I admit it; I wanted to be an Air Traffic Controller as much as I wanted to be a professional pilot. For a time I thought I wanted to be a controller more because the most interesting part of a flight was takeoff and landing. Well I ended up being a professional pilot and that’s pretty darn fun but thanks to Tower! 2011 I can still live the dream without all the training, stress, and risk of creating a tragic metal shower if I screw up.
Choose your own runway to depart and recover aircraft. You are also responsible for getting the aircraft to and from this runway and the gates.
As far as ATC simulations go Tower! 2011 is quite realistic and detailed which is what fans of simulators and airplanes want. One flying co-worker from a past job had a special term for that: AvNerd, which I embrace fully. Tower! 2011 is part of the ATC Suite which includes: Tower! 2011, TRACON, and ARTCC, all produced by feelThere. What you get from this game is realistic and accurate ATC displays, simple controls, a great voice recognition feature, all overlaid on a satellite photo of the airport involved.
The role of a tower is often misunderstood. It is tasked with controlling traffic on the runways and taxiways, as well as airspace 2,500 feet above within five miles. That’s a relatively small space yet often in the media and movies you will hear people calling for the tower when they over the middle of nowhere. All the other airspace is controlled by TRACONs and ARTCCs. Now with that misconception cleared up we can better tackle the various scenarios in Tower! 2011.
Tower tour
The game uses three airports: St. Thomas, Miami, and Los Angeles. St. Thomas has a single runway while Miami and Los Angeles offer multiple parallel runways. Its best to start with St. Thomas because, it represents the sleepy airport all controllers wish to end their careers at. But even with its single runway, its not without its challenges since not all the planes are parked in the same area and on opposite sides of the runway. Plus you have a mix of airline traffic (Jets and Turboprops) and General Aviation aircraft which can be as small as a two-seat piston aircraft all the way up to a 15 passenger business jet.
Before you know it, they planes start growing like flowers at the gates. The active runway is 25R at the lower right. But way at the top you have aircraft that also must get there and there is only one taxiway from the north side. When arrivals start showing up you can have a standoff.
The key is that aircraft move at different speeds and you have to figure out a way to keep them all separated and happy. Make one wait too long and the crew may not be happy about all the fuel they wasted sitting on the ground, or the crew that had to “go-around” because you had the runway blocked with landing traffic, or even worse, taxiing traffic you tried to cross to the other side.
But you don’t have to do it alone. Tower! 2011 has several realistic displays that recreate exactly the tools and displays that controllers use. You can watch the actual movement of the aircraft from the top-down view which superimposes aircraft on the satellite photo and they move around the taxiways and runways, complete with wing tip and tail lights and strobes as well as a landing light which casts a beam ahead of the plane.
