On the other hand, raising prices too much or cutting corners will upset customers and result in a loss of business. Tricky, you might think, and you'd be right. Juggling the many balls of airport management is no easy task. One misplaced building or ignored complaint can lead to a cascade of disasters that leaves your business in financial trouble.

The airport environment is represented by a functional, if a little basic-looking, 3D engine. This has the advantage of allowing you to swing the view around to your heart's content to find the ideal spot for building. A multitude of camera angles enable you to get a passenger's eye view or a quick peek out of the control tower.

After a while, when things settle down a bit, day to day management might become a little monotonous, but fear not - there's a variety of interesting, if life-threatening, things that get thrown in to spice things up a bit. Anything from bomb threats, hijack situations and aeroplane collisions appear from time to time, and more frequently if you tell the control tower to be careless to get more flights out.

The whole experience happens in real-time with events like new contracts and complaints about delays and so on appearing on your ever-present pager. The scenarios generally last at least 10 years, so unless you've really got nothing to do, the game time can be altered. Even so, expect to be burning the midnight oil to achieve your goal. You'll never look at airports in the same way again.