 hours.
• Turboprops (SETS, SETL, METS, METL): 0 / 50 / 100 / 200 / 500 hours.
• Jets (JET, HEAVYJET): 0 / 50 / 100 / 500 / 1000 hours.

A class that matches none of these uses the light-aircraft table.

Distribution

The doughnut on the right shows how your hours split across classes. The centre carries the cumulative total, the legend lists each class with its hours and share, and the total number of landings sits underneath.

Drill-down by class

Click a class card to open the list of the flights that count toward that rank. Filter it by period — 30 days, 90 days, 1 year (the default) or all time — and the footer repeats the thresholds that apply to that class.

Looking at someone else's ranks

If you run a Virtual Airline, the member list has a shortcut that opens the ranks of the member you picked. A banner then names whose progression you are reading, with a button back to the Virtual Airline console. In that view the page stays on the Pilot tab and the per-class drill-down is switched off — the flight list can only be queried for your own company, so showing it there would list your flights under their name.

Tip

Hours count every flight the pilot made in a class — freelance charters, Company Jobs, routes, personal flights — not only charters. That is the universal notion of pilot experience, and it is why the number here can be larger than what any single part of the game shows.