Career Mode User Guide
FSFO Career Mode User Guide
This page explains how Career Mode works in FSFO, including pilot progression, schedules, training, scoring, fatigue, and the permanent flight log.
Career Mode uses a local database to track your pilot profile, your active schedule, and your long-term flight history.
Overview
Career Mode is built around three main areas:
- Pilot Profile
Your pilot's name, company, rank, tier, balance, location, type ratings, score, errors, contract legs, and training status
- Current Schedule
Your active scheduled legs
- Flight Log
Your permanent flight history and performance record
Use Career Mode if you want persistent progression across multiple flights instead of isolated one-off sessions.
Getting Started
To begin using Career Mode:
- Open the Career Dashboard
- Click Rebuild Database the first time you use Career Mode
- Enter your pilot name
- Select a company
- Optionally select a type rating
- Click Apply Company
Once accepted, your pilot profile is created and Career Mode begins tracking your progress.
Career Dashboard
The Career Dashboard includes the following major functions:
- Rebuild Database
Creates or recreates the local career database
- Apply Company
Applies for a company and creates your pilot profile if needed
- Apply Type Rating
Starts type-rating training
- Generate Schedule
Builds your current schedule
- Load Stats
Refreshes pilot statistics
- Save Options
Saves career settings
- Flight Log
Opens the permanent flight history window
NOTE: The current Show Contract button is not implemented yet.
Career Options
These options affect how schedules are generated, when flights count toward progression, and whether readiness checks can block a flight.
- Start from last airport
Requires you to begin your next career flight from your saved current location. If enabled, FSFO checks that you are within 10 NM of the pilot's stored airport before the flight is considered ready.
- Fatal crash starts over
If enabled, a fatal crash can end your current career and force you to start over.
- Must fly scheduled flight
Only credits career progress when you complete the next pending scheduled leg in order. If enabled and you do not fly the correct leg, the flight can still be logged, but it will not advance total legs, average score, balance, rank, or career tier.
- Passenger comfort
Enables passenger-comfort rules so smoother, better-managed flights matter more to your career results.
- Can be fired
Enables the career rule that allows poor performance or major failures to put your employment at risk.
- Enable fatigue
Turns on fatigue tracking. If enabled, FSFO checks recent workload and can block career-flight readiness when fatigue rises above the allowed threshold.
- Schedule based on rank
Automatically builds schedules using the pilot's current rank and tier to determine the maximum leg distance. If a full schedule cannot be built within that cap, FSFO falls back to the full eligible route set.
- Must have type rating
Requires the pilot to hold the appropriate type rating before operating aircraft that need one.
- Lock schedule until complete
Prevents generating a new schedule while an existing schedule still has incomplete legs.
- Application based on rank
Makes company applications depend on your current rank, including tier eligibility and hiring probability. It also enforces the rejection cooldown for repeat applications.
Companies and Company Tiers
Companies are loaded from Airlines.cfg. Each airline has a tier. That tier affects hiring rules, contract leg requirements, and pay scaling.
Current contract-leg requirements by company tier: Tier 1 = 30 legs Tier 2 = 60 legs Tier 3 = 90 legs Tier 4 = 120 legs Tier 5 = 150 legs
If you leave a company before satisfying the required legs, Career Mode can apply a contract-break penalty.
Ranks
Career Mode uses a five-rank system:
- Rank 1 - Cadet
- Rank 2 - Second Officer
- Rank 3 - First Officer
- Rank 4 - Captain
- Rank 5 - Senior Captain
Your rank affects:
- the maximum leg distance used in automatic scheduling
- your bidding advantage when schedules are generated
- which companies you can apply to if rank-based hiring is enabled
- your promotion eligibility
- your pay multiplier through Career Tier
How Promotions Work
Promotions are based on two things:
- Total Legs
- Average Score
Requirement: Your Average Score must be at least 92.0 before any promotion is possible.
Promotion thresholds: 50 total legs = Second Officer 125 total legs = First Officer 200 total legs = Captain 350 total legs = Senior Captain
If your flight is not credited toward progression, it will not count toward promotion.
Career Tier and Pay
Career Tier increases with promotion. Pay is recalculated using a tier multiplier.
Current pay multipliers: Tier 1 = 1.00x Tier 2 = 1.04x Tier 3 = 1.08x Tier 4 = 1.12x Tier 5 = 1.16x
When you are promoted, FSFO updates:
- your rank
- your career tier
- your pay per hour
Company Applications
If Application based on rank is enabled, not every pilot can freely join every airline tier.
Current hiring chances: Cadet - Tier 1 = 100% Second Officer - Tier 1 = 100% - Tier 2 = 50% First Officer - Tier 1 = 100% - Tier 2 = 100% - Tier 3 = 50% Captain - Tier 1 = 100% - Tier 2 = 100% - Tier 3 = 75% Senior Captain - Tier 1 = 100% - Tier 2 = 100% - Tier 3 = 95%
If you are rejected by the same company, FSFO enforces a 7-day wait before trying again.
Type Ratings and Training
Use Apply Type Rating after you have joined a company.
Type rating requests will be blocked if:
- no pilot profile exists
- the pilot is not currently employed by a company
- the pilot is already in training
- the pilot already holds that type rating
Two training paths are available:
- Private Training
Costs money immediately
- Company Training
Extends contract legs instead of charging the balance directly
Training duration and costs depend on the type rating group.
Schedule Generation
Schedules are built from your route data and filtered by:
- current airline
- rank
- type rating, if type-rating enforcement is enabled
- current location and preferred airport logic
If Schedule Based On Rank s enabled, FSFO automatically applies a maximum leg distance by rank:
Rank 1 = 750 NM Rank 2 = 1500 NM Rank 3 = 4000 NM Rank 4 = 8000 NM Rank 5 = 10000 NM
FSFO first tries to build a schedule using that cap. If it cannot build a full schedule, it falls back to the full eligible route pool.
If Schedule based on rank is disabled, the Max NM value entered by the user is enforced strictly.
If Lock schedule until complete is enabled, FSFO will not generate a new schedule while an incomplete schedule already exists.
Schedule Bidding System
Lets you request specific route segments when generating a Career Mode schedule. Enter your bids in the Route Bid box using directional airport pairs separated by commas, for example: KBOS-KBGR,KBGR-KDEN. Bids are directional only, so KBOS-KBGR is different from KBGR-KBOS. FSFO applies bids in the order entered, and each bid must maintain schedule continuity — the next bid must depart from the airport where the previous leg ended, otherwise the remaining bid is wasted..
If Schedule Based On Rank is enabled, each bid leg is awarded based on the pilot’s current rank:
Current rank-based bid chances: Rank 1 = 20% Rank 2 = 40% Rank 3 = 60% Rank 4 = 80% Rank 5 = 90%
If Schedule Based On Rank is disabled, FSFO will try to honor the requested bid exactly as entered, but only if it can still build a continuous schedule from the pilot’s current location.
Preferred Airport
You can set a preferred airport for a company. FSFO uses that airport when generating schedules and gives preference to routes that end there, especially near the end of a generated trip.
Route Map
After a schedule is generated, FSFO can build a route map from the loaded schedule legs and open it externally.
When a Flight Counts Toward Progression
A flight does not automatically count toward career progression.
If Must fly scheduled flight is enabled, the flight must complete the next pending leg in order.
FSFO compares:
- the actual flight number
- the actual departure airport
- the actual arrival airport
For the leg to count, the pilot must:
- start at the correct airport
- arrive at the correct airport
- match the next pending scheduled leg
If the flight does not meet that requirement:
- it can still be logged
- it will not increase Total Legs
- it will not update Average Score
- it will not reduce Contract Remaining Legs
- it will not update Balance
- it will not trigger promotion
If the next scheduled leg is completed correctly, it is marked COMPLETED. If that was the final remaining leg, the schedule is cleared.
Flying a Career Flight
Before flight, FSFO captures:
- company
- flight number
- aircraft
- departure airport
- arrival airport
During flight, Career Mode monitors multiple operational and scoring categories.
Examples include:
- pitch exceedance
- bank exceedance
- G-force exceedance
- IAS exceedance
- taxi-speed exceedance
- light misuse
- fuel-management failures
- landing-performance issues
These events affect the total score and increment the appropriate error counters.
Landing Score
Landing Score is based on:
- vertical speed
- G-force
- distance from the runway threshold
When runway data is available, the current weighting is: Vertical speed = 40% G-force = 30% Touchdown distance = 30%
If runway threshold data is unavailable, the distance portion is redistributed proportionally between vertical speed and G-force.
Total Score and Qualification
Career Mode stores both:
- Landing Score
- Total Score
A flight is currently marked Qualified for Progression when the total score meets the system's qualification rule. The flight log stores that qualification result along with pay, fines, and error counts.
Fatigue
If Enable fatigue is turned on, FSFO calculates fatigue from your recent workload using both:
- number of legs
- block hours
It evaluates three rolling workload windows:
- Last 24 hours
- Last 72 hours
- Last 7 days
Current formula: Acute Load = max(legs in last 24h / 3.5, block hours in last 24h / 7) Short Load = max(legs in last 72h / 7, block hours in last 72h / 16) Weekly Load = max(legs in last 7d / 14, block hours in last 7d / 32)
Each load is clamped from 0 to 1.
Final fatigue: Fatigue = (Acute Load × 50) + (Short Load × 30) + (Weekly Load × 20)
The result is capped at 100 and rounded to the nearest whole percent.
Career Mode readiness fails if fatigue is greater than or equal to 75%.
Flight Log
The Flight Log is the permanent history of your career flights.
Each flight log entry stores:
- date
- company
- flight number
- aircraft
- from airport
- to airport
- block time
- landing score
- total score
- landing rate
- landing G
- block fuel
- critical/configuration/lights/speed error counts
- qualification result
- pay earned
- fines paid
Use the Flight Log window to review your performance over time.
Notes
Quick reference notes for current Career Mode behavior.
- Career Mode currently supports one local pilot profile
- The current schedule stores only the active trip
- The flight log is the permanent historical record
- The current Show Contract button is not implemented yet
Troubleshooting
"PilotProfile was not found"
Create or rebuild the database, then apply to a company.
No schedule was generated
Check that:
- routes.csv exists
- the file format is valid
- routes match the current airline
- type-rating rules are not filtering everything out
- the requested leg count is realistic for the route pool
My flight did not count toward progression
If Must fly scheduled flight is enabled, verify that:
- you flew the next pending leg in order
- you started at the scheduled departure airport
- you arrived at the scheduled arrival airport
- the flight number matched when required
I cannot generate a new schedule
If Lock schedule until complete is enabled, finish the current schedule first or turn that option off.
For additional setup help, see Getting Started. For general problem solving, see Troubleshooting.
