Crew & Smugglers

Recruiting crew

Crew are hired in the Crew tab, which unlocks at Level 12. There are three ranks. The Crew tab labels them Soldier, Lieutenant, and Captain. The dispatch and Economy screens label the same three ranks Smuggler, Pilot, and Ace. They are the same ranks, just two different sets of words.

Higher ranks can fly anything below their cap too, fly faster, and carry more on remote trades, but they take a bigger wage cut (see Wages below).

What hiring costs: a one-time sign-on fee when you recruit them, then an ongoing cut of every mission you fly (their wage).

Your roster size grows with your level. Your roster size is also your limit on how many crew runs can be in the air at once.

How to send a crew member on a run

There are two places to dispatch crew.

From the Economy tab (available once you have crew)

1. Be at an airport where you have a plane.
2. Buy goods in the Economy tab. They load into your plane.
3. Click DISPATCH on a destination market.
4. Choose Send a Smuggler, pick the crew member, confirm.

From a Lab (the Lab tab unlocks at Level 16)

1. Open a Lab and click Dispatch.
2. Choose Send a smuggler.
3. Pick the crew member and their aircraft, choose how much of the lab stash to send, pick a destination, confirm.
4. You do not need to be at the lab. The crew member picks the cargo up themselves.

What you actually need to dispatch

Just three things:

1. An idle crew member (not already on a run). Their current location does not matter. If they are parked somewhere else, they reposition to the pickup first, which just adds a bit of flight time. You will see this on their card as "@ ICAO (ferry)".
2. A suitable plane: one the crew member's rank is allowed to fly (see the rank table above), with enough cargo room, that is not already in use and not under repair.
3. Cargo to send, and a discovered destination that buys it. You discover airports by visiting them and by trading.

That is the whole list. No airport ownership, no territory, no minimum reputation.

Repositioning crew and planes

• If your crew member or plane is not where the cargo is, they ferry there automatically as part of the run. The extra leg shows up as "pickup" time in the estimate.
• You can also move a crew member or plane ahead of time using Relocate or Move aircraft, which sends them empty to an airport of your choice.

Timing and offline progress

• Crew runs play out in real time while the app is open. You will see a flight time estimate before you confirm a run.
• When you relaunch the app after being away, it catches up on missed time, up to a maximum of 24 hours. Anything beyond that is skipped.
• Higher ranks fly faster: Smuggler is the baseline, Pilot is about 10 percent faster, Ace about 20 percent faster.

Payouts

When a crew run lands successfully:

• The cargo sells at the destination's market price.
• The pilot keeps 25 percent of that sale as their cut.
• You keep 75 percent, which lands in your wallet (or pays down debt first if you owe any).
• Your actual profit is your payout minus whatever you paid for the goods.

The dispatch screen shows you the full breakdown (revenue, pilot cut, your payout, and profit) before you confirm, and it compares it against flying the run yourself so you can decide which is worth it.

Interception risk

Every run rolls once for interception when it arrives. The chance depends on the cargo tier and the pilot's skill.

A higher-skilled pilot lowers this. A top-skill pilot roughly halves the base chance. The final risk is shown on the confirm screen and is floored at 2 percent and capped at 50 percent.

A successful run can also trigger small bonus events: extra cash, loyalty, or a rare skill bump for the pilot.

Crew wages

Crew take a cut of every mission you personally fly, scaled to the size of the job:

These stack across your whole roster but the combined cut is capped at 50 percent of a job, so a big crew can never swallow a whole mission. Because it is a percentage, it stays tiny on small early jobs and grows into a real cost as your payouts grow.

Territory

A successful crew run grows your influence:

• Plus 3 influence at the origin airport.
• Plus 5 influence at the destination airport.
• Minus 5 influence to rival factions at the destination.

Influence holds through a short grace window after the run, then slowly decays at airports that are not your base or a lab. Running crew regularly is one of the main ways to take and hold ground from rivals.

Remote crew trading (unlocks at Level 20)

Before Level 20, you can only buy goods at the airport where you currently are, then dispatch from there. This is why, early on, your buy options are limited to your own location.

At Level 20, the Economy tab adds a section for each idle crew member who has a plane parked with them. From there you can buy and sell directly at that crew member's airport, loading straight into their plane, then dispatch the run, all without flying there yourself.

Remote trades have two limits:

There is also a 10 percent commission: you pay 10 percent more when a crew member buys for you and receive 10 percent less when they sell for you. This is the cost of doing it remotely instead of flying it yourself.

Quick answers

I hired crew but I cannot assign them a plane or give them missions.
That is expected. You assign a plane at the moment you dispatch, not when you hire. And crew fly cargo runs (via Economy or Lab dispatch), not mission-board missions.

Do I need to control the airport?
No. There is no airport-ownership requirement anywhere in dispatching crew.

My crew member is at a different airport than my cargo. Is that a problem?
No. They reposition to the pickup automatically. It just adds some flight time.

Why can I only buy where I am standing?
You are below Level 20. Remote buying and selling at your crew's airports unlocks at Level 20.