What each position does, and how its panel works.

1Clearance Delivery

DEL · first call every departure makes

Click a departure on the strip list to open its clearance panel. Pick the runway it will depart from; the departure procedure (SID) is suggested for you based on the runway and the aircraft's destination — the recommended one is starred, and you can pick any of the others listed if you want a different routing. ATC Relay then fills in the squawk code and builds the full readback for you.

Press Provide clearance to send it. The aircraft then calls Ground for pushback on its own — you do not have to hand it off by hand.

If no runway fits the aircraft's filed route or its performance, the panel tells you why instead of offering a clearance you cannot actually give.

2Ramp

RAMP · gates, pushback, and the apron

The ramp view shows every gate across the terminal as a board: a gate lights up for an arrival that fits it, brighter if it is that aircraft's own airline, amber-dashed if the fit is tight, and with an orange ring if ATC Relay is suggesting it. Click an arrival, then click the gate you want to send it to.

On departures, a strip requesting pushback shows REQ PUSH. Open it, choose Push back approved, and Speak to send the readback and let the aircraft start moving.

The gate board itself uses the same colour code while aircraft move: red means occupied, with the minutes until it frees up; yellow means an aircraft is currently pushing back from it; cyan means it is reserved for an aircraft already inbound.

Airline delays (a carrier delay, or a ready time the airline sets) show on the strip itself so you know why an aircraft is not ready to push yet. Cargo flights are a separate case: they are only ever sent to cargo stands, never a passenger gate.

3Ground

GND · everything between the gate and the runway

Open an aircraft that is ready to taxi. You can press Build taxi route to draw one yourself taxiway by taxiway, or leave it blank and ATC Relay works out the automatic route for you. Either way you can set where it should hold short of — usually a runway it is about to cross or line up on.

The standard instructions are all one click: Taxi runway 10L, Hold position, Continue taxi, and Contact tower once it reaches the hold-short line and is ready to be handed to Tower.

Every runway-holding instruction has to be read back before an aircraft is cleared to cross or line up on a runway — the panel keeps that rule for you, it does not let a crossing clearance go out silently.

4Tower

TWR · owns every runway

Tower's job is simple to say and strict to run: nothing lines up, takes off, lands, or crosses a runway without Tower's own clearance, and Tower is the one place that sees every runway's state at a glance — reserved for the aircraft about to use it, occupied while it is actually on the runway.

Once an aircraft is lined up, its panel offers the real set of departure clearances: fly runway heading, cleared for takeoff straight away, an immediate takeoff when you need the runway back fast, or a direct routing like RNAV to a fix, cleared for takeoff when the departure allows it.

Landing works the same way in reverse: you clear an arrival to land, and the panel tracks whether the runway is clear before you can hand the next departure a takeoff clearance on it. A go-around is its own instruction, used the moment an arrival cannot safely land.

Tower also owns runway changes after a clearance has already gone out — if the flow changes, Tower is where that gets corrected before the next instruction, not Delivery or Ground.

5Approach & Departure

APP / DEP · the airspace around the airport

This is the one seat that works in headings, altitudes and speeds instead of taxiways and runways. Open an aircraft's panel and you get three steppers — heading, altitude, and speed — plus its assigned STAR (for an arrival) or SID (for a departure) with the other published procedures listed if you need to change it.

Once an aircraft is established on its procedure, proceed direct lets you shortcut it straight to any fix still ahead on that STAR or SID, rather than flying every point along the way.

The left-hand list of published STARs and SIDs is also a filter: toggle one off to declutter the map when you only care about the traffic using a particular procedure. ATC Relay also watches for conflicts between aircraft under your control and flags them rather than letting two aircraft close on each other silently.

6The flight board

BOARD · read-only, for everyone in the session

The flight board is a read-only departures and arrivals list for the whole session — useful if you want to see the bigger picture without sitting in a working seat, or while you are waiting for a position to open up. It does not issue instructions itself; every clearance still comes from the position actually working that aircraft.

Pick Board from the seat menu to open it: two columns, departures and arrivals, each with time, flight, destination or origin, aircraft type, gate, and status — FINAL CALL, BOARDING, DELAYED, APPROACHING, ON TIME, with a NEW GATE tag when a gate changed after the board was first drawn.