guide Flying

[Vorpaxis 7]

Carrying Capacity
With nothing to your name you can carry 5 items from abroad. This capacity can and must be increased.

A faction can provide up to +10 through perks.
These perks are paid for by the faction with Respect, a lot of which is gained from chaining. Chaining is good.

A Private Island with airstrip provides +10, removes the cost of flying and reduces travel time by 30%.
I highly recommend renting a private island that has an airstrip for 7 days to get you started. This should not cost more than $3.5m ($500k per day).
Once you have moved in you need to hire a Pilot. After that you're set to fly fast and cheap.
ROI: It will take you 17 hours of flying to recoup this cost.
Or: You need to fly 2.5 hours per day to offset this cost, the rest is free money.
Once you've built some capital you should look for a private island with 3700 happy or more to help with your gym gains, but that is a different topic.
You absolutely need to live on a Private Island immediately. Sell losses, marry a sugardaddy or borrow money. You'll make it back in a day.

A Large Suitcase provides +4.
This will cost just north of $10m.
ROI: It will take you 250 hours of flying to recoup this cost.
While not as urgent as a Private Island, you 100% need this item eventually. So get it as soon as you can afford it.
There are smaller suitcases which you can buy meanwhile if you want, but I don't know how easy they are to sell back to the market. My first suitcase was the Large Suitcase.

Working in a 7* Toy Shop lets you carry an extra 5 plushies.
A toy shop requires low working stats so it is not too difficult to get hired in one. Make sure it is 7* or higher.
ROI: Flying 10 hours a day will make you an extra $500k. But at the same time you are not working in a different company (like a sweet shop) where you could potentially make more or gain different bonuses. Company choice is a topic on its own.

Working in a 7* Flower Shop lets you carry an extra 5 flowers.
Same as Toy shop, but flowers are generally less profit than plushies.

Working in a Cruise Line Agency provides +2 total capacity at 3* and +3 more at 10* for a total of +5 total capacity.
Cruise Line requires very high working stats and if you are a new player you will not get into a 10* without a friend owning the company.

So the max carrying capacity you can reach right now is 34 items. Quite a difference from 5.

Where to fly, what to buy
Items will get bought and eventually have 0 stock. Once at 0 it will restock in half the time it took to deplete.
So if an item restocked to 2500 at 1am, reached 0 stock at 3am (2 hours), it will get restocked to 2500 again at 4am (1 hour since depletion).
Items only restock on a quarter hour. If there is no good stock when you arrive, wait until the next quarter hour and refresh. If you stay too long you will get mugged.
The easiest way to fly after you completed everything in the previous topic is:
Fly to the UK and buy Red Fox Plushie, Nessie Plushie, or Heather.
This trip takes about 3h45m and with max capacity earns you a net $1.3m per trip.
The reason this is the easiest option is because there are 3 items that all yield a high profit. Most locations only have 1 and if it's out of stock when you get there all you can do is wait.
Bring enough money to buy the item that costs the most, in case that is the only one available. In this case Heather costs $5000 to buy so bring $200k.
It is good to bring a bit more than you need in case you get mugged and lose 10%.

If you want to get nerdy about it use these links:
https://doctorn.rocks/travel-hub/ This shows what the current stock is for each item. Take note of how long ago it was updated. If it was 20 minutes ago the numbers can't be trusted.
https://arsonwarehouse.com/foreign-stock alternative to the link above if it's not working.
https://eski786.pythonanywhere.com/flyguide This shows what the current profit is for each item. It assumes you sell to a trader, so the profit will be bigger if you sell from your own bazaar.
If you don't have a bazaar do not sell on item market, in that case it's better to sell to a trader.
If you want to get super nerdy about it collect data for 18 hours and make a spreadsheet to estimate at what stock levels you should fly for different items. 

Energy and nerve
Your energy bar fills up from 0 to full in 5 hours.
Energy is the most precious resource in this game.
Any flight that takes a total of more than 5 hours will waste energy and should be avoided even if the highest profit item is in those locations.
Same thing goes for your nerve bar. Nerve regenerates at 12 per hour, so before you have 45 max nerve you will waste nerve on your trips to the UK. Some people are really into crime and do not want to waste nerve, while others don't see the point of crime so they don't care.
Either way it is arguably not as important as not wasting energy. Decide how you want to play.

Getting mugged overseas
Some people think a good way to not waste energy is to mug people overseas, since that uses energy. So the longer you stay in a location the more likely it is that you will get mugged. Bring 10% cash more than you need, and limit your time spent overseas.
You cannot use medical items overseas, so you have to wait the entire hospital time.
(Caveat: you can ask for a revive overseas which usually costs $1m and is paid with the honor system)

Merits
There are 22 merits to get from flying. 8 of them you will get without any focus, just keep flying.
The others require you to fly 50 times to each locations. When stacking energy for chains you can travel to places further than 5 hours away without wasting energy. You will still waste nerve.

Notes
ROI means Return On Investment. The time an investment takes to earn back its own cost. In the case of Large Suitcase it is not how long it takes to earn $10m, it is how long it takes those extra 4 slots to earn $10m.

The profit numbers in this post are very pessimistic, at around $10k per hour per carry slot. Actual profits will be up to 30% bigger depending on market and how you choose to sell your stuff.

The highest profit item to buy is actually Xanax from South Africa. It's around 20-25% more profitable than the best plushie but has 2 downsides.
It costs $745k each, so you need up to $20m in your pocket to fill your capacity. Carrying that much money is always a risk.
South Africa is a 7 hour trip so it wastes tons of energy. I'd only consider this trip when stacking energy, and even then you can waste drug cd since Xanax can go as low as 6h.

 

This has been one of the better posts I've found regarding this, and I don't think I could do better

https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=61&t=16153607&b=0&a=0&start=0&to=20188665