Airline Legend vs Aerobiz Supersonic

Aerobiz Supersonic is the 1993 airline game by Koei (now Koei Tecmo) for the Super NES and Mega Drive/Genesis, and a lot of Airline Legend comes from it. This page says what we kept, what we changed, and where the old game is still the better one.

If you played Aerobiz Supersonic (in Japan, Air Management II: Kōkū Ō wo Mezase), most of Airline Legend will look familiar within the first few minutes. You pick a home city, you cannot fly anywhere without slots, and to get slots you send someone to the airport to negotiate. That last idea is straight from Aerobiz, and we kept it because nothing else in the genre makes slots feel as scarce.

What we built on top is a much larger map with small regional airports as well as the big ones, a far bigger aircraft list, and more control over each route. And it runs in a browser, so the same airline is on your phone and your desktop.

Airline Legend and Aerobiz Supersonic side by side

What we took from Aerobiz

Slots you have to go and get. In Aerobiz you send one of your agents to a city to buy slots there, and while they are away they cannot do anything else. In Airline Legend it is a rep: you send one to an airport from the Slots page, they are gone for a few rounds, and they come back with an answer. A small request comes back sooner and is more likely to be granted. Every airport has a fixed number of slots shared by every airline, so a busy one can fill up before you get there. You start with two reps and get more as your network grows. For a new airline, slots are usually what holds you back, not money, which is how Aerobiz felt too.

Hubs. Aerobiz made hubs part of the game: smaller cities hang off a hub, and you need a hub before you can expand into another region. In Airline Legend a hub is what lets you fly abroad, and it makes slot talks at that airport go faster.

History moving under you. Aerobiz had oil crises, wars, the Olympics and the end of the Cold War. Airline Legend follows the real fuel prices and demand of its era, so oil shocks, financial crises and the collapse in travel during COVID all show up in your results. Things also go wrong at random, and what goes wrong depends on the region: hijackings in the United States and China; typhoons that close a whole area's airports and volcanic ash in Southeast Asia.

What we changed

The map. Aerobiz puts about 89 cities on one world map. Airline Legend has 500+ real airports in 490+ cities across six regions (the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Southeast Asia and East Asia). A world is set in one region: you fly to that region's own airports plus the international gateway airports elsewhere, about 240–330 airports per world, already more than Aerobiz has on its whole globe. Every airport sits at its real position with its real runway, and a runway that is too short for an aircraft keeps it out. Demand comes from the size of the two cities, the distance between them and your fare.

Regional flights. Aerobiz's 89 or so cities are mostly major ones, with no network of small airports to build. The Airline Legend map includes the small airports too, and the catalogue has the aircraft built for them: the YS-11, ATR 42, Saab 340, Dash 8, the CRJ and ERJ families and the E-Jets. You can run short feeder routes from small towns into your hub, or build a regional airline that never touches a widebody.

The aircraft. About 42 real aircraft types in Aerobiz, plus some made-up future ones. Airline Legend has more than 180 real types, and in each world you can only order what was being built that year. A 1970 world starts with turboprops and early jets, and the aircraft you want arrive as the years go by. New aircraft are built to order and take a few rounds to arrive; used ones are cheaper and join your fleet the next round but cost more to maintain. You can buy or lease.

The routes. In Aerobiz a route is a hub, a city, a number of planes and a price. In Airline Legend you also choose how many times a week it is flown, and one aircraft can fly a rotation across several connected routes within its weekly hours. A route can also have a fuel stop: when the distance is beyond your aircraft's range, it lands once on the way to refuel, with nobody boarding there, so London to Buenos Aires is always within reach. Before you open a route, the planner shows what it should earn in its first week. After that, the load factor tells you whether to raise the fare or add flights. Service and advertising build your reputation, which wins you a bigger share of every market over time.

The clock. An Aerobiz turn is a quarter. An Airline Legend round is a week, so a fare change shows up in the next result, not three months later. In a solo world the clock is yours: pause it, or skip ahead.

Phone and desktop. Aerobiz needed a console and a TV. Airline Legend is a web app that fits a phone screen as well as a desktop, and your airline is saved on the server, so it is the same one wherever you open it.

Multiplayer online. Aerobiz multiplayer meant four people taking turns at one console. In Airline Legend multiplayer worlds everyone shares one clock online, and the world settles every ten minutes whether you are there or not.

Where Aerobiz is still the better game

• The whole world at once. Aerobiz puts every region on one map, and winning means beating rivals on several continents. An Airline Legend world is one region.
• An earlier start. Aerobiz begins in 1955, with propliners and the first jets. Our earliest era starts in 1970; a world that begins in 1955 is in development.
• The Cold War as a rule. Countries in Aerobiz have a friendliness level; early on, Eastern and Western blocs barely let you negotiate, and some aircraft are off limits until perestroika. We have nothing like it.
• Local businesses. Aerobiz lets you buy businesses in the cities you serve, such as hotels, travel agencies, ferry lines, amusement parks and ski resorts; they earn money and bring in more passengers. Airline Legend is airline only for now; we are working out how best to bring something like it in.
• Four friends on one sofa. Hot-seat play on one console has a charm that online worlds do not replace.

Which one to play

• You want the feel of Aerobiz with a bigger map and more aircraft — Airline Legend.
• You want to play on a phone, or between a phone and a computer — Airline Legend.
• You want to play online against other people — Airline Legend.
• You want the whole globe and Cold War diplomacy, and you still have the cartridge — Aerobiz Supersonic.

Airline Legend is free, so it costs nothing to see how it compares. Play Airline Legend · How to play · More airline management games

FAQ

Is Airline Legend a remake of Aerobiz Supersonic? No. It is a different game by a different studio, with no connection to Koei Tecmo. It borrows ideas from Aerobiz, slot negotiation above all, and builds its own map, aircraft and route system.

Do I still need to negotiate for slots? Yes. You send a rep to the airport and wait a few rounds for the answer. The request can be refused, and a rival can take the last slots first.

Can I play Aerobiz Supersonic today? Only in its old releases. Besides the original Super NES and Mega Drive/Genesis cartridges and the PC-98 version, Koei released Windows 98–XP ports in Japan in 2004 and 2005. We found no version for current platforms.

Is there a version in Chinese or Japanese? Airline Legend is fully translated into Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, as well as five other languages.

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Disclosure: Airline Legend is our game. Everything said here about its current version you can check by playing it for free; features still in development are marked as such. Aerobiz Supersonic is Koei Tecmo's game; what is said about it comes from its Japanese and English Wikipedia articles and from published play-throughs. Where versions differ, we describe the Super Famicom version. If you played on a PC, some rules may differ from what you remember: the PC-98 version, for example, has no split between hub and non-hub cities, and any city can take a head office or a branch. Nobody paid for this page.

Last verified: 20 October 2026. Games change — if something here is out of date, tell us.