It's worse than default 2020 ATC in the few flights I've done involving mountainous approaches it's hard to believe but it's true.  Just completed KBJC>KSHR in 2024 and I have no idea how and why BATC chooses a particular runway for example at this northern Wyoming airport which gets little commercial traffic it sends me to a visual at Rwy24.  That's fine, but I wanted to change runways so requested that and so I request a different runway it says, ""Confirm NEW APPROACH Visual 24".  Sorry, wrong answer to the request made.  This also happened at KSBA when it routed the Longitude not into KSBA's commercial strips but to Rwy 15L which at KSBA is used for touch and goes and departures only because there is way too much elevation change from the mountains due north of that runway.  So I request another runway, either 07 or 25 and it says the same thing:  "Confirm new approach to Visual Rwy15L."  The sad part is these are pretty dead airports for traffic!

And worse still:  on my KSHR flight I just did it tells me to 'Descend to 4000' from the 34K feet I was at when I told BATC I was ready for descent at about 130mi out.  What?  KSHR is at 4021' that seems bizarre to me and we did a very slow descent to avoid the obvious.  35mi out or so it changes that to 7000'. Okay, then again, back to 4000' at about 20 miles out which means I'm getting terrain warnings of course.   I tell you rather than working on LLMs fix this very basic stuff!

Whats about the negative BATC posts the last days? Is that a campain? 😉

Why not just reporting it to the BATC devs, that they could fix the early access tool? 

1 minute ago, guenseli said:

Whats about the negative BATC posts the last days? Is that a campain? 😉

Why not just reporting it to the BATC devs, that they could fix the early access tool? 

I'm curious if others experience this basic problem.  I did report it on their Discord.

I just fly the plane. I look at the airport, approach, and then figure out what my descent rate should be and go by that. All BATC does is clear you to a new altitude, it doesn't tell you how or when to start descending, that is up to the PIC. I usually look at the TD and go by that. 

57 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I just fly the plane. I look at the airport, approach, and then figure out what my descent rate should be and go by that. All BATC does is clear you to a new altitude, it doesn't tell you how or when to start descending, that is up to the PIC. I usually look at the TD and go by that. 

Fair enough, though very diff from experience with FSHud in this regard.  So ultimately it's seeming much like ambience because you're really going to do what you always did, what I always did, as PIC.  In that case I can lose the stuttering AI traffic and just stick with FSLTL and still use BATC's ambience ATC.

I just follow the approach charts restrictions no matter what BATC says, it usually works out fine.

Lee

21 minutes ago, Noel said:

Fair enough, though very diff from experience with FSHud in this regard.  So ultimately it's seeming much like ambience because you're really going to do what you always did, what I always did, as PIC.  In that case I can lose the stuttering AI traffic and just stick with FSLTL and still use BATC's ambience ATC.

I never put arrival in FMC until I am on approach. If the last waypoint is far away from the airport,  I ask for descent in BATC. That way I get the arrival runway and approach as soon as I ask for descent. I then wait until the TD gets close, and then start descending using VnAV. Usually works out fine. 

20 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I never put arrival in FMC until I am on approach. If the last waypoint is far away from the airport,  I ask for descent in BATC. That way I get the arrival runway and approach as soon as I ask for descent. I then wait until the TD gets close, and then start descending using VnAV. Usually works out fine. 

That is what I have been doing as well.   

34 minutes ago, Midnight Music said:

no matter what BATC says

Yeah, well, that's not what you bought BATC for, is it? To ignore it? That's my main problem with BATC lately: I have to ignore a LOT of what it does. I know the 'you are the PIC'-excuse but imho that's a cheap excuse.

 

BATC is amazing, but yes it does tend to put you straight into a mountain on descent at times.

I just use the charts and adjust the descent rate if need be.

 

1 hour ago, mistolip said:

Yeah, well, that's not what you bought BATC for, is it? To ignore it? That's my main problem with BATC lately: I have to ignore a LOT of what it does. I know the 'you are the PIC'-excuse but imho that's a cheap excuse.

 

Yea having to ignore ATC in controlled airspace is not exactly a good feature for an ATC simulator

5 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

I just fly the plane. I look at the airport, approach, and then figure out what my descent rate should be and go by that. All BATC does is clear you to a new altitude, it doesn't tell you how or when to start descending, that is up to the PIC. I usually look at the TD and go by that. 

That being said, ATC is responsible for terrain clearance when assigning altitudes. 

How would the BATC devs get that kind of info? How would it know there is a mountain there?

@Noel, Radar Contact has a NOTAMS option for airports in mountainous terrain. It will instruct you to descend if able. If it’s unsafe to do so you won’t get told off. You, the pilot, decide when it’s safe to do so.

Does BATC have that option?

43 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Noel, Radar Contact has a NOTAMS option for airports in mountainous terrain. It will instruct you to descend if able. If it’s unsafe to do so you won’t get told off. You, the pilot, decide when it’s safe to do so.

Does BATC have that option?

I haven't seen that language, 'if able' yet.

3 hours ago, Rusty Spanner said:

Yea having to ignore ATC in controlled airspace is not exactly a good feature for an ATC simulator

I clearly don't fully appreciate how ATC is supposed to work but again being routed into the shortest runway at both airports in my last two flights, regardless of the surrounding descent requirements, and giving the OPTION to request another runway, then tells me I'm requesting a different approach the same poor runway selection?  I would have thought BATC would have done better than that at this stage in its development.  Odd as heck it's been a very long time since default ATC which looks at the steps in the avionics has done what BATC did on these last two flights, clearing me to an elevation BELOW the arrival airport?  Love the interface and voices but FSHud seems better at ATC in my short experience.