11 hours ago, Rocky_53 said:

Agreed. I was flying from Sicily up to Innsbruck last week, and then told to descend to 5000ft as I was approaching the Austrian alps!! 

This is so true, too much of the time.  Flying KBJC near my home up to Sheridan Wyoming it has me descend to an AGL below the airport!  And there was no reason to do that!  Just today flying Juneau Alaska to Anchorage Alaska it gives me the STAR for arrival and tells me to start my descent after just telling me to climb to FL180 (cruise was FL360), just a few minutes after taking off at Juneau .  Hello?  I swear this dedicated team seems lost on this basic stuff.  They do win in the ambience department is about it sadly.  Plus, it seems clueless as to my own flight level.  I can come in too high aligned w/ a downwind leg, say 12K feet over the airport because...well I was tied up in the kitchen and forgot to pause ...but in any case it tells me to turn 90 to align w/ the base leg and yet I'm 12K feet over the airport.  This is seriously mentally compromised ATC   Time for AI to get way more involved.  Sounds like the perfect task for AI.

Don't mean to say BATC doesn't have a lot of things well done and I appreciate those aspects.

Edited October 28, 2025Oct 28 by Noel

Yes BATC provides some background ambience but not a great deal else -  it can't do vectors reliably and there is this minimum safe altitude stuff.  All pretty basic matters that you would expect from an ATC addon.

Bruce

I guess I'll report my third experience testing BATC here, since this turned into a discussion.  Spokane - Seattle.  Departure went ok, although it stuck me on a south heading at 15k for a lot longer than seemed reasonable.  I just told myself it was a metering vector for SEA, very realistic 😂.  But then once I was on my way, I got to altitude and then was cleared to descend via the GLASR3.  Good start. 

But then it hung me at 12k, pointed at the airport, and told me to expect the visual.  In IMC.  I requested the ILS and it did seem to take that this time, and turned me onto a downwind... And then shipped me to tower.  On downwind, at 12k, in IMC, supposedly on vectors for an approach 😂.

So, to recap:  

Attempt one: it descended me into mountains. 

Attempt two: it gave me a 90 degree intercept to a final approach course. 

Attempt three:  it tried to give me a visual in IMC, and then dropped me on a downwind at 12k and shipped me to tower. 

I'm afraid I give up.  This program just seems pretty broken.

Does BATC have a logging feature that you can send to the support team when things don’t go as anticipated?

https://wiki.beyondatc.net/support/bug-reporting/#how-to-get-help

12 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I guess I'll report my third experience testing BATC here, since this turned into a discussion.  Spokane - Seattle.  Departure went ok, although it stuck me on a south heading at 15k for a lot longer than seemed reasonable.  I just told myself it was a metering vector for SEA, very realistic 😂.  But then once I was on my way, I got to altitude and then was cleared to descend via the GLASR3.  Good start. 

But then it hung me at 12k, pointed at the airport, and told me to expect the visual.  In IMC.  I requested the ILS and it did seem to take that this time, and turned me onto a downwind... And then shipped me to tower.  On downwind, at 12k, in IMC, supposedly on vectors for an approach 😂.

So, to recap:  

Attempt one: it descended me into mountains. 

Attempt two: it gave me a 90 degree intercept to a final approach course. 

Attempt three:  it tried to give me a visual in IMC, and then dropped me on a downwind at 12k and shipped me to tower. 

I'm afraid I give up.  This program just seems pretty broken.

Have you tried the same flight plan in any other ATC programs (including default)? The comparison would be interesting.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Does BATC have a logging feature that you can send to the support team when things don’t go as anticipated?

Yes.

10 hours ago, flyingscampi said:

Have you tried the same flight plan in any other ATC programs (including default)? The comparison would be interesting.

Nah.  AI ATC is not important to me.  I tried BATC as a lark, because a friend kept asking me to.  I was expecting it to be much worse at interaction; it's good at that.  But I really did expect that, as a product being sold, it would, you know... Work.  The core purpose of these utilities is to be able to vector aircraft realistically, and this program simply cannot do that.  Regardless of whatever else it does, it seems it doesn't actually work. 

Maybe others do, but I guess I kind of doubt it now, after seeing this one.  I'll let others do that testing.