Better ATC (ILS, radar, ground radar and ATC emloyee)

Feature request title:

ILS and radar

Description:

To make your airport more realistic and nice looking. The idea is that if you want to take medium contracts or have night and bad weather operations, you need to build an ILS system and radar. Just like in real life. You would need to place these “things” at the end of each runway and manually build ILS tower and radar tower. Radar would allow you to get better weather info and more precise arrival times. You would need to hire a new employee type, the ATC controller to run your tower. The game would tell you how many of them you would need to hire based on how many stands you have built.

ILS: would allow for bad weather operations and would be a requirement in better contracts
Radar: would make predicting arrival times more precise, would better direct departing and arriving traffic would be a requirement in better contracts
Ground radar: would make groung taxiing faster and more coordinated, would be a requirement in better contracts (maybe merch ground and standard radar ?)
PAPIs: make them work and make them a requirement
ATC emloyee: a new employee type, you would hire them to operate your ATC tower, the number of them would depend on number of stands built

Why it should be implemented:

Extra realism, good looks, more gameplay and a new challange.

Images, references or additional content:

https://aemstatic-ww1.azureedge.net/content/dam/avi/online-articles/2014/06/navcanada.jpg

12 Likes

A rotating radar unit sounds excellent. Upgrade to tower for ILS sounds good too. Ties it into the weather system too, so if bad weather planes would not land without it. :grinning:

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Isnt ILS a separate system next to the runway?

Yup, ILS is a separate system next to the runway. It need a ILS tower, like the one shown above and those “things” at the end of each runway to work.

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Having ILS would allow landing in adverse weather. Radar could help predict actual arrival times? Or what game mechanic could it enhance? More flights per hour allowed?

It could be tied into the separation times on the flight planner? With radar you know where they are so can group them closer. Without radar you’d need to eyeball them and allow greater separation.

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Effectively increasing capacity. I like it

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I imagine you would need ILS if you want your airport to operate in bad weather and at night (connected to night time operations). Every medium airline contract (lets say 3+ stars) would require ILS. Radar would work as a better communication divice than what ATC tower has and it would also work as a weather station+. It could also help with better arrival times predictions.

Which could lead to a new staff member. Tower/Ground controller.

I know most ATC arrivals and departures are controlled remotely from a central location but…

edit: removed ATC for Tower.

I would add ground radar as separate entity, allowing faster ground operations.

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ATC is split in ground operations, arrival / departure and (sometimes) tracon (mostly these stations are in the middle of nowhere)

Hence the but…

However, ground and tower staff are usually onsite?

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Yes. Ground is in the glass part, arrival / departure below or in a separate dark room, hunched over a radar screen.

Edit: Heathrow is doing a test with remote ATC (30 km offsite) using loads of cameras

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Yeah, I’ve read and seen videos. They are not the only ones it seems.

I might actually add ATC employee to this too, now that I think about it.

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Yes please. There is a separate Staff / board feature topic that could tie in nicely

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Let’s get our planes running around our taxiways a LOT better. :heart_eyes:

I’d suggest changing your title a little. This is more than just employees. It’s a whole system for ground control and everything else. You title does not really make that clear.

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I would, but there already is a topic for better ATC, and Im not sure if we dont contradict each other.

Air traffic controllers work multiple short shifts (so i have read) which means that a minimum number of air traffic control staff members would be needed to ensure the airport remained operational over a 24hr period on a heavy rotation. This need be nothing more than employed staff that draw a salary and come and go every 8 hours, but the atc tower should not be able to operate without a mimimum

1 Like