Cleaner navigation and tighter simulation rules

Since our intro post, we spent most of the week making Jetstream Empire feel more like a real airline ops desk and less like a pile of screens. The headline change is navigation: five clear tabs instead of six overlapping ones. Under the hood, we also tightened simulation rules so "active" routes mean something, and we shipped optional custom aircraft liveries you unlock with JetCoins.

Five tabs, one mental model

The mobile app now follows a single navigation pattern: Live, Fleet, Network, Finance, More.

We removed the extra Airline tab. It duplicated summaries you already had on Fleet, Network, and Finance, and it added a fair bit of "where do I go for this?" friction. Your airline profile and reputation are still there, reachable from More within a tap or two.

Network is the other big change. Your active routes and the route marketplace now live in one place, switched with a segmented control at the top. You browse opportunities and manage what you already own without bouncing between tabs.

More is organized into grouped sections (Operations, Company, and the rest) and includes a proper Settings screen. Fleet and Finance got skeleton loading states and clearer empty-state prompts when you have no aircraft or no ledger history yet.

If you create an airline and leave mid-onboarding, the app now resumes at the right step instead of dropping you on a generic dashboard. That was a small bug, but it mattered: early players were losing the thread between "name your airline" and "acquire your first route."

Routes that sit idle now cost money

One gap in the simulation was too forgiving. You could mark a route active, lock slots and parking, and pay almost nothing until you published a rotation and actually flew it.

That is no longer free.

An active route without a published rotation now accrues a daily holding fee on the tick. The fee is tied to prorated rent and minimum crew standby, and it shows up in your ledger with the route callsign so you can trace it. Your first route gets a short onboarding grace period so new CEOs are not punished while they are still learning the rotation flow.

We also enforced rules that were always intended but not always applied consistently:

• One aircraft, one active route in the MVP. You cannot assign the same tail to two networks at once.
• Readiness gates on activation. A route will not go live if the assigned aircraft is not in a flyable state (maintenance, livery generation in progress, and similar blockers surface as warnings first).

These changes are not about punishing experimentation. They are about making the daily books honest. When a route says active, something should either be flying or costing you money to hold the rights.

Custom liveries are optional (JetCoins)

Jetstream Empire is a management sim, but we still want your airline to look like yours when you choose to invest in it.

New aircraft arrive with a default look. Custom paint is not included on purchase or lease. From the aircraft detail screen, you can spend JetCoins to queue AI-generated liveries based on your airline branding. The pipeline uses white-base template photos per aircraft type, then paints your colors and logo across multiple views (ramp side, gate angle, front). Generation runs in the background; you will see progress on the fleet screen while it finishes. If you are short on JetCoins, the Empire Store is where you top up.

We also wired alliance invite notifications so partnership requests do not get lost in a menu you never open.

Finance and ledger fixes

Behind the UI polish, we reconciled a few ledger edge cases that were quietly skewing reports:

• Inventory fuel now appears in the finance overview reconciliation, so bulk fuel purchases match what the tick consumes.
• Insurance billing entries align with the same ledger rules as every other balance change.

Money still only moves with a ledger line. These fixes were about making the numbers you see match the numbers the simulation actually used.

Waitlist rewards

If you join the waitlist before launch and create your account with the same email, you will receive $2,000,000 in starting capital and 50 JetCoins when Jetstream Empire goes live on iOS. The JetCoins are enough to try premium cosmetics like custom liveries without opening your wallet on day one.

What is next

Navigation and the holding-fee policy are in good shape for playtesting. We are still working through visual identity details (callsign labels are wired; player-chosen tickers are a product decision still open) and a few secondary empty states on Crew and Airports.

If you are on the waitlist, nothing you need to do. We will keep posting here as the loop gets tighter.

If this is your first time reading: join the waitlist for $2,000,000 and 50 JetCoins at launch.