Aircraft

From OpenTTD

First Aircrafts are designed in 1928.

Aircraft are the most efficient and profitable method of transport of passengers in the game, with large capacities and the capability to travel long distances much more quickly than a train.

Aircraft also are capable of carrying small amounts of mail, and many can be refitted to carry other types of cargo as well. However, since their capacity to carry either mail or other cargo is fairly small, their usefulness in carrying anything but passengers is limited, especially when compared to trains.

Beyond building airports, no infrastructure is required for aircraft. Airports do take up large amounts of space, however, and so finding (or creating) enough flat land in a reasonably central location within a city can be challenging. Airports successfully placed inside in a large city will rapidly overflow with cargo. They are ultimately limited by the number of gates in the airport, and the long delays in landing and loading cargo.

OpenTTD contains helicopters, but most players consider them almost useless; they're slow, the capacities are very small, they cost almost as much as a plane, and in the future era they become obsolete without an endgame replacement. Nevertheless, the miniscule footprint for helipads occasionally tempts players to try using them anyway.

Below are links to a Comparison table, and the plane database, with planes ordered by design date.

[edit] List of aircraft

• Aircraft comparison table

Temperate/Arctic/Tropical	Toyland
Small Planes
Sampson U52* Bakewell Cotswald* Coleman Count*	Ploddyphut 100
Jet planes
FFP Dart Bakewell Luckett LB-8 Darwin 100 Yate Aerospace YAC 1-11 Bakewell Luckett LB-9* Darwin 200 Darwin 300 Yate Haugan Guru Galaxy Bakewell Luckett LB-10 Airtaxi A21 Bakewell Luckett LB80 Yate Aerospace YAe46* Darwin 400 Airtaxi A31 Darwin 500 Dinger 100* Airtaxi A32 Bakewell Luckett LB-11 Darwin 600 Airtaxi A33 Airtaxi A34-1000* Dinger 1000 Dinger 200 Yate Z-Shuttle* Kelling K1* Kelling K6 FFP Hyperdart 2 Kelling K7 Darwin 700	Flashbang X1 Juggerplane M1 Flashbang Wizzer
Helicopters
Tricario Helicopter Guru X2 Helicopter	Powernaut Helicopter

* this is a small plane, being able to land on small and commuter airports without crashing frequently. A useful technique is to override the colour of small aircraft to something different to your default, which makes the them easy to spot when you build aircraft.

[edit] Accidents

Aircraft will occasionally crash on entering an airport. This will block the runway it lands on for a while and lower your ratings at the airport considerably.

Airplanes have a small chance (0.07%) of crashing each time they land at an airport. Big planes have a high chance (5%) to crash in small or commuter airports. Keep this in mind when building small airports!

Aircrafts will also crash when all airports of that company in the game are destroyed. The aircrafts will explode in mid-air and crash.