I'd be interested in checking into that. I've been poking around at Arcana the last few months and would certainly love to do some runs at some point.

In scenario one I would suggest that you purchase only McDonnell Douglas DC-8's. Other aircraft might be cheaper, but no other early plane in scenario one can beat the DC-8 for fuel economy, available seating and flight distance. I would also suggest starting in London or New York so that you have the strongest monetary start possible. Because slots in certain cities can be slow to refill, focus on creating routes which use three to six slots instead of fourteen slots. Although we do want some profit -- and fourteen slot routes can certainly generate a bunch of profit -- we also want to 'sprint' across the world as fast as we can. Waiting to build several fourteen slot routes will slow us down to a crawl and allow our opponents time to expand.

On the 'Beginner' difficulty, one of the requirements for victory is to have 2500K passengers per year which equates to 625,000 passengers each quarter during that year. Knowing that, we can use a bit of math to narrow down exactly how many slots in each city we will need and how many planes we need to purchase. A DC-8 that is using six slots on a route and has no empty seats will generate 38,736 passengers per quarter. A DC-8 that is using three slots on a route and has no empty seats will generate 19,368 passengers per quarter. Therefore, thirteen six slot routes and eight three slot routes should cover the 625,000 passenger requirement and then some ( 625000-(38736x13)+(19368x8)). In total we will need 34 DC-8's at a cost of 2108000K which will be purchased throughout our campaign of worldwide domination. Personally I tend to factor in a bit of 'overkill' into the equation in terms of passengers because I am usually connecting the last few cities in the final quarters of the year which means those cities have not been generating any passengers for me during that time.

You can check how many passengers per quarter a route is generating by going into 'Routes' (the first option on the left on the main screen), selecting 'Change', selecting the route you want to check, and pressing the A button once. On the far right side of the screen you will see two num bers. The one on top is the passengers per quarter.

Also, if the white stick figure passengers beneath the green sales bar and red expenditures bar of the route does not fill the entire space, you have empty seats and are not generating the maximum amount of passengers. To fix this you can either lower the price per ticket, remove aircraft or run an advertisement. If you are in direct competition with a computer player, I would suggest lowering the price to at least -15% or -20%. Doing so will generally allow you to scramble back on top and win the battle for more passengers. I would not suggest setting a ticket price above 0% if the route is near an opponent. If an opponent opens a route in direct competition you will then want to lower the ticket price, which means that you will have to do a bunch of menuing that will slow you down. On other routes, adding +5% to +15% onto the ticket price should be fine.

I am glad to hear that someone else has an interest in Aerobiz Supersonic! Although I have played the game casually for quite a while, I am new to speedrunning the game. So keep in mind that there may be a better strategy than what I am currently using.

The most important choice in the speedrun is the home city. In 'Scenario 1' (the Dawn of the Jet Age - 1955~1975) New York is the best home city in my opinion. Not only does New York start with 1540000K, but North America is the single strongest area in the time period. Most routes opened in the region will be rather profitable, allowing you to further extend your starting cash (unless a competitor also starts in the same region). North America is also a difficult market for the AI to penetrate as South America is weak and an aggressive strategy to penetrate the Europe market will keep the AI in that region on the defensive.

Basically, we want to sprint across the world as fast as possible, set up a hub in each region and then be number one in passengers for four of them (you must also be number one in your home region). The primary focus should be on spanning the globe and assessing uncontested regions to take over with the least amount of effort. Do not attempt to focus on creating profitable routes outside your home region. The only thing that matters is siphoning passengers from your competitors, so lower the price of tickets to -50% when invading an occupied region. Do not squander open slots in hub cities. Open a route with one flight a week to connect the area and then use the remainder to either open regional routes or hop to another hub city.

I aim to win the game before or a year after the 707-120 and DC8-30 are made available in 'Scenario 1'. Once those planes are available, overpowering a competitor in certain regions can become a long, drawn out process. Also, by the time those planes are being sold you are almost certain to be running out of money. Typically I purchase twenty Lockheed L1049's in the first two turns and then purchase ten to twenty Boeing 707-120's once those are available. The Lockheed L1049 can fly the farthest distance and can carry the most passengers until the jets arrive. The Boeing 707-120 is a competition killer and can guarantee a victory in a region if you move fast enough.

Since the game is comprised entirely of menus, navigating through the menu system is another big part of the game. Even on the fastest setting, the text speed is abysmally slow. However, if you press up, left, right, or down on the d-pad then the text speed is increased significantly. Unfortunately you must be careful because if you hold the wrong direction when a screen comes up you can lose a few seconds to waiting for the cursor to move, for information to load, getting back a desired plane you passed by, and so on. I also disable the un-skippable animation that plays each time you open a new route to save time and to remove an annoyance (I am still contemplating whether or not that should be an official rule).

The overall strategy changes a bit since competitors are randomly selected, but I typically start by opening two or three routes in my home region. Unless a competitor starts in North America, I only need two or three routes to maintain first place in passengers for that region. Next, I focus on negotiating slots in Mexico, London and Tehran/India to fast-track the rapid expansion. Cairo is typically embattled (Gulf War II) for much of the game, so if I think the game is going to go fast I head into Tunis to take over Africa. I usually open a hub in Hong Kong and then for the final stop I slide into Sydney.