Short Final
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For teachers and aviation clubs

Short Final in the classroom and at the club

Short Final is a free phone game about air traffic control, built on real airports. Here is what it is, why it can help a class or club, how to use the free browser demo in a lesson, and three lessons you can run with paper and one shared screen.

Get it on Google Play Play free in your browser

What Short Final is

Short Final is a free air traffic control game for Android phones, made by Thin Air Studios. You pick an airport. Planes come in towards its runways. You draw each plane's path to a runway, keep the planes apart and land them safely.

The airports are real. The game has more than 29,000 of them, each with the runways it really has and the runway names it really uses. Many also have taxiways and gates drawn from OpenStreetMap.

In the Android app, live flights come from The OpenSky Network and arrive with their real flight numbers. When the sky is quiet, simulated planes fill in. The game is not a flight tracker: live positions are approximate and simplified for play.

The app is free on Google Play, with no ads and no sign-up needed to play. The daily challenge is always free. After your first three days, you get three free games a day at any airport. Short Final Pro is an optional one-time purchase for unlimited games.

Why it suits a class or club

Spatial reasoning. An approach is a path on a map. Students read a runway layout, judge distances and angles, and plan turns so that each plane lands on the right runway and stays clear of the others.

Real-world geography. Every airport in the game is a real place. Students can find one, compare its runway lengths, see which airports are the busiest (the game's list uses ACI World's 2025 passenger results) and learn why an airport has two codes.

How air traffic control works. The game keeps the central job of a controller: many aircraft, one runway, and every plane kept clear of the others. The guides explain who does each job, why planes hold, and the words used on the radio. The game is simplified. It has no slots, no flow management and no en route control centers, and its planes do not follow published procedures. That difference makes a good discussion in itself.

Using the free browser demo in a lesson

The browser demo needs no install and no sign-in. It works on a shared classroom screen or on a student's own device.

  1. Open the demo on the shared screen.
  2. Say what it is. The demo plays simulated planes only. It does not show real flights. The real flights are in the Android app.
  3. Plan for one game per visit. The demo gives one game each time the page loads, and a reload starts a new one. With a class, use one screen and take turns, or give each pair a device.
  4. Use the airport links in the guides. Each guide has a "Try it yourself" button that opens a named airport in the demo.
  5. Treat the score as a talking point, not a grade. Ask what the group did well before asking what went wrong.

Three lesson ideas

Each lesson takes 20 to 40 minutes. Each needs only one guide, the demo and paper.

1. Why planes circle

Goal: Students can say why a plane holds, and sketch a holding pattern and a holding stack.

Time: 30 minutes

Read first: Holding patterns: why planes circle

Steps

  1. Read "Why planes hold" together. Write the five reasons on the board.
  2. On paper, draw a racetrack: two parallel legs joined by two turns. Mark the holding fix and the direction of the turns. The guide explains why standard turns are right-hand.
  3. In the demo, make a plane circle in place, or draw a closed loop for it. Ask the class what the plane is doing and why a controller might want it to wait there.
  4. Read "Holding stacks". Sketch three levels, with the lowest plane released first. Ask why the controller keeps the planes at different heights.

Discussion questions

  • Why does a plane in a hold burn fuel, and what can a crew do when a hold runs long?
  • Why might a controller use a stack instead of moving the planes sideways?
  • What does it mean that a holding pattern is published? How do the pilot and the controller both know where it is?

2. Which way do planes land?

Goal: Students can work out headwind and crosswind from a wind and a runway direction.

Time: 30 minutes. The lesson uses cosine and sine. For younger students, use the guide's worked example and a protractor.

Read first: How weather changes the runway in use

Steps

  1. Read "Headwind and crosswind" and work the guide's example together. A wind of 20 knots at 30 degrees gives about 17 knots of headwind and 10 knots of crosswind.
  2. Give pairs three winds of 15 knots, at 0, 45 and 90 degrees to the runway. Each pair works out the headwind (speed times cosine of the angle) and the crosswind (speed times sine). Check the answers together.
  3. Choose an airport with two or more runways, such as Chicago O'Hare. Find its runways in the runway table on the airport page and note their names.
  4. Give the class a wind direction and speed. Ask which runway end gets more headwind, and which runway they would choose. Then read "How the runway is chosen" and ask what else a real controller would weigh: noise, traffic, approach aids, runway length and closures.

Discussion questions

  • Why do planes land into the wind?
  • Why is a crosswind harder for a light aircraft than for a heavy one?
  • Why might a controller keep the same runway when the wind is very light?

3. Who talks to the pilot?

Goal: Students can name the controller for each stage of a flight, and use a few standard radio phrases in a role-play.

Time: 25 minutes

Read first: How air traffic control works, then ATC phraseology for beginners

Steps

  1. Write five job names on cards: clearance delivery, ground, tower, approach and departure, and en route. Students match each card to its job in "Who does what".
  2. Ask where a flight changes controllers, and what the phrase "contact departure" tells the crew.
  3. Read the list of common phrases in the phraseology guide. In pairs, one student is the pilot and one is the tower. They run a short approach using only those phrases.
  4. Open the demo and watch one arrival and one departure. For each thing that happens, such as a taxi to a gate, a landing or a pushback, name the controller who would handle it in real life.

Discussion questions

  • Why do pilots and controllers use fixed words on the radio?
  • What would go wrong if two controllers gave the same runway to two planes?
  • Which parts of a real flight does the game leave out, and how would they change the job?

Ages, accounts and privacy

The Short Final app is for players aged 13 and up. A player under 13 cannot play the app. The browser demo has no sign-in, asks no age and keeps nothing on the device. It shows simulated planes only. The privacy policy explains what the website and the demo do.

For a class with students under 13, use the browser demo with the teacher at the screen, and do not ask students to install the app.

The app and these guides are in English. The home page of this website is also available in 12 other languages.

Real flights are in the Android app

The browser demo plays simulated planes only. The free Android app brings in live flights from The OpenSky Network. The app is for players aged 13 and up.

Get it on Google Play Play free in your browser

Contact

Questions about using Short Final in a class or club, or a correction to this page, go to thinaircapital@gmail.com.