ARRIVAL RADAR is a tiny game where you are put in the seat of an air traffic controller responsible for guiding arriving airplanes to their final approach. Your objective is to land planes as quickly as you can while keeping them a safe distance from each other.
Select an airplane to talk to using LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys. Once a airplane has been selected, you can start preparing your instructions for the airplane: use UP and DOWN arrow keys to choose between standard arrivals. When you have selected one you want the airplane to follow, press the X key to instruct the plane to follow that arrival.
Sometimes you want to assign a new standard arrival to an airplane, but you do not want it to go back to the start of the arrival. Rather, you prefer it join the arrival on an intermediary waypoint. To do this, select the airplane, select the arrival you want it to join, and then use the Z key to cycle between waypoints on that arrival. When the desired waypoint is selected, press X to instruct the plane to join the arrival at that waypoint.
Other tricks include maneuvering for spacing (temporarily assign another arrival to get the airplane to turn a little, then assign back) and one-lap holds (wait until the plane has passed a waypoint, then assign that waypoint again.)
If you think things are moving too slowly, hold down the X key to speed up time. This is useful mainly in the beginning – the rest of the game is too stressful.
What are the grey lines? The grey lines show the path of the airplane in the next minute, assuming it does not perform any maneuvers. This is helpful to figure out whether planes will be appropriately separated when their flight paths intersect. Half a minute of distance is a good minimum to aim for, to allow for some slowdowns if the first plane makes less efficient maneuvers.
Why is that one plane really slow? It's in the way! Some planes are smaller and can only go so fast. Deal with it.
Why is the grey line shrinking? Waypoints are associated with speed restrictions which the planes do follow. They also slow down a little when they sense they are getting too close to each other. This is not enough to prevent conflicts, but maybe enough to give you a few more seconds to deal with the problem.
What are the blue planes? They are planes you have not yet explicitly assigned an arrival to. If the arrival they are on looks good, you can turn them white by pressing X to assign them whatever they are already doing.
How do I separate planes coming from two sides to join the final approach at nearly the same time? One useful trick is giving one of the planes a shortcut by clearing it direct to the ILS instead of first to VEK. You can also extend the base leg a little by temporarily routing a plane on TAL direct to GUH or vice versa, then when abeam of VEK, clearing it in for the landing.
That requires there not to be long trains on both sides of the approach. How do I get rid of those? Create gaps between planes early on. This reduces efficiency but gives you more freedom to slot in planes between each other. Send planes to the other side of the airport if that happens to be more lightly utilised.
How do I separate planes by altitude? You do not. All planes have the same altitude.
How do I assign a lower speed to maintain separation? You do not. Lower speeds are not assigned, they come either from restrictions on waypoints or proximity alerts in the planes.
How do I assign a higher speed to maintain separation? If the plane is near the end of its arrival, you can send it to a waypoint early in an arrival. Those waypoints have unrestricted speed, so the plane will accelerate. If you assign back to the end of the arrival shortly thereafter, the acceleration will be temporary.
Can planes crash into each other? Yes. By popular demand, you can now crash planes into each other. But there's something wrong with you if you do it intentionally.