Infinite crashes.
Airport Madness 4 is about keeping airplanes from colliding into each other in the airport environment. We give you all of the tools necessary to do this. As in real life, you may find yourself saying "That wasn't my fault!". Many a real-world controller has uttered these words! The universe tends toward chaos. As an air traffic controller, you are the last line of defense against catastrophe.
Most collisions in Airport Madness 4 occur at the threshold, or beginning, of a runway. The usual error involves giving an aircraft permission onto the runway while another is landing. The second most common collision point is where runways cross each other. If you can master these two collision points, consider yourself an ace!
There are keyboard shortcuts for all commands. Everything can be done with keys 1 through 5 on your keyboard.
As in real life, arriving aircraft land themselves. No input is required from you. Sound too easy? Just because an aircraft can land itself does not necessarily mean that it can avoid hitting other aircraft. That is where you come in! Arriving aircraft can be seen early on your radar screen, before appearing in the airport environment. They are being fed to you by other air traffic controllers whose job is to put the planes on a path to one of your runways. It is not their job to ensure that no collisions occur upon arrival. That is your job, and you will often need to slow arrivals down, speed them up, assign new runways, and issue holding patterns to achieve this.
By clicking an aircraft, it's runway will be highlighted. It's control panel will also indicate which runway it is landing on. When an aircraft is clicked, note the flight info that appears over top of the radar screen.
Once an arrival has touched down, there is little you can really do to manage the aircraft, except instruct them to expedite off the runway. Once an arriving aircraft has exited the runway, it operates on an uncontrolled apron, where it taxiis all by itself to the nearest available gate.
SLOW: This command reduces an aircraft's speed by 20%.
FAST: This command increases an aircraft's speed by 25%.
GO AROUND: This command tells an aircraft to cancel it's landing, and climb straight ahead until you instruct it to do otherwise. The go around is a great move when an arriving aircraft is closing in on a slower aircraft attempting to takeoff. Cancel the go around by dragging the aircraft to any runway.
DIRECTIONAL CONTROL: This hidden feature is a terrific improvement over the previous version of the game. By clicking and dragging an aircraft, it will immediately cease it's current operation and fly straight in the direction it was dragged. This is a great way to build in space between arriving aircraft that are too close. You can also drag an aircraft to any runway, which makes the aircraft land.
RUNWAY CHANGE: Arrivals can be assigned to certain other ruways, should the need arise. This is done by clicking the aircraft, then releasing over any runway threshold that highlights itself as available.