I was flying into KBOS and IFATC Nathan was manning Tower and Ground. Connected to Tower frequency to call inbound. Unfortunately, after doing so, I was switched to KBOS Unicom. Assuming the controller left or that there was going to be a controller change, I continued inbound. Just as I was on final, I saw/heard the broadcast to contact Tower again. I checked my ATC frequency list and still no green, just KBOS Unicom. To be sure, I double checked on the map and clicked on KBOS, sure enough, IFATC Nathan was still there but it showed that he was only manning Ground frequency. Thinking that it was a glitch, I continued inbound, calling out my final approach on Unicom. And then I heard the broadcast from Tower 2 more times to contact Tower. Being a little afraid of being ghosted due to the 3 strike rule in place, I executed a missed approach, hoping to circle over the bay to find out the cause of the issue.
Turns out, all I had to do was to go back to my home screen, turn WiFi off and on again, and switched back to IF. Voilà, the Tower frequency appeared in green. What a close shave. I was chided by IFATC Nathan to check help pages for ATC assistance after that. While I felt kinda wronged, I was honestly just glad it all worked out without a ghosting.
Anyway, I’m posting this up as a “bug report” of sorts for everyone’s info. Some pictures of the glitch below.
Thanks for the information, I’m a little reassured that the ATCs would not ghost me if I was not interfering with traffic flow in such an instance. In any case, I became too close for comfort with another A340 over here probably because the controller decided to vector the A340 ahead of me due to the communications issue.
No harm done. Happy with the ATC service in the end! :)
But the funny thing is from the map, I can see IFATC Nathan manning the ground frequency while not the tower frequency. Wondering if this has happened to others before. Maybe IFATC Nathan can chime in on whether he saw me as “unknown”, but I could definitely see his ATC callsign.
You were not listed as unknown on my ATC strip. I contacted you many times to connect to my frequency and you did not respond.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you possibly had connection issues so therefore, I remained patient and did not ghost you. I appreciate you turning away from the airport while you reconfigured yourself versus continuing inbound with an aircraft just a mere feet ahead of you. If you had done so, you would’ve been ghosted.
Thanks for reaching out. Hope you solve your connection issues so you don’t run into situations like this in the future. Have a nice day. :)
