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Sydney Approach Control

YSSY / SYD — Australia

Sydney (YSSY / SYD) is one of the real-world terminal areas you can control in the free ATC Radar Simulator. Its approach (APP) airspace — centred near 33°56.8'S 151°10.6'E in Australia — is modelled with real runways, radio navaids and instrument procedures. As the approach controller you sequence arriving traffic onto the ILS approach, launch departures on their standard instrument departures, and keep every flight safely separated on the radar.

Sydney Kingsford Smith is Australia’s busiest airport and Qantas’s home, set on the shore of Botany Bay just eight kilometres from the city centre. Two parallel runways run north–south, 16R/34L and 16L/34R, with the cross runway 07/25 alongside, and the airport works under a night curfew and an hourly movement cap — so every slot in the daytime stream counts.

Sydney chooses its runway mode with noise in mind: parallel operations on 16 or 34 carry most of the traffic, while modes using the cross runway, and ones that put departures and arrivals over Botany Bay and the ocean, share the noise around the city. Arrivals come from four directions — BOREE from the north, MARLN off the Pacific to the east, RIVET from Melbourne and Canberra in the south-west and ODALE from the west — and Australia’s transition altitude is 10,000 ft, so the transition level is FL110.

Runways

Runways 07, 16L, 34R, 16R, 34L are equipped with an ILS (Instrument Landing System) — a localizer for lateral guidance and a glideslope for the descent path down to the threshold. In the simulator you turn arrivals onto the extended centreline, clear them for the approach, and watch them capture the localizer and glideslope automatically.

Radio navaids

VOR/DME: SYRIC
NDB: WOLKAT

Standard arrivals (STARs)

Standard departures (SIDs)

The terminal airspace

• Field elevation: 21 ft above sea level.
• Transition level: FL110 — below it aircraft fly altitudes on the local QNH; at or above it they fly standard flight levels.
• Upper limit: FL200 — overflights cross the sector below this level.
• The terminal control area (TMA) extends roughly 51 NM around the field.
• Entry / exit fixes on the boundary: SYRICWOLKATBOREEMARLNRIVETODALEWELSHENTRAMARTOKAMPIFISHADIPSO

How to control Sydney in the simulator

In the simulator, Sydney is about choosing your runway mode. On 34L or 16R the long north–south final takes most of the stream; switch to 07 or 25 and you are working a single cross-runway final with arrivals turning in over the bay (there is no ILS on 25 here — it is flown as an RNP approach). Mind the high transition level: below FL110 everything is an altitude on QNH.

Pick Sydney when you start a session, then double-click an aircraft's data block to assume it. Give it radar headings, climb or descend it to a level and control its speed to build an orderly stream toward the runway. Turn arrivals onto final, clear them for the ILS, and keep at least 3 NM and 1,000 ft between aircraft — the short-term conflict alert (STCA) warns you before a loss of separation. New to it? Read the guide to approach radar control and the ATC glossary first.