The World Flight Market (WFM) is the persistent passenger economy at the heart of MetaFlight V3. It replicates the global air travel market: more than 55,000 routes, built on the real destinations of every airport, with passenger demand that builds, saturates and waits in real time. We built this world and opened it. What happens to it now is in the hands of the pilots who fly it.

What is the World Flight Market?

The World Flight Market is a single, shared map of passenger demand covering the whole planet. On every route, passengers are waiting to travel, and their number moves through the day. There is no private instance and no mission generated just for you: every MetaFlight pilot works the same market.

That shared state is what makes MetaFlight an MMO rather than a career mode. When you carry a group of passengers from one airport to another, they are no longer waiting for anyone else. And when you log off, the world keeps turning: demand keeps building on the routes nobody is flying.

How does MetaFlight replicate real-world air travel?

We did not invent a route network: we copied the real one. The destinations available from each airport are modelled on real-world air travel data. If a direct flight does not exist in reality, it does not exist in the World Flight Market. You will not find a non-stop Paris to Zanzibar, because no airline flies it.

Passenger behaviour follows the same logic. Large hubs and trunk routes carry heavy demand, smaller fields and thin routes carry less, and when a route goes unserved, its passengers accumulate. The result is a network of more than 55,000 routes that behaves like a real market: some routes overflow with demand, others are waiting for their pilot.

Why it matters when you fly

Your career looks like a real airline schedule, not a list of random hops. The route you choose, the aircraft you fly and the SimBrief plan you import all make sense together, and the decisions you take in the market are the same ones a real dispatcher would weigh.

What is route tension, and why does it pay more?

Route tension is the gap between the passengers waiting on a route and the capacity serving it. A route under tension is one where many passengers are waiting: think of a busy Paris to Dubai with a long queue of travellers and too few flights.

MetaFlight rewards pilots who answer that demand. The load factor system multiplies your FlightCoins earnings on routes under tension: the more passengers are waiting and the fuller your cabin, the bigger the bonus. Flying a nearly empty aircraft on a quiet route earns far less.

Supply and demand, in the hands of pilots

Tension is never permanent. As pilots serve a busy route, its queue shrinks and the bonus fades, while demand rises elsewhere on routes nobody is flying. The market is never solved: reading it, and moving before everyone else does, is part of the skill.

How do FlightCoins work in V3?

FlightCoins (FC) are MetaFlight’s in-game currency, and they are back in V3 with a new economy. You earn them in flight, on every leg you complete. Four things decide what a leg is worth:

• Load factor: how full your aircraft is, multiplied on routes under tension.
• Route choice: flying where the market actually needs seats.
• Passenger care: cabin announcements and onboard service raise passenger satisfaction.
• Flying well: a clean leg, recorded end to end on the map and in your flight log.

We deliberately do not publish values. V3 opens as an open beta, and a living economy is tuned in real conditions. If the balance requires it, FlightCoins earned in flight may be rebalanced, or reset, so that everyone starts again on fair ground. Purchased FlightCoins, your flight log, licences and flight hours are always kept.

Why do licences expire every 90 days?

FlightCoins are not just a score: they fund your career. With them you buy licences, which open the flights you are allowed to take. Every licence expires 90 days after purchase. To keep flying the routes it unlocks, you need to keep earning.

That is where strategy comes in. Which routes to work, which licences to keep active, when to renew and when to grow: every pilot builds a plan to earn as many FlightCoins as possible and to move up in their career. Two pilots on the same map will not play it the same way.

What is MetaFlight Airlines?

MetaFlight Airlines is the airline every pilot flies for at the launch of V3. It hands you passengers from the World Flight Market and launches your career: you choose where to fly, and the airline fills your cabin with the travellers waiting on that route. Every pilot flying for MetaFlight Airlines answers the same global demand.

What comes next: virtual airlines in V4

MetaFlight Airlines is the first step. With V4, Airline Manager will let players build and run their own virtual airlines inside the same World Flight Market, and pilots will choose whose colours they fly. The routes and the demand you shape today are the market those airlines will compete for. Airport Operator, the role that runs the ground operations of an airfield, is also in development.

A world we opened, now in your hands

We modelled the market, set the rules and opened the doors. From Tuesday 27 October at 2:00 PM Paris time, the destiny of this world belongs to the pilots who travel across it, answering the supply and demand of air travel one leg at a time.

Frequently asked questions