Some of the most common comments we receive on the Just Flight Forum and in support tickets are regarding Ai Traffic frequently performing go-arounds on approach, either due to traffic on the runway, or more commonly, due to traffic not having the correct separation on approach. The methods/workarounds that we have used to improve the arrival traffic within FS Traffic also lead to the reasons why custom-created schedules do not appear in arrival schedules. This FAQ aims to cover these points below.

The main limitation we face with arrival traffic is that the MSFS Ai Traffic / ATC system does not apply any form of separation to the arriving traffic. ATC simply directs the Ai Traffic to start the approach immediately after the traffic is generated, and does not take into account other traffic in the area.

This then leads directly to another issue we face with the default MSFS traffic system, which is when an Ai aircraft performs a go-around, there is a sizeable chance that the aircraft will not receive further instructions from ATC to rejoin the approach. If the Ai Traffic does not receive instructions from ATC, it will not know where to fly. This can then cause the Ai Traffic to fly back to the last waypoint on its flight plan (which in our case is the destination airport) and will fly over the airport at a very low altitude. 

As MSFS does not handle the approach separation, we have to add separation via the FS Traffic code, and the only reliable way we have found to do this is by controlling the timing and position of the arrival traffic generation.

The way the arrival traffic currently works in FS Traffic is we take all the arrivals in a 1-hour period that the player is currently in, and then space those arrivals out equally over that 1-hour period. For example, if you load into an airport at 1020, we process all of the scheduled arrivals between 1000 and 1059 and then generate them in equal time periods for the duration of that hour (so if there are 6 arrivals scheduled in that hour, an arrival aircraft will generate every 10 minutes). We have also added a hard limit to the arrival traffic of a maximum frequency of 1 arrival every 3 minutes. From our extensive testing, this provides the best balance of arrival separation and quantity.

As we have to apply a significant amount of code to ensure the arrival traffic is generated correctly and with the best possible separation, we made the decision to prevent custom flights from appearing in the arrival schedules.

The FS Traffic development team continues to investigate other methods of arrival traffic generation, and if any alternative method is found that allows for custom arrival traffic to be generated, either via custom code or an MSFS Sim Update, then it will be included in a future update.