ATC Communications

Table of contents

  1. Tuning In and Opening the Conversation
  2. The Conversation Window
    1. Mute
    2. Pop-out Window
  3. Requests Through a Flight
  4. Automatic Hand-offs
  5. Picking a Gate
  6. Talking to ATC with Your Voice
  7. Requirements & Notes

FlyAround includes a fully voiced ATC conversation for your flight — request your IFR clearance, pushback, taxi, takeoff and landing, get handed from controller to controller as you fly, and talk to ATC with your own voice using push-to-talk. Every exchange is spoken with realistic radio audio and written to a live transcript.

The ATC conversation works in every edition. Spoken ATC audio uses the crew-voice pipeline (Settings → PA & Callouts → Realistic AI crew voices), and talking to ATC by voice additionally requires the AI Assistant feature — see Push-to-Talk.

Tuning In and Opening the Conversation

ATC is driven by your COM1 radio — tune the frequency of a real controller position at your airport and the matching station comes alive.

  1. On the active-flight screen, find the floating Actions bar (it shows your COM1/COM2/XPDR readout).
  2. Click the COM1 readout to open the ATC frequencies list for your departure, destination, and nearest airport — grouped by position (ATIS, Clearance, Ground, Tower, Departure, Approach, Center).
  3. Tune a controller frequency. The ATC button on the Actions bar lights up and its tooltip names the position you reached — Clearance Delivery, Ground Operations, Tower, Departure, Approach, or Center.
  4. Click the button to open the conversation window.

The button stays disabled while no request is available on the tuned frequency (for example on ATIS). At smaller fields that don’t publish every position, Tower absorbs the missing ones — clearance, ground and departure requests simply appear on Tower.

The Conversation Window

The window title shows the position, station callsign and frequency — e.g. Ground Operations — Kennedy Ground · 121.9. It has two parts:

  • Request list (left) — only the requests that are legal right now on this frequency.
  • Live transcript (right) — pilot calls on the right with your pilot avatar, controller replies on the left. Lines appear in sync with the spoken audio, with a typing indicator on the side of whoever speaks next. Every exchange is a real three-part call: your request, the controller’s reply, and your read-back.

New lines auto-scroll only while you’re at the bottom — scroll up to re-read history and the transcript stays put until you scroll back down.

When a controller has nothing further for you, the request column tells you who to call next: “Nothing further on {station}. Tune {controller} to {request}.”

Mute

The mute button in the title row silences ATC voice entirely — muting skips voice generation (it doesn’t just lower the volume), so a muted radio consumes no AI credits. The transcript keeps flowing normally.

Pop-out Window

In the desktop app, use Open in window in the title row to detach the conversation into its own borderless window — handy on a second monitor. Drag the header to move it, resize from the edges, and use Back to dialog mode to return it to the main window. The transcript and session stay in sync between both surfaces.

Requests Through a Flight

Phase Request Controller
Pre-flight Request IFR clearance Clearance Delivery
Ground Request startup / Request pushback Ground
Ground Request taxi to runway Ground
Departure Request takeoff / line-up Tower
Climb-out Report airborne (Departure) Departure
En-route Report level / check in, Request higher, Request lower, Request direct to destination Center
Arrival Request approach clearance Approach
Arrival Request landing clearance Tower
After landing Request gate Ground

The session enforces the real-world order — asking for taxi before pushback gets you an authentic refusal (“Unable, complete pushback first.”), not an error.

A few requests do more than talk:

  • IFR clearance assigns a squawk code and writes it into your transponder automatically.
  • Taxi clearance reads the actual taxiway sequence (“Taxi to runway 27L via A, B, C, hold short.”) and draws the cleared taxi route on the map, updating as you advance along it. The same happens for the taxi to your gate after landing.
  • Approved pushback and startup are carried out by your virtual First Officer — beacon on and pushback started (through GSX if you use it as your ground handling, otherwise sim-native), fuel pumps and APU running.

Automatic Hand-offs

As your flight progresses, ATC proactively calls you — each hand-off retunes COM1 automatically and appears (voiced) in the transcript:

  • Ground → Tower — approaching your departure runway during taxi-out, Ground hands you to Tower and the crew checks in holding short. The First Officer also runs the line-up preparation (landing lights, strobes) as you near the runway.
  • Tower → Departure — climbing through 1,000 ft after takeoff, Tower hands you off and your airborne report is made for you.
  • Center hand-offs en-route — each time you cross a FIR boundary you’re handed to the next Center, with check-in and “radar contact”.
  • Arrival chain — nearing your top of descent, ATC starts working you down: descent clearances, hand-off to Approach, an approach clearance for the runway best aligned with the live wind, hand-off to Tower, and finally a landing clearance that includes the current surface wind.

Picking a Gate

After landing, ask Ground to Request gate. The Pick a gate list shows the stands at your destination, nearest first, labelled by kind (Gate / Ramp / Cargo / Dock) with a size class, stand diameter and distance — e.g. Gate 12 · S · Ø18 m · 250 m.

  • Stands too small for your aircraft are filtered out — an airliner is never offered a GA spot, and widebodies only see heavy stands.
  • Stands occupied by parked AI traffic are disabled and marked Occupied.

Once assigned, you get a taxi clearance to the gate and the route is drawn on the map.

Talking to ATC with Your Voice

You can make any request by voice instead of clicking — even with the ATC window closed.

  1. In Settings → AI Assistant → Voice & Push-to-Talk, enable push-to-talk and bind the ATC transmit key (a keyboard chord or joystick button — separate from the assistant key, like radio transmit versus intercom).
  2. Hold the key, speak your request — “request pushback”, “ready for departure”, “taxi to gate A12” — and release.
  3. A floating pill shows Listening… with a live transcript, then Transcribing…, with an ATC chip confirming who you’re addressing.

Your phrase is matched against standard phraseology; if nothing matches confidently, nothing is transmitted — you’ll never send a garbled call. Speech recognition runs through the FlyAround voice service, so it needs an internet connection and available AI credits.

Push-to-talk requires the AI Assistant feature on your plan. Joystick binding and the global hotkey (which works while the sim has focus) are currently Windows-only.

Requirements & Notes

Topic Details
Simulators Works on both MSFS (2020/2024) and X-Plane 11/12.
Navigraph Not needed for the ground/departure side — frequencies fall back to FlyAround’s bundled airport data. A Navigraph subscription is required for the en-route Center hand-offs and the automatic arrival chain.
GSX Not required. With GSX selected as your ground handling, approved pushback drives GSX; otherwise the sim’s native pushback is used.
First Officer The ATC-triggered actions (pushback, startup, line-up lights) use the virtual FO — keep First Officer auto-actions enabled in Settings → System.
Voice audio ATC lines are spoken through the crew-voice pipeline with a VHF radio effect. Requires PA & Callouts and Realistic AI crew voices to be on; use the in-window mute to silence ATC specifically.
Persistence The conversation, clearance state, squawk and assigned gate survive an app restart mid-flight.