To make your airport more realistic and nice looking. The idea is that if you want to take medium contracts or have night and bad weather operations, you need to build an ILS system and radar. Just like in real life. You would need to place these “things” at the end of each runway and manually build ILS tower and radar tower. Radar would allow you to get better weather info and more precise arrival times. You would need to hire a new employee type, the ATC controller to run your tower. The game would tell you how many of them you would need to hire based on how many stands you have built.
ILS: would allow for bad weather operations and would be a requirement in better contracts Radar: would make predicting arrival times more precise, would better direct departing and arriving traffic would be a requirement in better contracts Ground radar: would make groung taxiing faster and more coordinated, would be a requirement in better contracts (maybe merch ground and standard radar ?) PAPIs: make them work and make them a requirement ATC emloyee: a new employee type, you would hire them to operate your ATC tower, the number of them would depend on number of stands built
Why it should be implemented:
Extra realism, good looks, more gameplay and a new challange.
A rotating radar unit sounds excellent. Upgrade to tower for ILS sounds good too. Ties it into the weather system too, so if bad weather planes would not land without it.
Having ILS would allow landing in adverse weather. Radar could help predict actual arrival times? Or what game mechanic could it enhance? More flights per hour allowed?
It could be tied into the separation times on the flight planner? With radar you know where they are so can group them closer. Without radar you’d need to eyeball them and allow greater separation.
I imagine you would need ILS if you want your airport to operate in bad weather and at night (connected to night time operations). Every medium airline contract (lets say 3+ stars) would require ILS. Radar would work as a better communication divice than what ATC tower has and it would also work as a weather station+. It could also help with better arrival times predictions.
I’d suggest changing your title a little. This is more than just employees. It’s a whole system for ground control and everything else. You title does not really make that clear.
Air traffic controllers work multiple short shifts (so i have read) which means that a minimum number of air traffic control staff members would be needed to ensure the airport remained operational over a 24hr period on a heavy rotation. This need be nothing more than employed staff that draw a salary and come and go every 8 hours, but the atc tower should not be able to operate without a mimimum
