Connecting Flights is a thematic and puzzly, medium weight airline management board game. Your task is to grow your airline by purchasing airports and planes to build a worldwide flight network. The game can be played competitively (2-5 players) or in a solo/cooperative mode (1-2 players) in 60-150 mins. The competitive mode features engine building, hand management, auctions and fierce competition for resources. The cooperative mode is a challenging puzzle, requiring you to work together as a team to purchase assets and transport passengers to their destinations (mechanics: pick up and delivery, hand management, engine & network building).

Connecting Flights features a novel route building system, in which you create flights by chaining individual cards (airport, plane and passengers). You can use your airport, plane and passenger cards, to create different flights in each round of the game, switching them up to minimize your fuel costs while keeping your passengers happy

 What makes Connecting Flights fun to play?

• Asymmetric player abilities drive your strategy, ensuring great replayability.
• High player interaction through auctions, sabotages, trading and negotiation.
• Thematic events – watch out for the Pandemic, Snakes on the Plane, or Snakes on the Plane in the middle of the Pandemic!
• Arranging your flights to minimise fuel costs is a mini-puzzle to solve each time you add a new passenger, plane, or airport. The puzzle gets more challenging with each additional card you get.
• Satisfying combos – will you manage to create a round-the-world flight by chaining 19 cards together?
• Dedicated solo/2 player mode which offers a different experience (featuring pick-up and delivery mechanic), sure to keep your brain working with customisable difficulty levels.

How to play – making flights

Whether you want to play the cooperative or competitive version of the game, you’ll need to know how to make flights. Each flight consists of 4 cards: an origin airport, a plane, a passenger and a destination airport, as shown below.

Each flight you make has to be valid – that means the passenger must be flying on a plane with a star rating equal to or greater than the passenger. The passenger must also land on an airport that has the same or greater star rating. You must also have a fuel truck of sufficient capacity placed on the player card. The graphic design makes it easy to check if a flight is valid:

How to play – competitive mode (2-5 players)

Have you got what it takes to build the most successful airline? In the competitive mode, you’ll need to look out for thematic events (some positive, some negative), sabotages (optional) and get ready to compete for resources in auctions. Over the course of the game, you’ll build up your airline from a single flight to a world-wide network of connections. Each passenger you transport generates an income each round, depending on the passenger’s star rating. To win, you’ll need to have the most profitable airline at the end of the game (in Round 10).

Throughout the game, you will face aviation related events and sabotages, make sure you are prepared!

In each of the 10 game rounds you will:

• Face an event (which affects everyone)
• Have the opportunity to buy/trade cards and fuel truck tokens (in Auction and Marketplace phases)
• Create flights and generate income
• Sabotage another player, or get sabotaged! (optional)

How to play – solo/cooperative mode (1-2 players)

When playing solo/cooperatively, your task is to cope with the passenger demand and take all passengers to their desired destinations before the game ends. New passenger meeples appear on the board in each of the 10 game rounds. Moving them around is done by constructing flights using the cards you have purchased.

Over the course of the game, you will accumulate airport, plane and passenger cards, allowing you to transport more passengers each round. Figuring out the optimal flights to fly as many passengers home as possible becomes more challenging as your airline grows.

In each of the 10 game rounds, you will:

• Have the opportunity to buy new cards and fuel truck tokens from the market
• Create flights to move passengers around on the board (hopefully take them where they want to go)
• Add new passengers onto the board
• Gain income and pay penalties for overcrowded airports