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Feature requests

Feature Proposals

  1. Stack instructions: In the real life, controllers often issues several instructions in one call. Right now all of the following examples in the game require two or more back-forth calls which takes unrealistic amount of time. If the frequency is busy, I hope the game would allow player to pre-select several instructions on screen, and when there’s opportunity to make the call, it would go in one run.

  • DAL1234, taxi to ramp via Alpha, cross runway 31L, hold short of runway 4R.

  • DAL3456, push back approved, facing north, expect new departure runway 31L.

  • DAL7890, go around, fly runway heading, 3000ft and contact departure.

  1. Add an option to ask pilots to monitor a frequency instead to “contact.” Pilots would tune to the new frequency without making a check-in call. It’s also a real world procedure. This is helpful when there is a queue for takeoff and there’s no point for the pilots to call tower and receive a “hold short“ instruction when the aircraft is the 5th in the line for takeoff.

  2. Give way during taxi. Instead of asking aircrafts to hold position, and continue taxi, ATCs use something like “DAL12, give way to Airbus A320 on Bravo.” The pilot would hold short of Bravo, and continue taxi as soon as A320 passes.

  3. Tower controls the area between active runways instead of Ground. At JFK, between 4L and 4R are handled by the tower, and it’s simply because it does not make sense for Ground to clear for crossing 4L, when landing is managed by the tower. So instead of handling landing traffic on 4R directly to Ground, they would say, “DAL456, exit left on Echo, taxi on Yankee, Foxtrot and hold short of 4L.“ What’s more interesting is that taxi on Foxtrot, cross runway 4L, contact Ground can be issued combined in one call.

Posted by mdbyyc ·
3 comments

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Comments3

  • ypsilon

    Team•

    Jul 17

    Thank you for your detailed feedback, mdbyyc. These are all excellent suggestions that we will certainly take into consideration for future development. Regarding your note on control areas, we agree that runway operations should ideally be managed by tower controllers. However, single-player mode will be heavily on frequent "monitor/contact" instructions between Tower and Ground, if we strictly restricted these boundaries, so we havn’t do that to ensure a smoother gameplay experience. We appreciate you sharing your perspective on how to improve this.

    • mdbyyc

      •

      Jul 17

      Great! Thanks for your attention. As you mentioned “frequent ‘monitor/contact’” I wonder there’s a misunderstanding. So just to clarify that implementing real control areas should not require more frequency changes because Tower will control all taxiways within the circled area. Not just for crossing, but also the ground movement on these taxiways. Which means, traffic coming out from 4R after landing, stays with tower while taxi on these taxiways until they cross 4L; then they will be handed off to ground, not back and forth. The same for departing traffic using 4R, they contact tower before crossing 4L, tower clears them to cross 4L, then, they stay with tower (they do not switch back to ground, and tower is the one to tell them to e.g. hold position, continue taxi, use another taxiway, etc. and of course, cleared for takeoff) until after they takeoff. Hope the explanation helps. People might think tower does not control the taxiways at all. But surprisingly it does, and not just JFK, same for airports like Boston, etc. where there are multiple runways and taxiways between them.

      • ypsilon

        Team•

        Jul 27

        Thanks for the clarification; if we implement this feature, we will follow Jepssen charts strictly, the area managed by seats will be marked clearly, and we will test whether it works. Thanks again!