How to contact a tower without the Communication window search

If I know the tower frequency and enter it, the comm window does NOT give me the option to contact and request clearance for landing. How to proceed?

I would also love to know how to do this and avoid the mind numbingly awful search through the Nearest Airports list. This is my single biggest complaint with the sim.

Seeing only 3 or 4 airports at a time in a list that is constantly changing in order is so frustrating. It wasn’t great in 2020 when you could see 10 lines at once, but somehow they decided that was too easy and made it even worse.

The UI appears to have been designed by someone who has never actually used a piece of software before.

The forum system recently closed my topic on this from January 2025.

Unable to contact tower via comm menu - Bug Reporting Hub / ATC, Traffic & NAVAIDs - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

As of now, it’s still not working properly with SU5.1 (beta).
I recently tried again at a few airports…hopeless.
And the “nearest airport list” is as bad and unusable as it always was.