If you haven’t come across OnAir before, the elevator pitch is this: it’s a persistent, multiplayer economic platform that runs alongside your flight simulator, giving every flight a purpose beyond getting from A to B.
With over 2.5 million registered flights logged and compatibility across MSFS 2024, MSFS 2020, X-Plane 12 and 11, P3D, and FSX, it has built a quiet but dedicated following over the years. You can fly as a freelance pilot taking one-off jobs, or go deep and run your own virtual airline with hired crews, maintenance schedules, route networks, and a player-driven economy. The world keeps running whether you’re online or not, with your AI crews continuing to fly and your industries continuing to produce while you’re away.
One of the platform’s more distinctive existing features is Base Camp, which lets players establish functional airstrips at locations with no official airport anywhere in the world. You place a base camp at a runway, expand it with lights, buildings, and industries, and it appears as a dynamic 3D object directly in MSFS, visible to every other OnAir player. Other pilots can then fly cargo in and out, with economic activity growing naturally around it. It’s a good illustration of the kind of depth OnAir offers beyond simply logging flights.
OnAir’s team showed up today at FSWeekend for a live presentation that covered several new features. Let’s check them out!
Tour freelance support
Earlier this month, OnAir pushed an update making tour missions compatible with freelance operations. When you start a tour, the system now automatically spawns a freelance aircraft at the departure airport matching the one you currently have loaded in your simulator, meaning you can jump straight into a tour without needing to ferry one of your owned aircraft to the starting point first. It’s a quality of life improvement that lowers the barrier to trying tours, both official and community-created.
The 24-hour freelance pass
For anyone who has been curious about OnAir but put off by the subscription model, the team announced a 24-hour freelance pass, giving full access to all freelance features for 24 calendar hours from the moment you activate it. You earn money, gain experience, and progress is saved in OnAir. The pass will be available next week, initially as a three-month programme, with any passes purchased during that period remaining valid even if the system is adjusted later. Pricing starts at €0.39 per 24-hour pass.
It’s a lower-commitment entry point than the existing seven-day free trial, aimed at pilots who want to try the platform around a specific flying session rather than signing up for an extended evaluation period.
Local radio on arrival
A smaller but characterful addition is local radio integration on arrival. When you land at a destination, the system tunes into a local radio station from that area, playing regional music or news to give the arrival a sense of place. It’s a minor touch, but one that fits the developer’s philosophy of making every flight feel connected to somewhere real.
A redesigned companion app
The team also showed early screenshots of a completely redesigned OnAir companion app, currently in development with an open beta planned soon. The app is described as a complement to the main desktop client rather than a replacement, giving pilots quick access to contracts, fleet monitoring, and company activity while away from the simulator.
OnAir is available on a subscription basis with a seven-day free trial at onair.company. The 24-hour freelance pass arrives next week.
