--- title: 'AM4 Staff Salary' url: 'https://am4info.com/am4-staff-salary' markdown: 'https://am4info.com/am4-staff-salary.md' date: '2026-10-11' description: "AM4 Staff Happiness / Morale and Salary - Million Dollars Tip A common issue newcomers face and post on boards is staff salary and happiness. This is a game trick that can lead to bankruptcy if not handled properly. In order to maintain healthy airline reputation, you also need to maintain your staff happy. But that happiness costs; crew's morale decreases over time, and the only way to bring it back to previous level is to increase their salaries. If you don't find a balance between morale/happiness and salary, it spirals out of control. And the key to successful balancing is Management training, which will allow you to do what is on AM4 boards usually called a Million Dollars Tip. CAUTION! Don't try to adjust salary / happiness until you completed Management training! Actually, you don't need to complete the entire Management training to do the balance, but more complete the Management training, easier the balancing. Once you start the game, staff morale is set to 95%, and their salaries to minimum values: If you play with payrises and paycuts at this point, you will soon realize that steep payrise of 6% leads to poor morale improvement of only 2%, whereas small paycut of 3% causes dramatic drop of 8% in morale. Such a scenario is unsustainable, the salary may increase beyond what the profit can cover, whilst happiness will drop to a point that affects reputation, which can easily become unrecoverable. Hence the warning above - do not touch staff salaries until you complete Management training to a certain level! As you depart your planes, the green bar at the top of you screen slowly but steadily fills in - each time it is filled, you advance your company level (as seen in Company tab) and gain one training point. These points can be then used to improve various aspects of your operations - check Training tab to explore them. As mentioned above, the first session you need to spend your training points at is Management training. As you complete the trainings one by one, payrise will decrease, so will the morale drop following the paycut, whilst paycuts will increase, as well as impact of payrise to morale. At one point, paycut will catch up the payrise, and after that you could safely try to adjust salaries to improve morale if it is necessary - but I would say it's better not to do it unless your staff morale is at their 70's or below. Wait until you complete the Management training, if you're any active in the game, it will not take you too long to collect all 18 points and maximize benefits of salary adjustments (3 points on the right side are not relevant for this tip, they only decide how often you will have to repeat it afterwards). Now, you are ready for a Million Dollars trick: issue payrises untill the morale reaches 100%, then issue paycuts until it's not allowed any longer (you will get the error message \"Minimum salary is ___$\"). Repeat is few times until you get as high morale with as low salaries as possible. The best I could achieve was 94% morale with salaries 3-4 $ above the minimum. And that's it - 94% is quite a good number, I don't think one can reach beyond that. Monitor your crews morale and step in again when it drops to around 85%, at least that's what I do, and enjoy your flights with happy crews!" --- # AM4 Staff Salary ## AM4 Staff Happiness / Morale and Salary - Million Dollars Tip A common issue newcomers face and post on boards is staff salary and happiness. This is a game trick that can lead to bankruptcy if not handled properly. In order to maintain healthy airline reputation, you also need to maintain your staff happy. But that happiness costs; crew's morale decreases over time, and the only way to bring it back to previous level is to increase their salaries. If you don't find a balance between morale/happiness and salary, it spirals out of control. And the key to successful balancing is Management training, which will allow you to do what is on AM4 boards usually called a Million Dollars Tip. > **CAUTION! Don't try to adjust salary / happiness until you completed Management training!** Actually, you don't need to complete the entire Management training to do the balance, but more complete the Management training, easier the balancing. Once you start the game, staff morale is set to 95%, and their salaries to minimum values: ![0-start.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/0-start.jpg) If you play with payrises and paycuts at this point, you will soon realize that steep payrise of 6% leads to poor morale improvement of only 2%, whereas small paycut of 3% causes dramatic drop of 8% in morale. ![1-start-raise.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/1-start-raise.jpg) ![2-start-paycut.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/2-start-paycut.jpg) Such a scenario is unsustainable, the salary may increase beyond what the profit can cover, whilst happiness will drop to a point that affects reputation, which can easily become unrecoverable. Hence the warning above - do not touch staff salaries until you complete Management training to a certain level! As you depart your planes, the green bar at the top of you screen slowly but steadily fills in - each time it is filled, you advance your company level (as seen in Company tab) and gain one training point. These points can be then used to improve various aspects of your operations - check Training tab to explore them. As mentioned above, the first session you need to spend your training points at is Management training. As you complete the trainings one by one, payrise will decrease, so will the morale drop following the paycut, whilst paycuts will increase, as well as impact of payrise to morale. ![3-medium-points.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/3-medium-points.jpg) ![4-medium-staff.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/4-medium-staff.jpg) At one point, paycut will catch up the payrise, and after that you could safely try to adjust salaries to improve morale if it is necessary - but I would say it's better not to do it unless your staff morale is at their 70's or below. Wait until you complete the Management training, if you're any active in the game, it will not take you too long to collect all 18 points and maximize benefits of salary adjustments (3 points on the right side are not relevant for this tip, they only decide how often you will have to repeat it afterwards). ![5-end-points.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/5-end-points.jpg) ![6-end-staff.jpg](https://am4info.com/user/pages/03.am4-staff-salary/6-end-staff.jpg) Now, you are ready for a Million Dollars trick: issue payrises untill the morale reaches 100%, then issue paycuts until it's not allowed any longer (you will get the error message "Minimum salary is \_\_\_$"). Repeat is few times until you get as high morale with as low salaries as possible. The best I could achieve was 94% morale with salaries 3-4 $ above the minimum. And that's it - 94% is quite a good number, I don't think one can reach beyond that. Monitor your crews morale and step in again when it drops to around 85%, at least that's what I do, and enjoy your flights with happy crews! --- ## Navigation - Previous: [AM4 Achievements Guide](https://am4info.com/am4-achievements-guide.md) - Next: [contact](https://am4info.com/contact.md)