And yes, I do know IFATCs have a choice to open anywhere.
But doesn’t this also give them a choice to open the suggested airports? So you can have some guarantee that a controller will be there when you arrive. Tyler puts a lot of effort in these schedules.
Can the way IFATCs choose their airports maybe influence the airports pilots choose to fly from/to?
And no, I’m not back 😚
Anton
P.S. well done @Nickolas_Ridgeway for opening an airport on the schedule! When I spawned there, I was the only aircraft on your airport…
The problem is - pretty much no one is flying in/out of the featured airports - we don’t tend to open airports with little to no traffic as it’s a bit boring.
It goes both ways - pilots go where there is ATC, ATC goes where there is decent traffic.
Thanks for the shoutout!! I normally try to open a featured airport to start building traffic and because I like the calm before the storm but there is only so much we can do when 300+ pilots choose to fly to one of 300+ locations. Keep in mind that some controllers aren’t allowed to control featured airports so it could be that none are available at the time you can always request atc if your planning ahead but at the end of the day as long as everyone is is happy where they are flying that’s the real point of the game!
And it won’t go away, unless the IFATCs change their behaviour.
Pilots will follow the IFATCs as long as they know where they will be.
Predictability is everything.
This is something I 100% agree with you. This is just sad, and as a matter of fact, I usually refuse to open LAX or LHR if not on the schedule. Why? Those airports have unfortunately become the “children’s playground” if case they get bored. Comparing to the pandemic years, or even from 2022, now they only find those airports as the only solution if case there’s not well known airports on the schedule, some day.
No diversity, no curiosity, no exploring… LAX and LHR have become the world for most of the pilots, sadly. And unfortunately, for some of the controllers as well. And this really hurts me because they haven’t been able to think at some time: “what is this place?”. Not even that… just, nothing.
It’s a mixed back of ATC’s desire to have traffic, and pilot’s desire to fly to their favorite airports.
I fly to KATL, KDFW, LOWI because they are my favorite airports. Not always open for ATC. But across IF and other sims, you see the same traffic patterns and same desire from ATC. We want to control our favorite airports, especially when busy. LAX isn’t necessarily a favorite, but I enjoy controlling there more than a lot of other places.
The schedule is great, and full appreciate to the work that goes into it from Tyler. I can create a fun ROTW schedule with the VA each week with it, and people do enjoy using it to fly… but people also like just flying to their favorite places, and those are typically the major hubs.
Not everyone likes the “destination” flights, and thats cool for them. replicating airline routes and such, you are typically flying to a hub and thats what i think 90% of sim pilots want to do
