Wheels Down
Oct 14, 2026 · Flight Control with real planes. Land Boston Logan's real morning rush, 36 real arrivals with their real callsigns, by drawing each plane's path to a runway, while the pilots talk back. Free in the browser.
Wheels Down is Flight Control with real planes. Every plane in it landed at Boston Logan on the morning of Tuesday 13 October 2026, between 09:45 and 11:00. You draw each one's path to a runway with your finger and keep them apart.
The flights come from open data. Hobbyists all over the world run radio receivers that pick up the position broadcasts planes send out, and adsb.lol publishes a day of them at a time. A script read a whole day for Boston and kept the 36 airline arrivals of that morning, with their real callsigns, aircraft types and order. Each plane comes in from the side its real flight came from. The 75 minutes play in about four and a half, calm at first and then busier.
The runways are Logan's real ones, and they come in three lengths. Heavy jets need the long runways. Other jets can use the medium ones too, and the small Cape Air props can land anywhere, even on Logan's short runway, which is less than 800 metres long. Touch a plane and only the runways it can use light up. Every plane has limited fuel. Halfway through the wind shifts, the whole field turns round, and two maydays call in, one low on fuel and one after a bird strike. Land on a runway that's still busy and the plane goes around. If two planes touch, the round is over.
Every pilot talks back. There are six characters, from a tired long-haul crew to a nervous rookie who says "Roger! I mean, copy." A readback never holds you up: the next one cuts it off.
It plays on a phone with one finger, or with a mouse. At the end you get your score for the morning to share, and a question about what the game should get next: more airports, a new real rush every day, or talking to the pilots yourself.
The idea is Jeff's, from Flight Control (Firemint, 2009). The flight data is © adsb.lol contributors under the ODbL and the runways are from OurAirports. The pilots' voices were generated with ElevenLabs, and it was built by Claude with three.js.