Features

20 hot tips and strategies for iPhone Flight Control

Help to make Firemint's strategy game plane sailing

20 hot tips and strategies for iPhone Flight Control
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Firemint's Flight Control has quickly become one of the most popular iPhone games, and since the introduction of online leaderboards, one of the most competitive.

It's also fiendishly tough once the screen gets full of planes, though. Happily, help is at hand.

We asked Firemint if they had any tips on how to play the game better, and they came back with their pointers, as well as some suggestions from the burgeoning Flight Control community.

Read on for the full skinny, and see you on the high-score tables!

FIREMINT'S TIPS

1. Land planes as quickly as possible. Make them fly in a straight line where you can, and drag their path all the way to the runways. Use sharp corners rather than curves.

2. Plan your air traffic lanes, and keep your flight paths away from the edges of the screen.

3. Land fast intercontinental flights before slower domestic jets. Land helicopters as quickly as possible or they will form a moving roadblock! Don’t be afraid to make domestic jets circle until you’re ready for them by drawing tight spirals.

4. Pass behind planes that are already on an approach path, rather than trying to cut in front of them.

5. If it looks like two planes will arrive at the landing zone at about the same time, include a little swirl or loop in the flight path for one of them so that it is delayed a little bit. Plus it’s fun to draw swirls and loops.

6. There are only a few spawn points around the edges of the screen - if you watch closely, you will notice which planes emerge from where.

7. Helicopters can approach the helipad from multiple sides at once, but be careful not to get them too close to each other.

8. Watch the black outlines of each aircraft, these are the collision points - as long as you keep at least one pixel clearance, they won’t collide!

9. Flight Control is multi-touch - you can play with a friend, take half a side of the airport each, and pass aircraft to each other.

10. The exact spot where a plane will land on the runway depends on its angle of approach and how close it is to the start of the runway. If planes are going in a straight line when they are coming in to land you can predict how soon they will touch down!

COMMUNITY TIPS

1. Don’t let your significant other play the game, or you’ll never get your iPhone back. Organise a roster for all your workmates at the office who want to borrow your iPhone, and keep plenty of external batteries on hand.

2. Planes (especially pink ones) can fly along the runway towards the left, then do a sharp 180 degree turn to land.

3. Follow one single flight path for each aircraft type.

4. Never play Flight Control while flying a real plane, as the sound of “GROUND 100, GROUND 100” is likely to ruin your concentration.

5. Whenever possible, put fast jets ahead of slow jets in your landing patterns. It allows you to focus your attention elsewhere because there is no risk of one overtaking the other.

6. Don’t look at your score while you’re playing. I find that it helps to not know because if I glance at my score I may get nervous about closing in on my previous high score.

7. You can “stop” aircraft by holding your finger down on them.

8. Pick out about six safe holding pattern spots not too close to the perimeter, where there’s room for emerging aircraft to go around.

9. When conflicts occur, the faster planes are better to redirect than the slow planes or helicopters. If two aircraft are going to crash, pull one of them back for a fraction of a second and then direct it straight back to the runway.

10. Some people do better while completely focused on the game, others do better while multi-tasking (watching TV or talking at the same time), so experiment and figure out what works best for you!

Meanwhile, Firemint has also provided us with an 'ubermap' of plane spawn points, as well as the danger zones for collisions. It's below - click on it for a larger version.

Have you got any Flight Control tips to add to this list? Let us know by posting a comment. For more info on the game's community features, click here.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)