Small GA aircraft inbound to land - runway headings 04/22
ATC reports wind direction 243 at 18 kts
ATC instructions: Enter left traffic runway 04
What do most of you do, land with an 18 kt tailwind on runway 04 or defy ATC and land on runway 22 only to be scolded by ATC after landing?
I run into the above scenario being asked to land with a significant tailwind about 50% of the time. ATC landing direction appears to be random with no regard for wind direction. I often wonder if Microsoft/Asobo realize how important wind direction is for realism and immersion.
I think the ATC may choose the correct runway more often if I donāt choose the destination airport from the world map flight planner, but Iām not sure.
In other cases the winds at ground level might be completely opposite the winds at 1K feet for example. Without being able to fully trust the ATC/ATIS I almost feel that I should fly by and check the windsocks first.
ATC is largely based on legacy FSX code. Working Title has stated that they will be tackling some ATC stuff this year (the linked video was recorded last year). Its not clear if they will be owning the entire thing or if they will only take a piece of it.
I donāt know what the official plan is, but my hope is for a comprehensive rewrite of ATC to support different regional phraseologies and accents, different transition altitudes and procedures in different countriesā¦maybe even the ability to figure out what the active runway is (or even SIDs and STARs) from live FlightAware data. (Maybe! Who knows?) I think such a rewrite would be better in the long term, but in the short term, it would probably mean that we wonāt see much movement on some of these ATC bugs for a while.
This is a very irksome issue, and a terrible immersion killer! I have experienced instances where ATC has instructed usage of a runway that is 180* opposite of what was displayed as the āactiveā runway on the flight planning page. Just last night, at KJAN, ATC instructed me to use runway 16L for takeoff, giving me an 18kt tailwind. I was flying the FBW A32NX so this wasnāt that big of a deal. But it still bothered me because I knew it was wrong.
This seems to continue to be a problem. Flying around the Bahamas itās almost ALWAYS WRONG. Same scenario, ATIS Reports Winds 074 @ 24, Tower says, bring it on in Runway 27. You can only imagine what that little C150 was doing with this one..
This happens with takeoff too. Iāll be doing a run on neofly in a C208 at MTOW and the ATC tells me to takeoff on the 1400ft runway with a 30 knot tailwind. No thanks man, Iād like to go home alive today.
This is now somewhat mitigated in SU14 with the additional settings for airports and traffic to disregard preferred runways (which was part of the root cause) as defined in the BGL file.
Iāve been flying the Beta for few times now and itās a much more consistent experience.
Example: asking me to land with 13 knots straight on the tail on rw36 instead of letting me come in from the opposite direction. EVRA on june 4 at 10:25 live weather flying the Yak 18T.
Just let us choose our preferred runway already if ATC canāt get it right more than 50% of the timeā¦
At my āhomeā airport KILG I canāt remember ATC using anything but ILS runway 1 regardless of the wind direction. Even if I set wind at 270/30kts. ATIS will report it right and say correct runway but on clearance the tower will always send me to runway 1. Departure, arrival, makes no diff. Like itās stuck. Have found other airports seem to favor whichever is the northern runway.
I like your answer! They have that ācertain fingerā emoji here on the forum, but I doubt weāre allowed to use itā¦lol
I think the ATC may choose the correct runway more often if I donāt choose the destination airport from the world map flight planner, but Iām not sure.
