With the release of global flight nearing, we all know that many of us will be doing at least one long haul flight across the pond or overland. The trouble with this is that the flight may be 8+ hours long and we won’t be sitting in front of our iPads or iPhones for that long. During cruise, we may want to leave our devices somewhere and come back as we approach our destination, but what if ATC contacts you while you’re cruising (nearby center or approach freq.) and you’re away from your device? They will give you countless commands to contact their frequency, but unfortunately, will ghost you for not following directions.
Even without global flight, there are times when I’m cruising to another airport and I walk away to get a sandwich but I worry about ATC contacting me while I’m not there, so I bring my device with me to the kitchen, which seems pretty stupid.
So my request is that ATC could have the ability to see a pilots status during their flight. If a pilot hasn’t interacted with the sim (i.e. changed heading, changed camera view, etc) then the status would be “inactive for ____ mins” in that way, ATC won’t contact you multiple times to connect to their frequency and won’t end up ghosting you for not following directions. When the pilot has interaction with the sim, then the status will change to “active” or “active for ___mins” so now ATC can contact you and give you commands to your destination.
Yeah I agree anyone would be crazy to sit there for 8 hours, but I still don’t see the point in ATC if pilots are free to pass through without making contact
It’s not that they’re free to pass through, it excuses pilots for not contacting ATC if they happen to be away from their device. Maybe if the pilot has been inactive for more than 15 mins then they could be excused, but anything less, the user could get ghosted.
I like this way better. Maybe a set up with a iPad-iPhone connection where if ATC contacts you on your iPad, you get a notification saying that “ATC has contacted you, go respond before ghosting!” But like you said, this would be tricky to do.