Review Insights · App Store
Pocket Planes: Airline Tycoon
NimbleBit LLC · 7,608 ratings · ★ 4.7
4.7
★★★★★
7,608 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 40 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
28 negative reviews mention this · 70% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Monetized slop. Stop filling the classic games with content you have to pay to use…it’s pathetic and spits in the face of your fans!" - nimble lover369
2
"years"
10 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Wow. Waited years for an update just to have a $40 paywall" - LE03000
3
"money"
7 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hate how the game plays now. Pocket Planes finally made an upgrade. Most of the upgrades are good. They changed how much money is needed to fly a plane - change makes it harder. I dont play it as much as I used to" - Wildrufus
4
"games"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Monetized slop. Stop filling the classic games with content you have to pay to use…it’s pathetic and spits in the face of your fans!" - nimble lover369
5
"update"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No support, hangs on start. Great app that I’ve had for a long time. Unfortunately, it seems like Nimblebit is either gone bankrupt, shut down or is struggling to survive. Most of their apps don’t get updated in less than two year intervals anymore. That means they ha…" - Browny901
6
"phone"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No support, hangs on start. Great app that I’ve had for a long time. Unfortunately, it seems like Nimblebit is either gone bankrupt, shut down or is struggling to survive. Most of their apps don’t get updated in less than two year intervals anymore. That means they ha…" - Browny901
7
"pocket"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hate how the game plays now. Pocket Planes finally made an upgrade. Most of the upgrades are good. They changed how much money is needed to fly a plane - change makes it harder. I dont play it as much as I used to" - Wildrufus
8
"plane"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hate how the game plays now. Pocket Planes finally made an upgrade. Most of the upgrades are good. They changed how much money is needed to fly a plane - change makes it harder. I dont play it as much as I used to" - Wildrufus
9
"playing"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Extremely laggy. I really do love this game. I had been playing it for 10+ years since it came out. I recently switched from android to iOS and on iOS things are terrible. Every aspect of the game is slow and choppy with animations lagging. My phone also …" - Skpapandrea
10
"love"
4 negative reviews mention this · 10% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Love the game but world is flat. Dear Nimblebit, Is it possible to make the world round so that I can fly from Tokyo to LAX directly?" - Iloveneko2
11
"nimblebit"
4 negative reviews mention this · 10% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Love the game but world is flat. Dear Nimblebit, Is it possible to make the world round so that I can fly from Tokyo to LAX directly?" - Iloveneko2
12
"love game"
4 negative reviews mention this · 10% of all complaints
📋 All 40 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Monetized slop
Stop filling the classic games with content you have to pay to use…it’s pathetic and spits in the face of your fans!
Love the game but world is flat
Dear Nimblebit, Is it possible to make the world round so that I can fly from Tokyo to LAX directly?
If you have a brain; you’ll hate this
I played this game since 2014. If it was good, this review wouldn’t exist
-sincerely
Someone that’s played this game since 2016
-sincerely
Someone that’s played this game since 2016
No support, hangs on start
Great app that I’ve had for a long time. Unfortunately, it seems like Nimblebit is either gone bankrupt, shut down or is struggling to survive. Most of their apps don’t get updated in less than two year intervals anymore. That means they haven’t bothered to update it just to be compatible with anything after IOS8 or the iPhone6. If you try to start the game on anything still supported by Apple, it hangs on startup, sometimes more than once. If you sit and wait long enough, it will USUALLY free up and actually be usable. The game doesn’t really need any fancy new function but either Nimblebit needs to maintain compatibility as IOS gets updated or pull it. I am avoiding ANYTHING by Nimblebit. No telling what else they could mess up on my phone.
Money grab
After market purchases are terrible. One of the biggest money grab games I have ever seen. Not even joking. You buy something and can’t use it till you buy something else and you have to buy something else to use that thing. It’s incredible. Wouldn’t recommend this app. It isn’t what it use to be.
Wow
Waited years for an update just to have a $40 paywall
VIP
This is the first update in years. They tote a new aircraft carrier for the update! Oh wait it’s locked behind a $40 VIP purchase to even gain access to it… what a greedy money grab.
Ok
Its a fun game but when i start to grow and acquire more places, its hard to find your place on the map. The place your suppose to go pulses on the screen but its so fait that i spend more time trying to find the location than playing
Waste of time
Game lets you buy any airport but the airplanes won’t tell you if they will make the trip or not.
Total waste of time after that. Not playing anymore.
Total waste of time after that. Not playing anymore.
ridiculously choppy performance
Even on a phone connected to an outlet this game runs unacceptably slowly. Especially with just being 2D pixel art. I do not recommend this game because of how terrible the performance is, even with no internet connection. On a plane, it’ll make your phone die so fast. Ironic, for being a plane game!
Downfall of a great game
This game use to be so fun and enjoyable. I redownloaded after nearly 10 years of not playing but now it seems like the developers are just trying to squeeze whatever value they can from it. Laggy gameplay, spammy ads, and no new game updates makes this game is just about unplayable. Even when you do watch the advertisements you never get the reward promised. Shame on the developer.
So laggy
I used to love this game but it lags and it’s annoying!
Was good.
Just like Tiny Tower, I used to LOVE this game. Cute art, nice mechanics, gameplay kept me coming back for me coming back for more. I took a break and came back a year later to find it’s suffered the same fate as Tiny Tower. Stuffed full of ads. Idk what happened, but you’ve sold out. Congrats. Deleted.
What happened to this game
Devs took an absolute classic and stapled three glowing buttons to it filled with ads that make it look like I’m on a shopping app
Fix the Performance Issue
I have submitted multiple tickets regarding terrible performance issues with.Pocket Planes. I am running V2.10-76-28AD576F on iPadOS 18.1. I have played the game for many years and the performance is so bad, the game is unplayable. Would you please fix this? This issue came up when you pushed this version of the game; prior versions didn’t have this problem.
Charged no confirmation
I pressed the red x on the lost and found page which I thought would back out but nope, it charged me without a confirmation or a finger print scan. Very deceptive practices have ruined this once fine game.
No Sri Lankan airport.
Why is there airport in Sri Lanka
No longer a good game
Nimblebit used to have some great games but over the last few years they have changed to a "money first" mindset and their games have suffered drastically (my guess is the company got sold). Since they added all the ads and the "offerwall" the game is so laggy it's almost unplayable, and makes my phone get quite warm after only a few minutes. The same thing happened to Tiny Tower a while ago. They also have all sorts of tracking now too. I used to be able to recommend any Nimblebit game without question but sadly that is no longer the case.
But are almost useless
What’s the point of bux when most in game events and activities you have to spend real money on? The vip is not worth the money they’re selling it for. Make bux more useful and open up the plane market for more than useless plane parts.
SCAM
THE BUX OFFERS ARE SCAMS!!! They claim that you can complete certain tasks for bux, such as viewing ads. IT NEVER WORKS NEVER GIVES ME MY BUX!!!!!!
Need help
How to fly plane
I can recover my old account
I have played this games for years but ones you lose your account there isn’t a way to get it back or at least that’s what I see…
Pocket Ads
Click the sceeen and collect new ads to watch!
Understandable tracking
This game has been around for an extremely long time and never featured any sort of data tracking. Now it features personalized data tracking.
Well it’s been fun but that’s unacceptable to me.
Well it’s been fun but that’s unacceptable to me.
Nimblebit have sold their souls
The new offer wall button is too close to the planes button and messes with the muscle memory I’ve developed over years of playing this game. There are so many ads in the game that it has lost its simple 8-bit style charm. The game has only gotten worse since the update from the 2017 version. It now feels like one of those scammy websites that offers you gems if you complete a certain number of surveys or offers. Please restore Pocket Planes to its former glory!
New update caused me to lose thousands of bucks
Open game today and saw two things… 1) I was missing about 4000 bux and 2) there was a new ad incentive thing. I can only assume that this update did something that caused me to lose over a week of progress (I also lost a lot of total flights - I’ve been working towards the 10,000 flight achievement).
This game was kinda fun, but mostly just a waste of time. I was planning to 100% achievements then delete, but thanks to this update making me lose a ton of progress… I think I’ll just go ahead and delete it now.
This game was kinda fun, but mostly just a waste of time. I was planning to 100% achievements then delete, but thanks to this update making me lose a ton of progress… I think I’ll just go ahead and delete it now.
No ability open a saved game after deleting app?
Game center can keep track of progress/purchase and past games but why not the app??
Do NOT delete and redownload to fix
I loved this game and what not but at one point after spending time, money, and effort on the game I got stuck at the loading screen. After a couple more tries I decided to delete the game and re-download it. Opening up the game I lost all my progress and reached out to the developers to ask to restore my progress. They said they were not able to do that so I requested a refund and now my refund got denied by apple and I’m putting in another review in for their decision. So now all my time, effort, and money go down the drain and it doesn’t qualify as a refund.
Poorly optimized graphics
There are STILL stretched graphics from the older smaller screen version of the game, the airport city text on the sign is still stretched the blurry.
Apps don’t reward
The game is fun but the ads are supposed to provide a reward. It’s a roll of the dice if they ever do. It’s annoying cause you genuinely want to get coins or bucks and get nothing. Over and over. Then boom works till it then randomly stops working. Why?!
Hate how the game plays now
Pocket Planes finally made an upgrade. Most of the upgrades are good. They changed how much money is needed to fly a plane - change makes it harder. I dont play it as much as I used to
Extremely laggy
I really do love this game. I had been playing it for 10+ years since it came out. I recently switched from android to iOS and on iOS things are terrible. Every aspect of the game is slow and choppy with animations lagging.
My phone also gets pretty warm. I don’t understand because it’s such a simple game. I hope a fix happens because the game is very frustrating to play in its current state
My phone also gets pretty warm. I don’t understand because it’s such a simple game. I hope a fix happens because the game is very frustrating to play in its current state
Please fix game
I have the VIP pass and I'm still getting hit with offers for ads and Microtransactions. Those should be turned off immediately for those who pay.
A once great game
I recently returned to pocket planes after a few years hiatus. However the game is not as it was. Progression has slowed to a crawl for free users and now it takes much longer to earn enough for your first big city. Unfortunately this game has been ruined by the push for microtransactions and the grind has become tedious. I will no longer recommend this game.
Crash and Burn
A once GREAT game, it was fun to play and manage a cute little airline business. Now, way too much ad bloat chokes the game.
The lag and drag is truly horrendous. The game is unplayable because the simplest game aspect, scrolling manifests and the map to load passengers/cargo & select cities along a route, is frustratingly choppy. The game feels like it’s having a stroke as it attempts to process the extremely simple tasks the game was built on. Old phone and new, this problem persists.
If the game isn’t playable, nobody will watch ads to push their little airline along, simple as that.
The lag and drag is truly horrendous. The game is unplayable because the simplest game aspect, scrolling manifests and the map to load passengers/cargo & select cities along a route, is frustratingly choppy. The game feels like it’s having a stroke as it attempts to process the extremely simple tasks the game was built on. Old phone and new, this problem persists.
If the game isn’t playable, nobody will watch ads to push their little airline along, simple as that.
手机都发烫了
手机又卡又烫的，你这是塞了什么不得了的代码在里面
Game is fun, offerwall is a scam
I’ve played this game off and on for at least 10 years. This game is great, but they added “offerwall” which is a way to get extra in-game currency. Turns out it’s an absolute scam. I did the offer for SiriusXM and gave them money for some “bux” and sure enough, my reward never came. I reached out to support for help and they literally said I didn’t have sufficient proof despite having an order number and credit card statements and closed the ticket to the point I can’t reach out to them. I really hope the DEVs just remove the feature all together.
Lies about how much rewards you get from ads
I’ve deleted & redownloaded this game 2 times so I know it’s not a glitch, they entice you to watch an ad for 20 in game dollars. But after you’re done watching the infuriatingly long ad it only gives you 3.
Not much done with this app.
Feels like they’re neglecting this app. Daily ad calendar and free coin are measly- less than 500 coins. Not even cost of a good flight.
Lucky wheels special plane is not explained- I’d won it and was wondering how I get my plane?? Gotta buy it in market - by the time I knew that it was gone.
Flights are going everywhere, so some airports not worth opening without clogging everything up.
Lucky wheels special plane is not explained- I’d won it and was wondering how I get my plane?? Gotta buy it in market - by the time I knew that it was gone.
Flights are going everywhere, so some airports not worth opening without clogging everything up.
No Jobs
Wait a whole day and there’s no jobs. How am I supposed to run an airline when there is no passengers.
Sentiment summary
93%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
4%
Negative (1-2★)