(I'm still waiting on Stephen to confirm the next game's start date; the poll is putting 1950s ahead by about 5-7 votes.)
New Features:
Updated loadfactor script; including the addition of the sales of food/drink (settable in your admin page), alliance codeshare effect, a few new modifications to demand, a general downturn in demand by a little bit, as well as a moderate drop in the impact of competition on demand.
Autoreturn of leases is live and appears mostly bug free: You will recieve warning messages (as a lessee) when a lease is going to expire in 3 months, 1 month, and when the aircraft is returned, all routes it was on will automatically be closed (but you'll be told the IATA codes of the route that closed in the message). There will be no penalty for premature cancellations, this will be implemented when leasing is flushed out a little bit.. Aircraft will only be returned at the end of the month, not mid-month. Lessors will be informed when an aircraft is automatically returned.
A lot of tiny, mostly unnoticable backend changes to airports. Let me know if anything related to an airport is weird, bugged, or otherwise defunct.
The Used market has been broken up and paginated.
You will all be allowed to choose the start continent of your choice, regardless of last age's start continent.
A cap of rented gates at an airport has been implemented, you may each rent up to 25 gates at any airport. To get beyond 25 gates at an airport, you need to build a terminal. You still need to have that airport as a focus city to build a terminal there. If you close a focus city, your terminal will be reduced to 25 gates if it has over 25 gates built. (you will be paid double the monthly cost for the airport for each gate sold).
The 8 largest airports in game have been bumped up to a 350 gate, 350,000 level, many airports were adjusted to their proper gate/cost levels.
The creation of a period where players can log in before the days start ticking, this will be about 24 hours long, to allow most players an equal footing in the game.
Significant additions to aircraft database (if you haven't noticed), as well as some good growth in airport quantities (5 shy of 1800 the last time i checked).
I'll leave stephen to fill in the rest of his additions. I've got a few tiny modifications left, but while i'm waiting for the results of a change i thought i'd post this. It's looking very good for a reopening of the game within a few hours (unless stephen fell asleep at the keyboard).