FlatoutATC 2.9 — Release Notes

Released [DATE] (build 61)

A whole new kind of shift: Search & Rescue. Plus player-controlled departures, a big fix to how time is tracked, and a round of airport upgrades.

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🚁 Special Ops & Rescue — the headline feature

A brand-new mission type, built around one feeling: getting someone home.

Launch a rescue helicopter from its base and fly a search for a survivor at an unknown location:

• Search the area — sweep the grid; a "warmer / colder" cue tells you when you're closing in.
• Get down low — you can only spot the survivor below a certain altitude, so you'll thread the terrain (mountains, water, coastline) to find them.
• Hover and hoist — hold a steady hover over the survivor to bring them aboard.
• Watch the clock — there's a survival clock running. And fuel is your tempo: run low and your helo returns to base to refuel on its own, but that time counts against the clock. Fuel never kills the aircraft — the survivor's clock is the stake.

Three dedicated rescue levels ship with it:

• Anchorage 🇺🇸 — rescues across Cook Inlet and the Knik/Turnagain Arms.
• San Diego 🇺🇸 — Pacific and bay water rescues plus the eastern foothills.
• Lucerne 🇨🇭 — our first Swiss level, a Rega-style alpine flagship over Lake Lucerne.

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🛫 Ready for Departure — you control the runway

Departures no longer sit on the runway blocking your arrivals. They now wait off-runway in a banner on the left — tap to release one onto the runway when you're ready to send it. You decide the rhythm of your departures instead of the game forcing the timing. (Straight from player feedback.)

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⏱️ Time now runs on the game clock

A meaningful fix under the hood: flight times and all in-game timers now track the game clock, not real-world time. Pausing, backgrounding the app, or coming back the next day no longer inflates flight times or expires your timers — no more "thousands of minutes" airborne after a pause. Everything picks up exactly where you left it.

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✈️ Airport Upgrades

• Anchorage (PANC) rebuilt with real runway thresholds and published procedures (SIDs, STARs, approaches) and a denser, navdata-accurate fix network.
• Boston / Manchester (BOS · MHT) — a busier, deeper pass: faster pacing, real procedures, and a corrected traffic flow.
• Los Angeles (LAX) — corrected runway headings so approaches line up cleanly.

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🔗 Fixes & Polish

• Shareable links and the daily-challenge widget open the app to the right screen again.
• General stability and pacing improvements across ground and live levels.

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💳 In-App Purchases

No changes. Your Full Game Unlock ($4.99) and prior unlocks restore automatically. No new purchases, no subscriptions, no price changes.

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🌍 Localisation

Fully localised in English, German, Spanish, and French.

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💬 As always

Tap Settings → Talk to the Developer with your thoughts — Search & Rescue grew out of exactly that. Go bring someone home.

— Craig