The Economy7 min read
How the economy works
Everything in Project Airports is priced in Aeros (Ⓐ), a single soft currency. You earn it by flying and being part of the world; you spend it on land, surfaces, and objects. The design anchor is simple: Ⓐ1,000 is worth roughly one US dollar of progress, and dedicated free play earns about that much per day.
Aeros
Every account has one wallet. Every earn and every spend is a line in an append-only ledger you can read on the wallet page- there are no hidden adjustments. The balance can never go below zero: if a purchase doesn't fit, it's rejected with exactly how much you're short, never an overdraft.
Where Aeros come from
| Source | Pays | Daily limit |
|---|---|---|
| Flying (see Earning Aeros) | Ⓐ1 / minute × 1–4× multiplier | Shared daily cap only |
| Visiting a new Project Airports field (no landing needed) | Ⓐ100–300, rising with each new field | 5 airports / day — exempt from the cap |
| Visitors to YOUR airport | Ⓐ25–400 per visitor (scales with investment) | 20 visitors / day — exempt from the cap |
| Idle income (companion app open) | Ⓐ1 / minute | First 120 min / day |
| Onboarding milestones | Ⓐ400–3,700 each (Ⓐ13,000 total) | one-time |
| Signup welcome grant | Ⓐ5,000 | one-time |
| Supporter kit ($25+) | Ⓐ25,000 | one-time |
Flying and idling share one daily cap. Exploration — visiting airports, and being visited — pays on top of it, and is the only way to earn more in a day. Full mechanics: Earning Aeros.
Where Aeros go
| Spend | Price |
|---|---|
| Your first land claim | Free |
| More land claims | Ⓐ25,000× how many you've bought (2nd 25k, 3rd 50k…) |
| Buildable-area levels (details) | L2 Ⓐ15,000 · L3 Ⓐ40,000 (L4/L5 coming soon) |
| Surface materials (details) | Unlock fee Ⓐ1,000–25,000 + a few Ⓐ-cents per m² paved |
| Objects & decor (pricing model) | Size-based; a small hut ~Ⓐ100s, big hangars Ⓐ1,000s, world landmarks up to Ⓐ100k+ |
| Vegetation paint | Per 100 m² painted, by biome |
| Two-elevation airport split | Ⓐ100,000 one-time |
Caps & fairness
Grind income (flying and idle) shares one daily cap: Ⓐ1,000 per day for free accounts, Ⓐ2,500for Supporters. The cap clamps rather than errors - you keep whatever fits, and the meter resets daily. Your Wallet's Today bar shows exactly how much of it you've filled.
Exploration income— visiting airports you haven't seen today, and pilots visiting yours — is deliberately outside that cap, as are one-time grants and refunds. A machine left running overnight can never beat a pilot who actually flew somewhere, which is exactly the intent: the cap limits grinding, not playing.
Anti-cheese, in plain terms
A visit requires a real flight: a session at least a minute old, and position telemetry that actually puts your aircraft over the field below 100 ft. Each airport pays once per day, so hopping the same pair of fields earns nothing extra. Time-based income is clamped to real wall-clock time, so parallel sims or clock tricks don't stack. You'll likely never notice any of this - it exists so the leaderboard flyers are real ones.
Refunds
Two different refunds are easy to mix up: unused purchased material area refunds at 50% from the builder; releasing a whole claim refunds 40% of that airport's material spend (never the land price - land is the one thing meant to feel scarce). Objects refund at 100% within 24 hours of buying, and that one is automatic: delete the object in the builder and the Aeros come back when you save (so you can check a new object in-sim risk-free). After 24 hours, removed objects return to your account pool to re-place for free, or refund from your Wallet at 50%.
Your wallet
The yellow balance pill in the top bar is your wallet's front door: click it anywhere for a popover with today's earnings bar and your spendable balance. From there, the full wallet page shows your income-tier multiplier, the objects you own (owned / placed / spare), and the complete ledger.