Flying out of KMIA, ATC has arriving flights coming in on the opposite direction as departing flights. Somewhat of an immersion killer when you are lined up for takeoff and you see a long line of incoming aircraft headed for you. While I’m at it, is there any way to get ATC to assign you the gate you selected at your destination airport? I have no issues selecting my departure gate pre-flight, but I’ve yet to have my selected arrival gate come up after landing.
Unfortunately this topic is soul destroying, voted on moaned about discussed on these forums, I dream of the day we can get working ATC like in FSX, who use to give genuine vectors for ILS, the current ATC just makes false promises and vectors you in to a mountain! 
The only way I know of is to select it using the world map when filing a flight plan.
So nice to see this topic/posts!! I thought “maybe it’s me?”
So many add-on (pay) ATC programs available now people have accepted that.. and that’s ouragious that you have to purchase an external program for one of the most basic flight sim features (and one that worked great in 20 year old incarnations of MSFS). Should we also have to pay for an add on to extend our landing gear?
FSX ATC was not 100% terminolgy-accurate, and it didn’t account for SIDs and STARs..ok, I get that. But it got you sane altitudes, approaches, ILS intercepts, etc. It never flew me into a mountain or stopped working. I pray that Asobo has heard these complaints. I pray that FS2024 will have an ATC which, at the very least, will work as well as FSX. I don’t need 100 voice choices, or even voice recognition so I can talk to it (fine if that’s also avasialable but JUST give me usable ATC default. It’s 2024 folks- you can do better! OK…rant over 
Personal Comments and Observations
No need for any of the pay systems unless you really want it.
AI Ground and AI Flow are your friends. They go hand in hand. Very little overhead, and properly forces separation and movement both at the Departure and Arrival as well as Enroute. And the changes to the Traffic Options where you can force the sim to honor your plan regardless of actual weather was a direct response to some of these complaints.
Most folks are flying using the world map - it’s not the best. That’s why Working Title demo’d the new Planner coming in 2024, and I’ve had long conversations with that team about the linkages between Live Weather, Live Traffic and ATC. What most folks don’t understand is that the three are interlinked along with Flight Planning. That’s what FSX never had - it “appeared” to have more control because everything was scripted - you were essentially flying what we have as Offline traffic based on historical BGL schedules. I personally plan using an EFB because I know what factors are not covered by the World Map easily - like overlaying winds aloft, NOTAMs, Airspace deviations, Cloud Coverage at enroute, etc. I just use World Planner to import that plan, make sure the Planner doesn’t attempt to roulette wheel my route by inserting SIDs/STARs (I load those in at aircraft start in-cockpit after confirming ATIS and upon descent). A good flight starts with a clean plan import.
I’ve never been flown into a mountain in 2020, mostly because right at the outset, I understood ATC didn’t account for SIDs/STARs - just like FSX ATC - and self-managed my descent according. I stayed “synced” with ATC by requesting appropriate altitude blocks matching my STAR altitude fixes. I accepted there would be dissonance depending on how close my STAR last WP arrival coincided with the “magic number” where ATC says “Oh you’re close enough to assign the Approach.” But that would be brief. Most flights, the TOD predicted in my EFB generated plan matched TOD call by ATC by a few miles and minutes.
All I needed was the FAA Phraseology mod to the language by a very skilled pilot/simmer and we’re off to the races.
I enjoyed FSX. But I would not call the ATC environment “better” in that version, mostly because it was all scripted. Live Services means a higher level of planning is called for by the sim pilot - that’s real traffic getting injected, real weather at departure, ENR and arrival.
So I load up a flight from NYC to Montreal.
Start up FSTL Traffic, setup the plane and then go to Request IFR clearance. 20minutes later I am still waiting for the 60 AI aircraft who JAM the radio without even letting me press the button (it gets greyed out while they are talking)
Its literally impossible to depart from a busy airport because the traffic AI is so fast on the radio and for some bizarre reason Asobo decided to DISABLE any ATC buttons while someone else is on the radio, so you are forced to sit there for 20mins while AI plane after AI plane requests IFR, requests pushback, requests stopping of pushback!
Its so bad, why not enable the buttons so I can at the very least LODGE my request in the queue rather having to sit there spamming the button. So broken, so little attention meanwhile we have huge focus on old planes that a lot of us will never fly. How about fix the basics of the sim that were better even in FSX before building refueling and all the other fluff.
I am really not hopefull for 2024, I think we will be exactly where we are just with better grass graphics, more bugs and still not able to make a call to ATC after 20mins!
At least I can have a laugh at landing planes while I wait to request pushback stop!
TBH i don’t have problems to get clearance or departure atc. I am currently on a world trip and at almost every leg i load in a flightplan via the world page. Especially in Colombia i had 45 channel changes in 10 minutes!! Back and forth between 2 frequenties. Totally nuts
It is a workaround but if you start FSTL just before pushback all is ok …. By the time you taxied to the runway and “ground” starts getting full of taxi clearance requests … you can switch to tower.
Works all the time … but far from
Perfect
Really? Am I missing something? I’m seeing only a 10% increase in AI ground traffic density. Not the extent that you are mentioning
It’s quite common at busy airports. Very frustrating. Same with trying to request altitude changes during peak periods. By the time you can finally break in and ask for a new altitude, you are long past the point where you needed to descend.
It’s not that bad for me since the AI will wait a few seconds before responding to ATC requests and the AI copilot is pretty quick to respond in that time period.
For the not being able to get a word in for all that AI traffic chatter, there is a quick workaround if you are fast. - change frequencies off of say ground to atis and then change it back again, this gives you a few seconds to get your request in. With in game atc you can do this with keyboad number presses (i do anyway). Just the act of switching it away and then back again will give you 2 or 3 seconds to send your request/reply to atc before they start communicating with other aircraft again. You will otherwise be there for ages not getting a word in with all the AI traffic comms. Another alternative to this is like someone already suggested don’t start up fsltl until you have finished clearance and maybe even a taxi request.
You are indeed right, what I did was similar I just RESET TRAFFIC in the FSTL popup. But yea it just annoys me that after 4 years they didn’t spend any time on ATC/AI traffic.
I did not know that, thanks will try next time!
Its probably only an issue for those that use a traffic injector like FSTL or AIG and fly from hubs like Heathrow. And also I don’t use the CoPilot ATC, maybe that would also solve the bug.
Its not that i cannot react to ATC because it is busy, but i notice that it won’t let me respond to a thing that is said to me, there is always an other plane in between the command and the answer. So f.i. i get the command to climb to 20000 ft, then the controller adresses another plane and then i (or my co-pilot) comes in with a reaction. IRL this is not how it works 
Also the STAR is given way to late when the arrival is already started.