Airport Land: Air Traffic ControlAirport Land: Air Traffic Control

Airport Land is a control tower game about takeoff and landing sequencing. You decide who lands, who departs and who holds short of the runway, and every pilot answers in real ATC radio phraseology. How many rush hours can your runway take?

6 a.m. on Sunny Atoll. One runway. A turboprop is circling over the sea and another is boarding at the gate. You bring the first one in and taxi it to a stand, then push the second one back, taxi it out and clear it for takeoff. Everything from pushback to touchdown is yours.

Day two adds a plane. Day three brings the first jets, and they want more runway. By day four there are three on approach, two at the holding point and still one runway. Now you're counting seconds: one vacates, the next one's wheels touch, and you squeeze a departure in between. Get that sequence right once and you'll want another shift straight away.

Then the airport grows. A second runway opens and widebodies start arriving from the mainland. The wind swings round at the busiest moment and the whole field has to turn. Birds land on the runway. The plane on short final is already at idle and the one ahead still hasn't cleared. Call the go-around, or give it two more seconds?

Your first evening rush will probably end in a string of go-arounds. The second one might not.

Once the island stops scaring you, go to the airports you've watched a hundred times on YouTube. Tokyo Haneda and its four runways. Heathrow swapping its runways at 3 p.m. Kai Tak and the checkerboard turn. Lukla's sloped strip, where you land uphill and depart downhill. Gibraltar, where the barriers drop across the road for every movement. Barra, whose beach runway is underwater at high tide. Each one runs by its real rules.

The radio is real phraseology from the first call to the last. "Cleared to land, runway two seven." Pilots and towers speak nine languages: switch the radio to Japanese and Japanese carriers answer in Japanese, while foreign captains keep their accent. A few shifts in, you'll be saying it yourself.

What's different here

• Not just the sky. Pushback, taxi, runway crossings, line up and wait, takeoff, landing: the whole flow is yours.
• Swap seats. In radio practice the tower calls you, you read back and carry it out. Learn real ATC phraseology in several languages, including a German BZF route. It's practice, not an exam, and there's no certificate.
• Daily Live: one shift a day, often built from the flights a real airport handled the day before.
• Too busy? Slow time down, or pause and queue up each plane's next moves. Nobody's judging.
• The planes are made of clay. Yes, they're adorable.

On Steam you get the whole game: every airport and every mode, no ads.

Airlines appear only by name and callsign to identify flights; Airport Land is not affiliated with any airline. For entertainment only, not for real navigation or air traffic control.