Basic Gameplay

At its heart, Air Hauler is a game where you, the player, own and operate an air transport business.  The game starts the player off with a plane and some start up money.  The type of plane the player gets and the amount of start up money depends on the difficulty level the player starts with.  Players also get to pick a home base, which is provided at no charge.

The game ties in with the most common flight simulators, Microsoft Flight Simulator (FSX), Lockheed Martin's Prepar3d, and X-Plane.  Until recently, most of my flying has been done in FSX.  Several weeks ago, I finally switched to Prepar3d version 3.

The idea of the game is to give the player placed to go and things to see in their flight simulator.  Now, most of your flights have a purpose:  to make money.  Your airplane is the main tool of your business.

At the outset, there are cargos which need to be taken and delivered to various locations.  Most of these loads begin or end at one of your bases, although there are a few which do not.  At its most basic level, the game has you flying cargos from point A to point B.  If you are lucky, there will be a return trip back.

In this way, Air Hauler is like other games, like FS Economy, which is an online game where players run cargos from point A to point B.

These jobs, at least at the hard level of the game, do not pay particularly well.  Some jobs may offer $8,000 or more, but it's more likely one will find jobs in the $1,000 to $3,000 range.  These jobs tend to take players to difficult approaches:  grass airstrips with no lights, no ILS and no charts.

I played my first company just flying cargos from Point A to Point B.  However, there is a lot more to Air Hauler.  For example players can make their own jobs and move their own cargos.  These are far more lucrative than the cargo jobs the game provides.  Eventually one can build factories, and produce their own cargos, which need to be moved to customers around the world.