Founded 1929 · Kraków, Poland
Almost a century of treating flight like an occasion.
Founded a year before LOT Polish Airlines existed, nearly extinguished twice, rebuilt each time in the image of the city that raised it — and then, in four years of mergers, grown into something no Warsaw carrier had ever been. This is the long way round, and it is why every ticket still includes a meal.
Two things live on this page. The story below is our lore — the mergers and callsigns that explain an airline of this size, told as a story because we like it. Everything after it is how we are actually building the thing: as a work in progress, in the open, shaped by the people who fly it. The Intent page has the full statement →
The story
1929 — A mail run to Prague, and a promise. Founded at Rakowice-Czyżyny outside Kraków by the Simanovski brothers. First flight: mail and passengers to Prague in a Fokker F.VII. From day one, one rule: anyone brave enough to fly in 1929 deserved to be treated like royalty.
1932–1935 — Polskie Linie Lotnicze Słowiańskie. Lwów, Poznań, Wilno. Hot meals on silver over the Tatras — "the Art of the Journey." Headquarters move to Warsaw in 1935; Kraków keeps its wings as the training and maintenance base it still is.
1939–1945 — Grounded, then leveled. Operations suspend with the war. Warsaw, and the airline with it, is destroyed almost entirely. What comes back is rebuilt from less than anyone thought survivable.
1949–1992 — Forty years of not stopping, a second trial by fire, a shorter name. A modest state carrier; the 1991 transition leaves three aircraft and one route, Kraków–Warszawa, the same pair it opened with. In 1992 it becomes simply Slavic Airlines and re-equips aircraft by aircraft.
2015 — First flight west. Long-haul begins for the Polish and Slavic diaspora across the Atlantic.
2021 — Polania Air. A Chicago-based carrier with O'Hare, JFK and Los Angeles is acquired whole. Its callsign, Polania, survives as the American branch's radio name. O'Hare becomes the airline's first non-European super-hub.
2022 — Wendish Skies, and Wend Freight Alaska. Two Wendish Skies carriers — Heathrow and Frankfurt — merge into the Group, bringing the mega-hubs that make Europe a network rather than a spoke of Warsaw. Anchorage arrives the same year as a cargo gateway to the Pacific.
2023 — Lechistan Pacific, and one roof. Tokyo, Singapore and Delhi come with the Lechistan Pacific acquisition — the name lives on as the Asia-Pacific callsign. Cargo, Charter and Express are formally spun up as branches under Slavic Airlines Group.
2024 — Southern Polania and the Gulf Sokol joint venture. Atlanta and Dallas join the American network; a Dubai joint venture gives the Group its Gulf super-hub and the Europe–Asia connecting point it lacked.
2025 — Chicago, Tokyo, and a treaty. The acquired carriers are rebranded as Slavic Air America and Slavic Airlines Asia-Pacific. The Trans-Slavic Aviation Compact is signed. Its signatories include Belgrade, and Serbia never closed its skies east — so the Group's charter arm, under a Serbian designation, flies to Moscow, Sochi and St Petersburg on Compact rights. The aircraft may sleep at Warsaw; the flight is a Compact flight. It is a loophole, and the founders will tell you so cheerfully.
Today — 414 aircraft, 34 hubs, 172 focus cities, 491 destinations. Still headquartered in the country the phoenix rose from. Still flying Kraków–Warszawa. Still serving a meal on every single one of them.
What we believe
One price, always
The fare you see is the fare you pay. No seat-selection fees, no baggage surprises.
A meal, every flight
Gate to gate, whether Kraków to Katowice or Warsaw to Tokyo.
The heritage cabin
Seat pitch stays generous. Deep blues and warm wood, modelled on Polish manor houses.
The Kraków kitchen
Pierogi from family recipes, Baltic spirits, a kitchen that still treats a tray table like it matters.
Not exactly a real airline — on purpose, and we say so
Slavic Airlines Group is a virtual airline for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and everything about its shape is chosen for one reason: the people who fly it. We know this is not entirely how a real airline works. A real carrier does not hand a whole aircraft's day to one pilot who picks it from a board, does not fly to 491 airports because the scenery is worth landing at, and does not tell its crews that the frame is invented. We are not trying to reproduce an airline's back office. We are inventing the version of an airline that is best suited to the person in the seat: the parts that make flying with other people more enjoyable are kept and made real — the line, the connections, the loadsheet with consequences, the aircraft that stays where you parked it — and the parts that are only paperwork are automated or left out. Every choice like that is made to raise engagement and satisfaction, not accuracy for its own sake, and every one of them is open to challenge.
The mergers that gave us Chicago, Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai, Delhi, Singapore, Atlanta and Anchorage are lore, written to explain a size no single airline would reach organically; the operating structure we are actually building is three groups — Slavic Airlines (PSL) hub-and-spoke through Warsaw, Slavic Air Express (PSX) point-to-point from bases, Slavic Airlines Cargo (PSC) blending both at night. Where a decision looks illogical for a real airline, it was almost certainly made on purpose for a simulated one. The demand model, the economics, the connection dependencies and the consequences when a flight is missed are all real inside this world and consistent with each other — that is what makes the flying feel earned. We would rather tell you the frame is invented than pretend it is not.
The mergers that gave us Chicago, Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai, Delhi, Singapore, Atlanta and Anchorage are lore, written to explain a size no single airline would reach organically; the operating structure we are actually building is three groups — Slavic Airlines (PSL) hub-and-spoke through Warsaw, Slavic Air Express (PSX) point-to-point from bases, Slavic Airlines Cargo (PSC) blending both at night. Where a decision looks illogical for a real airline, it was almost certainly made on purpose for a simulated one. The demand model, the economics, the connection dependencies and the consequences when a flight is missed are all real inside this world and consistent with each other — that is what makes the flying feel earned. We would rather tell you the frame is invented than pretend it is not.
How we are building it — intent and method
In the open, one foundation at a time
Airports first — every destination has hand-built scenery and can physically take the aircraft we send, on real runway data, with estimates labelled as estimates. Aircraft second — the fleet is the set of study-level products that actually exist for MSFS 2024, as they ship. Then the calendar: holidays and events tied to the airport that hosts them. Then the network: PSL hub-and-spoke, PSX point-to-point, PSC cargo blending both. Then the schedule and the lines: Virtual Pilots (VP) fly the whole timetable; Command Pilots (CP) bid lines cut from real aircraft days, and find out the final loadsheet fifteen minutes before departure, like a crew does. Then the glue — vAMSYS, SimBrief, GSX and the ACARS networks doing what they were designed to do, our platform adding the consequences.
Three rules sit under all of it. You can fly the line with the base game alone — add-ons only change how much of the airline reaches you inside the cockpit. The airline is shaped by the people who fly it — the more of us on the line, the fewer sectors our Virtual Pilots have to cover, and the richer it feels. And very little of this is fixed — we evolve the concept as we go, to whatever best serves the vision of a working line. All of it is versioned and published, and it changes when we learn something.
Three rules sit under all of it. You can fly the line with the base game alone — add-ons only change how much of the airline reaches you inside the cockpit. The airline is shaped by the people who fly it — the more of us on the line, the fewer sectors our Virtual Pilots have to cover, and the richer it feels. And very little of this is fixed — we evolve the concept as we go, to whatever best serves the vision of a working line. All of it is versioned and published, and it changes when we learn something.
Where we are, and where this goes
Now · v0.0.32
Concept
Very much the conceptual phase. The foundations, this site, the database and backend exist; the integrations are designed and being confirmed with the vendors. Nothing flies yet.
Next · 0.1.x
Alpha — a very small volunteer group
Real lines flown end to end on a Europe-only proof of concept. We will ask for volunteers on Discord when it is ready.
Then · 0.2.x
Beta — hopefully Q1 2027
Registration in waves, the economy switched on, regions added as the community grows.
Goal · 1.0
Execution — hopefully H2 2027
The airline as intended. The date depends entirely on how the community grows.
Every published change ticks the version in the footer. The numbering system and the milestones behind it are on the Intent page.
Built by one person so far — come and build it with us
This concept has been created by a single person. That is its weakness and, for a little while, its speed. More community involvement is what turns it into something shared — and what we are trying to create is a simulated organic environment, an airline that behaves like a living thing because living people are flying it. That will always be better with more pilots on board and more of the community engaged. If you want to be part of this — as a pilot, as someone with development ideas, or as someone who can actually help build a piece of it — you are exactly who we hope is reading. Come and say so on Discord → or write to ops@slavicairlines.com.
Two crews, one airline — the words we use
VP — Virtual Pilot
Automated crews that fly the published schedule around the clock so every route exists the moment you want it, and step aside when you claim the line.
CP — Command Pilot
You. A member who claims a line and flies it. Your arrival is what the connecting passengers are waiting for.
A line
A contiguous slice of one aircraft's real day — same aircraft, same registration, sector after sector.
The loadsheet
Final passengers, bags, cargo and zero-fuel weight, computed from what actually happened upstream and delivered by ACARS before push.