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It is clear the developers spent all their time on scenery and not enough time on air traffic control. I used MFS X for a long time and that ATC module was horrific, but the ATC module for MFS 2000 is even worse! I fly everything IFR on flight plans developed by professional flight planning/airline dispatching software. I have to transfer them into MFS 2000, which takes a while, and then I can go off and fly the route. The whole package is really nice and I like it better than MFS X, but when it comes to ATC I have to say I am totally disappointed. The ATC module uses words and phrases no pilot or controller would ever say. It totally restricts what the pilot can do when interacting with ATC, and if you don't at least acknowledge what the controller says to do it WILL NOT let you go beyond that point or do anything else. Case in point, when flying a Cessna 172, I asked for a different approach from the controller from that which he assigned. MFS issued a completely new clearance and said "Climb and maintain FL180." Obviously, a C172 can't do that and there is no way to tell the controller "unable," which is what I would do in real life. So, in the simulator you must ack the climb but don't climb (to tick the "the aircraft responded" bit within the ATC module,) and request a lower altitude. It stacks that request behind the climb request by saying, "Climb and maintain FL 180, expect 8000 (or whatever you ask for)" -- and from that point on unless you actually climb to FL180 (which is impossible) it does nothing but bark at you to "expedite your climb to FL180." It's an impossible situation -- yet one that is easily resolved in real life. It has caused me to cancel IFR to shut off the barking. And it doesn't help to re-establish contact and ask for a new clearance. It just shoots up up to FL180 all over again, so nothing gained. Another funny one is when flying in northern Texas. It calls the centre "F T Worth Centre" -- spelling out the letters F and T -- instead of saying "Fort Worth Centre." NO controller or pilot would ever do that. It says "tree" instead of "three." I know the ICAO standard says to say "tree," but NO ONE does that. Same for "fife" as opposed to "five." When changing frequency, the controller always says, "...continue as planned, altimeter XX.XX." NO CONTROLLER does that. You check on a new frequency and give your altitude, and the controller just acknowledges you and MAYBE gives the altimeter setting. I have also read, on this forum and others, people saying ATC does weird things to them. I can believe all those stories. The ATC module is totally broken. It is inflexible, directs impossible situations, isn't forgiving to correct errors, and says things no pilot or controller would ever say. I don't know if there is a third-party fix for this, but I would really hope Microsoft assigns some talent to this and corrects the problem. Some of us really do want to use this software for IFR flying as close to the real world as possible, and this ATC module leaves us totally lacking in almost every respect.