Air Traffic Chief: you're in charge!

The air traffic controllers are responsible for flight safety and regularity. This is a very difficult task when dosens of planes are in the air. This job requires attention, thinking, good comminicational and analytical abilities.

The game Air Traffic Chief is about the job in the most difficult air traffic zone – Approach control. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s statistics, most part of accidents happen there during take-off, climbing, descending and landing. But don’t be afraid, this game is much easier than the real ATC work and it is much fun, too!

We have here an airport with two intersecting runways and a helicopter landing zone. The air traffic only arrives, there’s no departures. When a new aircraft is about to enter the screen, a red exclamation mark will appear near the screen border. Then you should press the mouse button on the plane (or helicopter), draw a line of flight and release the mouse button. If the trajectory drawn ends on the runway threshold or a landing zone (for copters), the aircraft will land successfully.

Sometimes the special flights will enter the zone. Their line of flight is pre-defined, its colour is red and you can’t alter it.

As you should maintain a safety distance between the traffic, you’ll receive a warning if two aircraft are too close to each other. Do something quickly, because if they become closer and collide, the game will stop.

While drawing the planes paths take into account speed differences. As a rule in this game the bigger planes are faster and the helicopters are the slowest of all.

This game has nice graphics and authentic sounds, but the discrepancy that I didn’t like is that the aircraft moving along the drawn path can turn by any angle. Another fact refers not to the gameplay but to the visualisation. Did you notice a windwane fluttering between the runways? It shows that the wind blows to the right. And the landing directions here are along the wind and crossing the wind. But in the real airports the landing direction is opposed to the wind so that it helps the aircraft to reduce speed.



Well, despite these details, Air Traffic Chief is a nice arcade which requires and develops almost the same skills as the air traffic controller’s work. Play and have fun!

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Categories: control, fly, job, plane, skill