What it needs from you
A browser on each device: Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, including Chromebooks. There is nothing to install, no account to create, no sign-in and no payment. Keyboard and mouse work, and so does touch.
A first shift takes about ten minutes, including a short built-in lesson that gets a new player to their first command. A full class period leaves time for a shared exercise and a debrief afterwards.
Two choices to make before class
Which mode. On the briefing screen, before taking the position, each player picks how the shift is scored. Sandbox is off record: nothing about the shift is posted anywhere, and it lets you set the length of the shift. Ranked is the scored game: when a student beats their own best at an airport, that record is posted to our public leaderboard. For a class, Sandbox is the usual choice. If you do use Ranked, tell students to choose a made-up callsign, never their name.
Voices or text. The pilots speak, and the voices are a model your browser downloads once per device, about 90 MB on most computers. Twenty-five Chromebooks fetching that together can slow a school network, and some networks block it. If either is a concern, have students click RADIO in the top bar until it reads RADIO ✕. The game remembers it, nothing is downloaded with the radio off, and every call and readback still appears in text on the aircraft strips.
One scenario for the whole class
Give every student the same link and they all start with the same airport,
the same wind and the same traffic. Add ?apt= with an airport code
and ?seed= with any word you like:
https://vectorheavy.com/play?apt=KCOU&seed=period3
Everyone who opens that link in the same mode with the same settings starts
from identical traffic. From there the shifts differ, because the decisions do,
which is the point: afterwards, two students can compare what they did with
the same aircraft. Change the word for a new scenario (period4,
friday, anything), and use any airport code from the
airport list. Columbia Regional (KCOU) is
one of the steadier fields, which leaves new controllers room to think.
- Have students play one ordinary first shift from the play page. A shared link deliberately skips the built-in lesson, so this is where they get it.
- Hand out the shared link. On the briefing screen, choose Sandbox, leave LAND THE FIELD on As forecast, and set END THE SHIFT AFTER to the same number for everyone (15, 25, 35, 50 movements are the options). Leave everything else at its default. Everyone then works a block of the same size.
- When the shift ends, each student gets an after-action review of the shift, with the score and any moments where aircraft got too close. That screen is the starting point for the discussion.
The game has a PAUSE button in the top bar, so you can stop the whole room to point something out.
What students practice
- Angles and headings
- Headings run from 001 to 360 degrees, and runway numbers are the runway's compass heading divided by ten, so runway 30 points about 300 degrees. Turning an aircraft onto the final approach course is applied geometry.
- Speed, distance and time
- Speeds are in knots, nautical miles per hour: at 180 knots an aircraft covers 3 miles every minute. Keeping 3 miles between two aircraft is a rate problem students solve live.
- Planning a descent
- A normal approach descends about 300 feet for every mile, so an aircraft 10 miles out should be about 3,000 feet above the runway. Too high and it cannot make it down in time.
- Why big jets need more room
- Heavy aircraft leave wake turbulence behind them, so a small aircraft following one needs more distance than the usual 3 miles. The game enforces the FAA's spacing rules for it.
- Precise communication
- Every instruction gets a readback. Students learn to say exactly what they mean and to check that what came back is what they sent.
- Decisions under pressure
- Traffic keeps coming. Students have to decide who goes first, what can wait, and what to fix before it becomes a problem.
The airports, runways and procedures come from published FAA data. Where the game simplifies the real thing, the fidelity ledger says so and says why.
Questions for the debrief
- Which aircraft did you deal with first, and why that one?
- Where did two aircraft get too close? What could you have done a minute earlier?
- Two of you flew the same traffic. Where did your decisions split, and which worked better?
- Why does a small aircraft need more room behind a heavy jet than behind another small one?
- What did the pilot read back, and did it match what you meant?
What leaves a student's browser
There are no accounts, and nothing requires a student's name, email or age. The only place an email can be typed is an optional box on the lobby for news about the game. Page visits are counted without cookies. In Sandbox, the game sends only anonymous counters, such as how long a shift lasted, never the shift itself. In Ranked, a new personal record posts an anonymous player id, the optional callsign, the score and a replay of the shift, and our server stores the IP address it came from, which on a school network is usually the school's. A bug report is sent only when a student types one and presses send.
The privacy page lists every one of these in full.
What this is not
It is not controller training and it does not qualify anyone for anything. Real air traffic controllers are trained by the FAA and at their facility. What a class gets here is a realistic, hands-on look at the job and the thinking behind it.
Tell us how it went
We would like to hear how it worked in your class: what students enjoyed, what confused them, and what would make it easier to teach with. Write to hello@vectorheavy.com.
Ready to try it yourself first? Take a position, or read what the first shift covers.