Airside 0.7.13.0 is about the frequency and the ground under it. Crews now wait for your word before the next one calls, they take a taxi with no stand to the hold short you name, and no aircraft crosses a runway you have not cleared it across.
Supporters first
Supporters have 0.7.13.0 today. Everyone else gets it on Friday 30 October at 15:00 UTC. From this version on, every new Airside reaches supporters first.
The radio
- Readback correct. Once a clearance is read back, the crew waits for your "readback correct", or your correction, before the next aircraft calls. Nobody cuts into an exchange that is still going, whether you work one position or several.
- Break break. It ends one transmission and starts the next, to the aircraft you name after it.
- Taxi with no stand. "UAL123, taxi via A, B, hold short of C" takes an aircraft with no stand to the hold short you name. "Turn left on J" turns it onto a taxiway.
- Continue taxi is read back by an aircraft already on its way, and in click mode a waiting aircraft has one CONTINUE button.
- No more "confirm?" again and again. A crew asks once.
- "Negative" is an answer. Said to "shall we contact ground?", it keeps the aircraft with you, and "holding short" is said once.
- Departures already taxiing take a new route, a new holding point or an intersection departure. "Line up and wait" after a takeoff clearance takes the clearance back.
- At US airports, when you work Ground, crossing the runway in use stays with Ground.
- What a crew asks for is one click. A takeoff, a line up, a crossing or a landing that a crew requests is on its strip and in its menu, and MORE carries only what can be done right now.
- Taxiways the scenery names two ways, such as Geneva's Outer, Inner and Links, are understood either way.
- With "Show me what to say" off, a clearance's words are no longer shown.
- A cleared departure's strip carries its SID and squawk, and the ATIS gives the field's own ISA deviation.
On the ground
- No runway crossing without your clearance. An aircraft taxiing to its runway keeps to the way it was given and asks before it crosses.
- An unused runway is crossed, not taxied around (Philadelphia), and a runway met at a shallow angle is crossed where it should be (Toronto 05).
- Gatwick's northern runway is taxiway J while the main runway is in use, and no crossing clearance is asked for a runway nobody is using (O'Hare's 04L too).
- An arrival waiting for a taxiway in use is sent round it (Boston), and a taxi in starts along the taxiway the aircraft stands on.
- An arrival with no stand that turns onto a close parallel taxiway waits there.
- A pushback no longer runs hundreds of metres past its lane (Krakow).
Go-arounds and runways
- No more go-arounds for "traffic on the runway" when the traffic is on the parallel (Heathrow).
- A missed approach given another runway keeps the one it is still low over until it has climbed away.
- Where runways cross mid-field, two aircraft meeting at the crossing are called out as a runway incursion (San Francisco).
Smoother
- The desk stays light through a long shift. Its memory no longer grows hour after hour.
- Speech recognition on the graphics card is tried safely first, so a driver that cannot run it no longer closes Airside, and two gentler ways are tried before it gives up.
- The tutorial no longer stops at "Now clear it to land", and its card no longer stays over the welcome screen.
- Cargo aircraft wear their own colours.
Your view
- The tower cab zooms out to 75 degrees. It still opens at the natural view.
- Your own tower and runway views. Some sceneries, add-on or default, give the tower wrong coordinates or none at all. Put the camera where you want it with the free camera, then hold Shift and click TOWER or RUNWAY: Airside keeps it for that airport. Where Airside had to place the tower itself, it says so.
- START SHIFT leaves the camera where it is. TOWER, or Ctrl+Alt+T, takes you to the cab.
- Settings, Display, Taxi routes: every aircraft's, the selected aircraft's, or none.
- Settings, Display, Colours: for red-green colour blindness.
- The quick keys' card opens only where the pointer rests.
And a new opening picture: Manchester at dusk, an airliner holding short of 05L.
The launcher
- No more 10 to 15 seconds on "Downloading Airside".
- If an update is refused, the Airside you have opens, and the update is tried again at the next start.
Live traffic
Already on since this week, for everyone:
- Copenhagen, and the other fields that said "There is no timetable to download", have their days again.
- A partner airline's flight number no longer takes the place of the airline that flies it.
- A flight the day lists under a city's name is no longer flown twice.
Open Airside from its launcher and everything arrives in one start.