I restart my career on playing Pocket Planes one month ago, so combining my starting skills and my knowledge previously makes me clearly understand the importance of choosing the right planes.
You are first equipped with a Bearclaw P, a Griffon C, a Wallaby P and a Navigator C, which are the planes you want to remove as soon as possible. You should notice that these planes have a very small range and are non-translantic. Therefore, you will need to choose planes that can cross the atlantic ocean easily. Though Supergopher's range is amazing, surpassing the X10 Mapple Pro, it can only carry one passenger or one cargo, therefore being not beneficial for your airline. The Anan Series is not good as well as you are not able to make transatlantic flights with it. My recommended starter planes are the Airvan and the Kangaroo Series, as for being cheap with a high capacity in terms of all Class 1 planes. However, you should only buy 1 Airvan P, 1 Airvan C, 1 Kangaroo P and 1 Kangaroo C ONLY, as you will need to save bux for the best of Class 1 planes - X10 Mapple Pro. A Kangaroo M is not preferred due to it being phased out by the X10. Spending too much bux on Airvan is not good too as Airvans are not going to last long if you want to make more profit. You need to remember that a plane slot is quite expensive when you just started out, so you want to choose the best planes to service. Some others would also prefer to buy Mohawks, but I think that it is unneccessary as Mohawks earn less than X10 but are only 4 bux cheap. To round up, your fleet can be as small as 5 planes while earning decent profits.
Once you reach Level 10 (I did it in 1.5 days), you will start to meet the Class 2 planes. It is good to buy a Birchcraft, but do notice that you should have sufficient Class 2 airports for it to land. Also, the Birchcraft cannot cross Boston-Madrid, therefore you should expand south and build Recife and Lagos to make it transatlantic. Buying Equinox is a waste of bux and plane slots as a X10 Mapple Pro is way better, but it can still make money fast. Pearjets are okay, but buying an Aeroeagle benefits more as Pearjet requires an extra 4 bux to buy, having a small range that requires more upgrades in range to cross Boston-Madrid, 1 slot short and having a high speed (creating large costs). It can profit well though, but not as good as Aeroeagles. I recommend skipping Equinox and Pearjet so that you can save bux on building a fleet of Aeroeagles. Aeroeagles are the best profit makers out of all Class 2 planes. I have bought all 3 planes and they are a main source of profit since they are used.
Do save up bux as you are between level 17 and 19 as Class 3 planes are incoming. First comes the Fogbuster at Level 20. I personally do not know why it received so much hate, it is not a bad plane at all. I think that the only disadvantage is its huge cost (and cannot bust fogs arhhhhh). You can skip Fogbuster as your bux will be much useful on building larger Class 3 planes. However, I got an Fogbuster M and it amazes me with its huge potential profitability. All you need to do to make Fogbusters profitable is to choose short flights; or choose flights that does not have much twists. At level 22 and 24 you get Sequoia and Tetra respectively. Of course, Sequoias are much better for me as for its high range. However, I get quite annoyed of Sequoia's slow speed (though Knagaroo's speed is unbearable). That being said, Sequoia's cheap cost makes it the star of Class 3 planes. Now comes the Cyclone Series, unlocked at Level 26. God may I say that this is expensive. However, its high speed makes it faster to reload the plane and therefore profits more than the turtle Sequoia. You can skip Cyclone as you will need to save up bux for Cloudliners. But for me, even after I bought 2 Cyclones myself, I can still save up enough bux for Cloudliners. If you are hardworking enough, buying Cyclones is not a bad idea. Finally the Cloudliners, I think that everyone has already prepared for this plane so I am going to ignore its cost. You should definetely buy a P and a C as it helps a lot on profitting. Its range is also the best, only upgrading to Level 2, the range is so big that it can make L.A.-Tokyo while only stopping at New York and Istanbul. You will defenitely feel successful and have no regrets once you buy them.
The Level 30 planes are quite useless but UAV C can still make good profits.
That is my opinion on all common planes. Of course, there are more goals that you can set after Level 30. You can explore more once you buy more planes. I hope this helps all players, especially beginners.
In the next blog, I will talk about how to choose jobs. It may seem simple, but it's not.
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