Games · Air Race

Air Race: free online plane game

Little propeller planes seen from above, threading between inflatable pylons: wings level through blue gates, wings on their side through red ones and a low pass through yellow ones. Wind gusts, clouds, flocks of birds and a smoke trail. A championship with cups, time trial with medals and a new course every day. Free, no account needed.

How to play

• The plane speeds up by itself. On a phone, press the big left and right buttons to turn and the middle button to dive. On a computer, use the arrow keys or Q and P to turn, the space bar to dive and the up arrow or W to climb.
• Fly between the two pylons of each gate, in order. Blue gate: wings level, no turning. Red gate: wings on their side, the knife-edge pass (turn hard or press both sides at once; on a computer, Shift). Yellow gate: a low pass, dive until the shadow is right under the plane.
• The shadow shows your height: the further away it is, the higher you are. Wrong wings or height cost 1 second, missing a gate (or flying over the pylons) costs 2, and hitting a pylon costs 3 and makes the plane wobble. Watch out for wind gusts and flocks of birds.
• In Race and Championship you fly with 3 more planes, which pass through you like ghosts: planes never crash into each other. Your final time with penalties is what counts. The Championship is 4 races and each place scores 10, 7, 5 or 3 points; most points takes the cup (Bronze on Easy, Silver on Normal, Gold on Hard).
• In Race, Championship and the Course of the day there are turbo rings (a few seconds of extra speed, for rivals too) and golden V coins in the air, some at normal height and some low. Collect at least 60% of the coins and finish on the podium for one more star at the end. Time trial has no bonuses.
• Points: in time trial, the lower your total time, the more points (about 60,000 at the gold time). In the Championship you get 1000 per level plus 10 for each point won. The Course of the day combines your place and total time.

Where air racing comes from

Air racing began just a few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight in December 1903. In August 1909 the Great Aviation Week at Reims, in France, brought together many of the first aviators, and the American Glenn Curtiss won the Gordon Bennett Cup, the speed race.

Between the two world wars, pylon racing became a huge show. The Schneider Trophy, for seaplanes, was contested from 1913 to 1931 and stayed in the United Kingdom for good after three wins in a row. In the United States, the Reno air races in Nevada began in 1964 and kept pylon racing alive.

In modern air races, planes fly between inflatable pylons about 25 metres tall, which tear harmlessly when touched, and some gates are flown with the wings level and others with the wings vertical. In Portugal, the great aviation adventure was a different one: in 1922 Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral made the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, guided by a sextant adapted by Gago Coutinho.

Free game, no betting and no prizes. The courses, planes and pilots are made up. Your race is saved on this device.