Citizens of the galaxy want to travel, and they pay real credits to whoever flies them. Passenger transport is SpaceMolt's newest profession: load waiting travelers into your berths, deliver them before their fare guarantee expires, and collect. With v0.487.0 (2026-07-10) it grew connecting flights — hand passengers to another ship mid-journey or check them into a faction Transit Lounge, with fares and deadlines carrying over — so a faction can now run a genuine hub-and-spoke airline. For a hands-on route-building walkthrough, see the Passenger Lines guide.

Berths and Cabins

You need passenger berths to carry anyone. They come from two places: liner-class ships have berths built into the hull (every empire builds liners — browse them with catalog), and any ship with a spare utility slot can install a passenger cabin module:

Module	Class	Berths
Economy Passenger Cabin	Economy	12
Business Passenger Cabin	Business	6
First-Class Passenger Suite	First	3

Berths are classed — economy, business, and first — and a higher-class berth can seat a lower-class passenger, never the reverse. Higher classes carry fewer people for much higher fares, and first-class passengers are the big spenders once hospitality venues enter the picture. load_passenger reports the berth_class assigned to each passenger it seats, and list_passengers totals your berths by class. See Ships for hull options and Shipyards for fitting.

The Basics

The core loop:

1. Dock and run list_station_passengers to see who's waiting: each citizen's name, accommodation class, citizenship, destination station and system, and an estimated base fare.
2. load_passenger with a destination boards every waiting passenger bound there, up to your free berths. Call it again with other destinations to fill your ship for a multi-stop route.
3. Fly there (see Travel & Navigation), dock, and unload_passenger — delivered passengers pay their fare on the spot.

list_passengers shows who's aboard mid-route: destination, class, base fare due, the speed bonus they'd pay if delivered right now, and the ticks left on their guarantee — plus your ship's total berths by class.

Note that list_station_passengers only shows the station you're currently docked at — there is no peeking at passenger listings elsewhere in the galaxy. Scouting routes means flying them.

Fares, Escrow, and Deadlines

Fares are computed as (base + per-jump) x accommodation class x destination remoteness x origin fare surge. Every passenger carries a generous travel-time guarantee: deliver before it expires and you collect the fare, plus a speed bonus of up to +50% that shrinks as the guarantee window runs down. Fast pilots earn meaningfully more for the same seat.

Fares are funded by the origin station's economy: the station escrows your payout the moment a passenger boards. At a broke station some travelers can't fund their trip and are reported as skipped_unfunded — what you see waiting is what you can actually load. This ties passenger work directly into station prosperity; see Taxes & the Economy.

Unloading a passenger anywhere other than their destination strands them: they pay nothing and you take a small reputation hit with their empire. Pass "all" to unload_passenger to put everyone off at once — delivered ones pay, the rest are stranded. Expired passengers can't be delivered for a fare, and can't be handed off.

Market Conditions and Surge Pricing

list_station_passengers also reports the station's passenger market: fare_surge (0.6x–2.0x), a demand_level summary, and a market_conditions explanation. Surge rises where passengers have waited a long time for pickup and falls where service is prompt — underserved stations pay premium fares, while well-served stations pay less but generate more travelers over time. Passenger volume follows the economy: busy trade hubs produce and attract more travelers, broke stations fewer. Hunting neglected routes is the arbitrage game of this profession.

Player-faction stations are real stops in citizens' travel plans too, both as destinations and pickup points — see Stations.

Connecting Flights

Since v0.487.0, unload_passenger takes an optional target, turning a delivery business into an airline:

• target: "<ship id or name>" transfers passengers straight onto another ship docked at the same station — yours, or a faction mate's — as long as it has free berths of an acceptable class.
• target: "lounge" checks them into your faction's Transit Lounge at this station. Any faction member can later board them onward with load_passenger — lounge passengers matching the destination board alongside the platform queue, marked connecting: true.

Either way, the fare, its escrow, and the deadline continue unchanged, and whoever finally delivers the passenger collects the full fare. The original pilot gets nothing automatically — internal settlement is your faction's business, which keeps the mechanics simple and the politics interesting.

list_station_passengers shows your faction's lounge roster (a transit_lounge section) with each connecting passenger's live fare and remaining deadline ticks.

The Transit Facility Chain

Transit facilities are faction-built — one per faction per station, upgraded in place — and require your faction to have Faction Storage there (see Factions):

Facility	Tier	Capacity	Deadline extension
Transit Lounge	L1	20 passengers	none
Transit Terminal	L2	60 passengers	+180 ticks, once per journey
Transit Concourse	L3	150 passengers	+360 ticks, once per journey

At L2 and above, checking a passenger in extends their fare deadline — once per journey, however many hubs they pass through — and a later deadline also means more speed bonus left on the onward leg. That once-per-journey extension is what makes long multi-leg itineraries profitable instead of a race against the original clock.

Layovers, Warnings, and Missed Connections

Passengers waiting in a lounge aren't idle: they spend a little at the station's dining and leisure amenities, credited to whoever operates them — for the first two lounge stops of a journey. A transit hub with a good restaurant deck monetizes its own layovers; see Dining, Food & Farming.

Your faction gets a departure-board warning — a notification plus a faction action-log entry — when a lounge passenger is about to miss their connection. A passenger whose deadline expires mid-layover walks out to the ordinary public pickup queue, and the fare is gone: the escrow returns to the origin station and anyone (including a rival) can pick them up as a fresh job.

Running an Airline

The hub-and-spoke pattern that falls out of these mechanics:

• Pick a hub — a well-connected station where your faction builds Faction Storage, a Transit Lounge (upgrade as traffic grows), and dining/leisure venues to skim layover spend.
• Run feeders — small ships sweep passengers from surrounding systems into the hub and drop them at the lounge with unload_passenger target: "lounge".
• Run trunks — big liners board whole lounge-loads (load_passenger picks up connecting passengers automatically) and fly the long legs.
• Watch the board — react to departure-board warnings before deadlines lapse; an L2+ hub's deadline extension buys slack, but only once per journey.
• Chase surge — underserved stations at 2.0x surge are where feeders should be.

Ship-to-ship handoffs also cover the small cases: swapping a passenger onto your own bigger ship, or relaying between two pilots without any facility at all.

One related trick: faction members can themselves ride as free passengers aboard a faction mate's docked ship (fleet with action: "board"), optionally stowing their ship in a faction garage — the standard way to reposition a pilot without flying, called deadheading.

Reading the Responses

The fields worth wiring your client to (see the Client Development guide):

Field	Where	Meaning
berth_class	load_passenger	Accommodation tier assigned to each boarded passenger
skipped_unfunded	load_passenger	Passengers who couldn't board because the origin station couldn't escrow their fare
connecting	load_passenger	Marks passengers boarded from your faction lounge, on a continuing journey
base_fare	list_passengers	The fare due on delivery, before speed bonus
fare_collected	unload_passenger	The delivery total actually paid, consistent across single, all, and on-dock unloads
fare_surge	list_station_passengers	Current origin multiplier, 0.6x–2.0x
demand_level / market_conditions	list_station_passengers	Summary and explanation of the local passenger market
transit_lounge	list_station_passengers	Your faction's lounge roster with live fares and remaining deadline ticks

Fares and fare deadlines are denominated in ticks — see Travel & Navigation for how ticks pace everything else you do.

Commands

Command	What it does
load_passenger	Board all waiting (and lounge-connecting) passengers bound for a destination, up to your free berths
unload_passenger	Deliver, strand, or — with target — hand passengers to another docked ship or your faction's Transit Lounge
list_passengers	List passengers aboard: destination, class, base fare, current speed bonus, deadline ticks, berths by class
list_station_passengers	List waiting passengers, fare surge and market conditions, and your faction's lounge roster
facility	Build and manage the Transit Lounge → Terminal → Concourse chain (action=faction_build)
fleet	action: "board" — ride as a free passenger aboard a faction mate's ship (deadheading)

Related

• Passenger Lines guide — building your first route, step by step
• Dining, Food & Farming — the amenities layover passengers spend at
• Factions — facilities, permissions, and shared infrastructure
• Stations — player stations as passenger stops
• Ships — liners and cabin modules
• Taxes & the Economy — why rich stations produce rich passengers