Here it is generally unclear whether it makes sense to expand the game’s capabilities, because, apparently, the game engine starts to choke with 10k passengers on strong hardware.
For example: You can get more different game experiences in DLC. Of course, you don’t need to add any DLC. It is just a plug-in to make the game more fun.
It was said here that I will get ears from a dead donkey faster than a Russian plane in the game, and you want DLC. Good luck!
That might be true. New planes are in work for months as they are very detailled since Rubble makes this wonderfull job. So in case all the planned aircrafts are finished and he has time to start Russian ones, it will take a while until it’s perfect. 
Regarding this topic, the thing I like is the tourism one. And that doesn’t really need a DLC. It is the opposite of some current emergencies and causing instead a higher load of pax during some days in the year. Or as suggested, a huge number of bags.
They said for the time being. They said nothing about abandoning ACEO. And they should make at least one DLC (I believe cargo is what most people want) to get some well deserved cash.
I mean their much much much bigger Swedish brother would have given (without any shame) the Emergency, Terminal and Turnaround updates as payable DLCs (probably multi-floor as well). Please @Olof don’t follow that path.
Well, as I’ve written on a few different places we’re independent (indie), self-managed, self-published and self-funded (via sales of course) developers and not in the business of collecting cash just because there’s an opportunity for it. ACEO will first of all be completed and become as good as it can be and it will of course also be maintained after its 1.0 release, we do have some very minor content plans after that 1.0 release as well but nothing in the scale of a full cargo DLC or any other major DLC.
Why? Well, for us as a studio and as a long term business it makes much more sense from both a purely psychological perspective (it’s time to do something new… 
) but also from an organizational sustainability perspective to use the experience and funds we’ve allocated from developing ACEO and to put that into the development of our own, re-usable Unity mid-layer engine built with modern architecture practices originating from a perspective of reliability, agility, scalability and performance (that’s a lot of buzzwords lol). Something that we can maintain and re-use long term, try out loads of different game ideas with and see how much better we can get. ACEO is the only piece of software and only game we’ve ever built and considering everything it turned out to be a pretty good first try, and I am 100% convinced that a second try would result in a multiple times over better product. In the end, such an investment could perhaps a lot further down the road lead to an more cohesively designed and extremely more performant Airport CEO 2 in 3D… and that to us is a much more entizing goal than spending another year on a cargo DLC for ACEO.
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So will the cargo compartment of the passenger plane be used?
It’s already being used. We have ULD loaders for the large planes and baggage loaders for small and medium planes.
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I was actually just talking to one of my friends a couple days ago who plays airport ceo too and we were both saying how we would love to see a game like airport ceo but in 3d and especially if it wasnt limited to a tile based system.
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I mean, the creators of Sim Airport have already taken on another game so it makes sense that ACEO (the original) will be completed in the coming months without more major updates after full release. I too would LOVE to see a 3d version. Of course, Sky Haven is in 3D but for me, it would not fare even close to a ACEO 3D. 
I would like to see a cargo aircraft DLC
Developers announced on Discord channel that there won’t be a large scale DLC like Cargo and historical airplanes.
@Olof I totally understand that from your business / personal perspective a new game is the way to go. Before you only go into bugfix only mode for ACEO, could you add more modding functions that the community would be able to add new aspects to the game?
In ModLoader Development Halted - #6 by Fishbait32 you already had some discussions about modding and said that you first wanted to finish the game before making the code more mod friendly.
I think some of the most used features in mods would be:
- Add new airplane models to ACEO (from historic, to future,…)
- Add new vehicles to ACEO (maybe with new /modded services)
- Alter game variables, like fees, contract prices, shop payments, staff payments, passenger needs (alter current needs like toilet-need and probably be able to add new ones). To be able to change the values when passengers will arrive, when the check-in opens and when service vehicles will be send to an airplane stand.
- Add more configuration options for airlines, like
- home country field, so if you have an Airport in Germany, you will not see an American Airlines flight from your airport to Norway, but only to an US airport;
- fixed / configurable number of flights per week (for just have an airport running with a diverse (and realistic) set of planes per airline)
- add an alliance field, so that you can designate a stand / lounge to an alliance like Star Alliance or Oneworld and the flight planner will add all flights from alliance partners to the designated stands.
With that I think the modding community will add really great mods to ACEO. Just look at Prison Architect or Rimworld. They are out for years and I don’t think anyone plays them vanilla.
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Also, I have seen software studios employing freelancers that take care of a DLC to add to the game. Paradox did it with HoI4 Battle for Bosporus DLC. Meanwhile they worked on other projects. If that isn’t possible then an enhanced moddability would really be great being able to add more than cosmetical things.
I can see Airport CEO being around a long time on computers.
That said, where you are going obviously is totally the dev’s call.
We need to stop wasting time and resources on ACEO, and get on with a new project. Hopefully it will be ACEO 3D.
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Agreed!
I’ll always take a well-made 2d game rather than a simplistic 3d game with the only gimmick holding it up is “it’s 3d!”. I’ve seen that before with sequels.
The thing I would most want to see from a sequel is a land expansion system like Prison Architect. You can expand in any direction with no limits.
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Same here - visuals are not everything.
As the devs mentioned, minor optimizations can still come. But not in the size of such a large feature like cargo, hotels management etc.
And I think this is mandatory. You can’t sell a new software and then abandon it directly after release. Also bugfixing has to be done within warranty time.
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I actually don’t care too much about the next step of the production team, because I believe their games will not go bad. So as long as their next game is related to aviation, I will definitely buy it, either Airport CEO2 or Airport CEO3D can be