Turbulence mode: reading wind and storms
Wind pushes every aircraft off the heading you gave it, storm cells scramble anything that flies into their core, and both get worse every wave.
Two forces, not one
Prevailing wind is a steady drift across the whole sector, shown on the wind dial. It turns slowly over a run and pushes every aircraft the same way at the same rate. It does not change the heading you commanded: the plane keeps pointing where you told it and slides sideways at the same time, crabbing across the screen the way real aircraft do in a crosswind.
Per-aircraft turbulence sits on top of that. Each plane gets its own swirl that varies with position and time, so two aircraft in different parts of the sector are shoved different ways. It ramps up with the wave number until tracks visibly weave. You cannot plan around it, only leave margin.
Lead your turns
Aim upwind of the exit, not at it. Wind pushing south means a heading slightly north of where you want the plane to end up, and the drift carries it onto the line. How much lead depends on distance and wind strength; you will have a feel for it within three runs.
Aim straight at the exit instead and you spend the whole crossing correcting, which is attention you needed somewhere else.
Aircraft near an edge are the dangerous ones. A plane lined up correctly but three seconds from the boundary can be pushed across the wrong edge before it gets there.
Storm cells
Cells are dark circles with a red core, and the sector gains one per wave:
- The visible cell is 70 pixels in radius.
- The dangerous core is 55% of that, about 38 pixels.
- Entering the core throws the aircraft onto a random heading, 110 to 230 degrees off.
- A stirred aircraft is immune for about 2.5 seconds.
The outer ring is not lethal, so clipping the circle is fine and threading between two cells often beats the long way round. A stirred plane is not lost either: re-select it and steer it back while it is immune.
The danger is where the stir leaves it. A random heading in empty airspace costs one correction. The same heading into traffic at the same altitude is a collision you could not have seen coming.
Altitude matters more here
Drift and stirs mean the picture you remember is always slightly out of date. If every aircraft sits at least 50 away from its neighbours vertically, a horizontal surprise cannot kill you. Spend the first two waves, while arrivals are 5 seconds apart, putting every plane on a deliberate level.
Storms are also cover
Small core, large circle, so most players avoid the whole thing and the space around cells stays empty. When the sector is packed, a cell's outer ring is often the only conflict-free path on the board.