With the recent release of Airport CEO, I'm sure we are all excited to start playing the game. I love the way that devs are trying to implment the tutorial in a very non-standard way via an "online classroom", but I think that the tutorial system does need some further work (something I'm sure the devs will continue to work on).

However until then, I've been working on a guide for new players that uses the "classroom style", but places the objectives in what hopefully is a slightly better format for new players. I hope you enjoy the guide as I develop it, and I hope this helps you guys enjoy Airport CEO more!

I've inculded a tl;dr section to every step, so you can just follow the instructions without explanations. I've also included a link to an airport that has everything that is mentioned in each guide section.

This guide got it's start on reddit, and has been slighly modified to fit the steam guide layout. If you want to see the original guide, it's sticked up on the reddit here.

So you start the game, choose your CEO's portrait, and choose your airport's location (to my knowledge, the location of your airport doesn't impact anything other than where the flights come from).

When you first load in, there will be a welcome letter form the mayor, and then you'll be in the game! The first thing you want to do is press "tab" on your keyboard to bring up the dashboard. To actually build anything, you first need to sign a contract with a construction company. Do to that you'll want to press the contract button on the left sidebar of the dashboard (I've boxed it in red).

tl;dr:
press tab to bring up the dashboard, and click on contracts (the red box)

Once you're on the contract menu, you'll notice that you only have 1 contract card right now. As you do more stuff more contracts will appear, but for now it's just HWY. You'll notice there is some info in the card (details below). You're just going to click on the card to bring expand the contract.

* Type: what type of contract is it? (Examples: Construction, Fuel, Airlines, etc)
* Class: the "size" of the contract (how many people, flights, size of airplane, amount of fuel, etc)
* Requirements: If the requirements for the contract aren't fulfilled, you can't sign it. (Click on the card to find out the exact requirements)
* Expires: it doesn't really apply right now, but in the future you'll have time limits to finish contracts (Example: when you sign a contract for a food vendor, you'll have a certain amount of time to make a certain number of sales)

tl;dr:
click on the contract card for HWY (I've boxed it in red)

Once you click on the contract card, it will expand to show you the whole contract. All contracts have the same basic layout (The first 2 paragraphs provide background information about the company, which is a cool detail from the developers!). The Paragraphs that you really need to care about is the conditions of the contract (which I've boxed in blue). The conditions will tell you first what you need to do to qualify for the contract (in this case nothing, since it's a construction contract). It then goes into the details of what you get out of the contract (in this case the number of contractors, and how much you pay for all of them). After you've skimmed though the conditions, then you can hit the green sign button at the bottom (I've boxed it in red) to continue.

tl;dr:
click on the green sign button (I've boxed it in red)

After you sign the contract, you'll be ready to bring the contractors on site. They don't automatically come, you need to manually deploy them. To get to the menu shown on the picture, you'll want to open the dashboard with "tab", then click on 'operations' on the left bar (I've boxed it in red), and finally click on 'Construction' (top right corner of the dashboard).

You hit the 'Deploy All' button to send out all the contractors. You can also control the exact number of contractors on the site at any time, via the up and down arrows next to deploy and dismiss buttons. After your initial build, you might want to consider dismissing most of the contractors on the site, since you pay for each contractor for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Below the deploy and dismiss buttons you'll see some additional information about construction and contractors.

tl;dr:
click on operations -> click on construction -> click on deploy all

Now that you've deployed your contractors, you're ready to build the airport! I have an example of an airport I set up, but feel free to setup your airport however you want. Just a few things to keep in mind:

* All the objects that can be built are found in the bar at the bottom left of the screen in the structure and infrastructure tabs
* You'll want to make sure to orient the stands so that the red airplane on the one side of the stand faces the taxiway
* Make sure your runway and aircraft stands are connected via a taxiway foundation (labeled in green)
* you can place as many stands as you want, but I've found that 6-8 small stands are a good number to start off with
* I like to make the taxiways 3 wide so that planes go along the centerline, but two also works (you can see that the taxiway is 2 wide in-between the stands)
* I would recommend that you build a taxiway out to both ends of the runway, because it helps with the flow of aircraft

tl;dr:
* small ATC tower (structure tab)
* small runway (infrastructure tab)
* taxiway foundation (infrastructure tab)
* small stand (infrastructure tab)

After you place all the objects, you'll then need to define the paths that the aircraft will use to navigate around the airport. To show these paths press "T" on the keyboard to bring up the taxiway view. You will notice that your runway, and the front of your small stands will have green dots in front of them. You'll have to connect your runway and your aircraft stands so that the aircraft can move between them. To do this hit the infrastructure tab at the bottom left of the screen (I've boxed it in red)

tl;dr:
hit "T" on your keyboard -> click infrastructure (I've boxed it in red)

After you open the infrastructure tab select 'Taxiway Node' (I've boxed it in red). You're then going to click and drag to place down the nodes and connect the runway with the aircraft stands like shown in this picture.

tl;dr:
click on 'Taxiway node' -> click and drag to connect the runway with the aircraft stands

You're going to want to place holding points on the taxiway nodes to help control aircraft movement around your airport. The holding points will cause aircraft to stop and wait until the path in front of them is clear, and helps prevent aircraft traffic jams, but your airport will work without them

After you have connected your runway with the aircraft stands, double right click on the grass to clear the selection. To place holding points, first make sure the taxiway view is selected ("T" key") and then right click on one of the dots. It will bring up a menu that says 'Select Setting'. What you're going to do is in the menu click on 'Holding Point (click twice to rotate)'. and you will see that the node has become red.

Just some additional information about holding points. You can change the direction that the node faces by clicking on the bottom option of the 'Select Settings' menu twice. You'll want to see how aircraft take off and land on the runway to ensure that the holding point ensures smooth travel. See the picture of the airport at the end of the album to see how I placed my holding points. With the way I have them set up, the aircraft land moving north -> south, taxi to the southern holding point and then move to a stand. For aircraft taking off, the move from the stand, taxi to the northern holding point, and then take off north -> south. This path ensure that the aircraft taking off and landing don't use the same taxiway. Another note, the direction that the aircraft take off is wind depended, so you might notice every once in a while, your aircraft will taxi in the opposite direction than your're used to.

tl;dr:
right click on a green dot -> left click on the option 'Holding Point (click twice to rotate)'

After you placed down all the structures and connected everything with taxiway nodes, you need to open everything up so that flights can land and use your aircraft stands. You'll notice that the runway and all of the aircraft stands have red power button icons on them, this means that they aren't open.

To open the runway, left click on the runway itself to bring up the runway menu. To make sure that flights can land on the runway, you're first going to want to make sure the general aviation slider (I've boxed it in red) under 'Accepted flights' is green and set of the right (you can also enable commercial flights at this time if you wish). Next you're going to want to actually open the runway. On the right side of the menu click on the option 'Open runway' in green (I've boxed it in red). You'll see the option change to a red box that says 'Close runway'. In addition on the far right under 'Runway Information' you'll see 'STATUS:' change from open to close.

tl;dr:
left click on the runway -> click on the general aviation slider -> click on open runway

After you have opened your runway, you can go ahead and open the aircraft stands so that flights will taxi there and bring you that sweet sweet $$$.

To open the stand, left click on a stand and you'll see a menu appear. To make sure that flights will use the stand, you'll want to make sure the general aviation slider (I've boxed it in red) under 'Accepted flights' is green and set of the right (I would lead "commercial" the way it is, since you can't receive commercial flights right now anyways). Next, you're going to want to actually open the stand. On the right side of the menu click on the option 'Open stand' in green (I've boxed it in red). You'll see the option change to a red box that says 'Close stand'.

You'll need to repeat this process to open every stand.

tl;dr:
left click on the stand-> click on the general aviation slider -> click on open stand

After you open your runway and aircraft stands, you'll notice that the red bar that says 'Airport Closed' is still up there. Even though your runway and aircraft stands can receive airplanes, your whole airport is still closed.

To open up the entire airport, bring up the dashboard again ("Tab" key), click on 'Operations' on the left bar, and then select 'Overview' on the top bar. Then under 'Airport Control' click on the slider next to 'Airport Closed', and you'll notice that the slider becomes green, and the text next to the slider becomes 'Airport Open'.

However, even after doing all of this, you'll notice that you'll notice you're still not getting flights. This is because you have to individually accept every general aviation flight by hand. You can do this by clicking on the plane icon on the top menu when it is glowing green and hit accept. If this sounds super tedious to you (which it should), you can just accept all general aviation flights.

To do this navigate back to the operations overview page. Under 'Airport Settings', you'll see an option to 'Always Accept GA', click on the check box (I've boxed it in red) and you'll start receiving flights. (NOTE: If it's night time, no planes will land, so if you click it and nothing happens just wait until the day starts.

tl;dr: How to open the airport
Click operations -> click overview -> click on the airport closed slider

tl;dr:
Click operations -> click overview -> tick always accept GA

Coming soon! :)