DOCS / GAME MECHANICS / TYPE RATINGS

Type ratings

A type rating is vCareer's way of saying "you're cleared to fly this aircraft for completion credit." Some you earn, the rest you buy with ∀Cred. Type ratings are the main money sink — most of the cost over a career goes here.

~5 MIN READ

What a rating is

A rating is a record on your account that authorizes one ICAO aircraft type (e.g. A20N, B77W, PC12) for mission-completion credit. You can declare an aircraft in your hangar without holding the rating — but the generator won't offer missions for it until the rating exists.

Ratings are per-account, not per-class. Once you hold A320, you can fly it for any class whose template accepts narrow-bodies.

Earned vs purchased

  • Earned. The starter rating is granted free on class entry. Milestone ratings are granted at T2 and T3 inside a class. Higher-tier classes earn higher-category starters (Long Haul T1 = B77W, not a C172).
  • Purchased. Anything past the milestone tree can be bought from the Ratings Shop. Prices scale with aircraft category — table below.

The two paths aren't mutually exclusive: earned ratings let you fly without spending, purchased ratings let you spend down a balance you accumulated faster than the milestone tree pays out. The system is designed to never feel like it's wasting your time or your ∀Cred.

Price table

CATEGORY EXAMPLES PRICE
Light GA / Bush C172, Beaver, Cub ∀5,000
Light Twin / Turboprop GA DA42, TBM, PC-12 ∀15,000
Regional Turboprop ATR-72, Dash-8 ∀30,000
Business Jet Citation, Phenom ∀50,000
Narrow-body Jet A320, 737 ∀100,000
Smaller Widebody 767, A330 ∀200,000
Widebody 777, 787 ∀350,000
Super-heavy A380, 747-8 ∀500,000

Authoritative numbers live in docs/economy.md; tuned during alpha based on telemetry.

Buying a rating

Open Ratings Shop from the top nav. Filter by class to see the aircraft pool that class can take missions in. Each card shows the ICAO type, category, price, and whether it's already in your hangar.

The purchase flow is one-shot: confirm the price, the balance is debited, the rating is granted. No refunds. If you don't have the aircraft in your sim, declare it first in the Hangar — a rating without a sim install is wasted ∀Cred.

Starter + milestone ratings

Per-class starter ratings (granted on entry-test pass):

  • Bush → C172
  • Business → DA62
  • Charter → PC12
  • Small Airline → A20N
  • Cargo → B738
  • Long Haul → B77W

Milestone ratings at T2 and T3 unlock the next-tier aircraft in the class's typical fleet — for example, Charter T2 grants the PC-24, which is also flyable for Business and Small Airline missions. Some milestones are deliberately "glue" ratings that cross classes; that's the system pushing you to fly broader.

NOTE
Across a full T5-in-all-6-classes career, you'll typically hold 8–12 ratings and spend ~∀900,000 on them. That's the largest single sink in the economy — see Economy → Sinks.