Economy Class

You can print these rules directly from your browser, or you can download the Economy Class PDF and print it out.

by Jeremy Bushnell

Object

Successfully Board your connecting flight before your opponents can board theirs.

You Need

Two coins
Small objects to serve as pawns
Some scrap paper
The Economy Class game board

Setup

Each player flips one pair of coins twice. Use the Departure Gate Chart on the lower right of the board to derive a Departure Gate and a Starting Gate from the results.

Each player again flips one pair of coins twice. Use the Goal Chart on the lower left of the board to derive a Goal from the results. On the scrap paper, write this Goal down: this is the beginning of your Goal List.

Place your pawn on your Starting Gate square.

Peacefully select someone to go first.

Play

On your turn, you may choose to move, or flip for an Event.

Moving:
If you choose to move, flip your coins and check the Movement Chart at the top of the board. Then move the indicated number of squares. You may not move diagonally.

If you move onto [or through] a square containing an icon that matches one of your Goals, you may cross that Goal off of your Goal List, unless you have been prohibited from doing so by an Event. If you have more than one Goal on your List, you may complete them in any order.

Moving onto the Moving Sidewalk square takes you [somewhat improbably] to the Moving Sidewalk square on the opposite side of the board.

Events:
Events are of two primary types: Transferable and Non-Transferable. Non-Transferable Events affect you, either immediately or at some specified point in the future. Transferable Events affect an opponent of your choice, and they do not take effect until you declare you are playing them. You may play Transferable Events at the very beginning or the very end of your
turn only.

Winning

If you land on your Departure Gate Square with no Goals remaining on your List, you successfully board your flight and win the game!

Variants

This Airport is Huge!
For a longer game, play with more than one board. Treat each board as an additional Terminal; give each Terminal a consectuive number. All players initially begin in Terminal One, and all Departure Gates are initially in the Terminal with the highest number. For Gate Change events, add additional coin flips to determine the Terminal number of your new Departure Gate.

In a multi-board variant, Moving Sidewalk A will take you to Moving Sidewalk B in the Terminal one number higher; Moving Sidewalk B will take you to Moving Sidewalk A in the Terminal one number lower. Moving Sidewalk B in Terminal One is out of order; as is Moving Sidewalk A in the Terminal with the highest number.

Origin and Credits

In the fall of 2000, the Invisible City Productions staff decided to attend March 2001’s Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) convention in Las Vegas. Since our commercial game releases are still in the planning phase, we knew that we’d be mainly showcasing the free games on the site. We brainstormed for a while about how to do this, and we attempted to condense some of our previous releases into a form that would fit on a single flysheet or on the back of a business card. Those avenues didn’t produce any spellbinding results, so I decided to create a new game for the conference, designed to fit on one sheet of paper: the rules on one side and the playing area on the other.

I’m a frequent traveler, and for some time, I’d mused about creating a lightweight game that could be played in an airport, in order to save me from reading scavenged copies of USA Today during the tedious airport downtime. I realized that an airport game would work great as a GAMA giveaway, since many of the conferees would be departing by plane, and thus would have immediate opportunity to play the game. Once I decided that the content should match the form — that the game should be not only playable in an airport but also about being in an airport — the thing practically wrote itself.

I’m proud of my decision to use coin pairs as a replacement for dice. People are just more likely to have coins handy in an airport, and the probabilities distribute out in neat ways. I also am happy with the concept of transferrable bad luck, which gives every player in the game a petty minor diety status, but also adds a necessary element of strategy into what would otherwise be a pretty basic race game.

Thanks to Jon and Sharon for their help in cooking up some of the game’s locations and events.

Credits:
Concept, development, graphic design : Jeremy P. Bushnell
Editing, conceptual assistance : Sharon J. Cicheli
Conceptual assistance : Jonathan A. Leistiko