Virtual Planes, Virtual Airports: Inside the World of VATSIM
&gt; <i>...when you’re approaching an airport and an air traffic controller is giving you your initial clearance, he’s going to tell you where he wants you, what altitude he wants you at, what speed he wants you at, what heading he wants you on, until you intercept the localiser for the runway you’re going to land on. So he’s going to give you about six pieces of information in a single sentence. You need to be ready to accept that information and understand it. If you’re not it’s going to come at you like arglebargle and you’re going to be saying please repeat please repeat please repeat. Well he doesn’t have time to do that because there may be fifteen aircraft in the pattern so please repeat is an extraordinary request in many circumstances.</i><p>Why isn&#x27;t this information transmitted digitally? Fire it off in a sideband of the radio transmission, or even just as a half-second modem bleep in the audio track. You keep the voice communication for redundancy and backwards compatibility for planes that don&#x27;t have the equipment, but having the information actually appear on your console is surely highly desirable?<p>...actually, isn&#x27;t this technology already available, so that ATC can give commands to planes flying on full autopilot?