Your first session

Ten minutes, one airport, a handful of arrivals and nothing else. This is the session to start with.

Step 5 of 5 · Learn to control

Set it up

Everything you need is on one screen. Only the airport is required.

1. Select Airport — search by name or four-letter code.
2. The runway and sector diagram — pick arrival and departure runways here.
3. Traffic sliders — arrivals, departures and alien traffic.
4. Start new session — it tells you what is missing if it is greyed out.

1. Press New Session on the main menu.

2. Pick an airport you know from real life. Recognising the layout is worth more than any other choice on this screen. Star it as a favourite so it is one click next time.

3. Choose the runways in use. Open the diagram and set an arrival and a departure runway. Until you do, the indicators show dashes and the start button stays disabled.

   The diagram is also previewing your sector and the published routes. You do not need to understand it yet.

4. Turn the traffic down. Arrivals low, departures zero. Arrivals reach you one after another, which is plenty to be getting on with.

5. Press Start new session.

Take one aircraft

1. Find an arrival that has called you and is still a long way out. Distance is time to think. If it has not contacted your sector yet, let external ATC bring it down and wait for its initial call. Not in 0.6.1.24

2. Middle-click it. That assumes the aircraft — now it will listen to you. Instructions to any other target are refused, and COM says so.

3. Read its label. The callsign is the top line. That is exactly what you will say first.

Say three things to it

Hold CONTROL, speak, release. One instruction at a time to begin with, and wait for the readback before the next.

1. Turn it.

   Iberia one two three four, turn right heading one three zero

   Watch the label: the aircraft starts its turn as the pilot finishes reading back.

2. Bring it down.

   Iberia one two three four, descend altitude five thousand feet

   The cleared level on the label changes immediately. The actual level catches up over the next minute or two.

3. Slow it down.

   Iberia one two three four, speed two two zero knots

That is the loop. Everything else you will ever do is a variation on those three.

If the pilot read back what you meant, it worked

Open COM to see the exchange as text. If the game misheard you, the text tells you exactly how — usually the callsign or a waypoint name.

Three ways out of trouble

• Undo it. Iberia one two three four, disregard within about ten seconds cancels the last instruction.
• Slow the world down. Keep game speed at x1 in the bottom bar while you are learning.
• Stop the world. Escape opens the pause menu. Traffic does not move while you are paused — read, think, change a setting, then resume.

Nothing here can be broken, and nothing is waiting on you.

Where next

• Playing the game — every screen, explained.
• All commands — the full list, in one table.
• Printable sheet — for beside the keyboard.