Method and evidence
Data
The game uses real aircraft, airports, airlines and events. A fact is only as good as its source, so every record says how far it can be trusted.
Confidence
- Exact: established and checked, such as coordinates.
- Estimated: approximated from general knowledge or interpolated. It carries a flag to verify before release.
- Placeholder: stands in for something that must be researched, such as an island operator that is fictional because the real service in these years was flown by a state airline.
Right now the 1958 to 1963 prototype holds 100 records across airports, aircraft, airlines and markets. 0 are exact, 100 are estimated and 0 are placeholders. 100 are flagged for verification. That is the honest position of a prototype, and the work ahead is to move records from estimated to exact.
Research
A research pass compared the prototype data with published sources. It checked 123 aircraft figures (66 agree, 30 are close and 27 differ, often because sources define range or take off distance differently), the coordinates of all 38 airports, runway and terminal dates for most of them, 1960 census populations for 28 of 34 markets, and the order books and ownership of the airlines. Where a source and the game disagreed on something that matters, the game now uses the sourced value. Where sources use different definitions, the game value was kept and the difference is recorded. Each aircraft and airport page shows the figures that were checked and the pages they came from.
One finding changed the design. In 1958 to 1963 the air service from Land's End to the Isles of Scilly was flown by British European Airways with Dragon Rapides, and a small independent, Mayflower Air Services, joined it in 1961. The island scenario therefore uses a fictional operator, and says so. Opinion: a scenario about the real independent, which lost an aircraft in 1963, would be a stronger story than an invented one.
The pages were read through a summarising tool, so figures should be rechecked against the originals before any release.
Calibration
The simulation is compared with headline figures from the period. Of the seven reference figures, 2 come from published statistics (the ICAO load factor for 1958 and the combined operating margin of the US scheduled carriers). The others are interpolations or approximations that no source read so far could replace. A pass on those shows the model is in a plausible range, not that it matches history.
| Measure | Reference | Model | Deviation | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Passengers carried on the North Atlantic in one year, both directions, 1958 | 1,143,000 | 1,361,993 | 19% | Within tolerance |
| New York to London share of North Atlantic passengers | 20.0% | 27.8% | 39% | Within tolerance |
| Average passenger load factor across scheduled carriers, 1958 | 58.2% | 65.8% | 13% | Within tolerance |
| Average load factor on North Atlantic services, 1958 | 65.0% | 62.3% | -4% | Within tolerance |
| Revenue weighted airline operating margin across the major carriers, 1958 | 5.0% | 5.7% | 13% | Within tolerance |
| Share of long haul capacity on jets two years after the first jet service (end of 1960) | 40.0% | 37.9% | -5% | Within tolerance |
| Annual air passengers on a thin island lifeline (placeholder operator) | 7,000 | 3,995 | -43% | Within tolerance |
Generated 2026-10-22 from seeds 1, 2, 3.
Strategy runs
Scripted strategies play each scenario for 156 weeks on 4 seeds. The tests look for a strategy that always wins, a scenario nobody can survive and any invalid state. The table shows the median final equity as a multiple of starting equity.
| Strategy | major | charter | lifeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| none | 1.04 | -1.94 | 3.84 |
| biggest | 1.52 | 2.43 | 3.63 |
| cheapest | 1.32 | 2.43 | -2.49 |
| expand | 1.79 | 2.36 | 3.58 |
| conservative | 1.56 | 2.65 | 3.54 |
| mixed | 1.66 | 2.64 | 3.72 |
| diversify | 1.64 | 0.75 | 3.72 |
| investor | 1.25 | 1.98 | 3.57 |
Equity ratio is final equity divided by starting equity. Invalid states or anomalies found: 25. Strategies flagged as dominant: none.
Sources
The following were consulted for the airline spectrum. Treat each as a pointer to check against primary documents, not as final evidence.
- Isles of Scilly Skybus (Wikipedia)
- Skybus to phase out Islanders, focus on Twin Otter (ch-aviation)
- Trunk carrier (Wikipedia)
- Local service carrier (Wikipedia)
- Supplemental air carrier (Wikipedia)
- Dan-Air history (Dan-Air Remembered)
- British United Airways (Wikipedia)
- Britannia Airways (Wikipedia)
- Airline types explained (Aviation Week)
Map outlines come from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain. Fonts are open licensed (Archivo, IBM Plex, Courier Prime, Libre Baskerville). Dataset terms and asset licences will be reviewed in full before any public release of the game.
Browse the records in the encyclopedia.