Sky Traffic Tips: Landing Rules, Spacing and Routing

Updated October 2026

Sky Traffic puts you in a control tower with one runway and an endless stream of arrivals. Each landing is worth 100 points, each plane that wanders off the screen costs 10, and a single touch between two planes ends everything. There is no clock, but the arrivals never stop speeding up, so every game ends sooner or later; your score is how many planes you bring down before the sky gets too full. This guide explains the flight rules built into the game and the routing habits that keep long runs alive.

Arrivals: where, when and how fast

Planes appear just outside the top, bottom or left edge of the screen, chosen at random. None ever comes from the right, because that is where the airport sits. A new plane points roughly inward, within about 39 degrees either side of straight in, so a plane from the top heads downward, one from the bottom heads upward, and one from the left heads right.

The first plane shows up about two and a half seconds after a game starts. After that, the gap between arrivals is set by a difficulty count: one for every plane you land, plus one for every 30 seconds of play. At a count of zero the gap is 4.5 seconds, and it shrinks by about 0.13 seconds per step until it reaches 1.3 seconds at a count of 25. It does not stop there: each further step takes 3 percent off the gap, with no floor. By our calculation the gap is about 0.8 seconds at a count of 40, 0.45 seconds at 60 and 0.13 seconds at 100. Losing a plane off the edge does not add to the count, but the clock part keeps rising even if you land nothing.

The airspace is a fixed rectangle 360 units wide and 600 tall, drawn as large as your screen allows, with a dark border where the shapes do not match. Every distance below is in those units, so the game is the same on every phone and also unchanged if the screen is resized mid-game. All planes fly at the same constant 30.6 units per second, 8.5 percent of the airspace width, and they never speed up. A plane needs roughly twelve seconds to cross the airspace from side to side. Plane colour is chosen at random and has no meaning; there is only one runway and every plane may use it.

Planes keep arriving whether or not you touch the screen, so be ready as soon as the game appears.

Drawing a path

Press within 22 units of a plane to grab it; if two planes are that close to your finger, the nearer one is picked. The path begins exactly where you pressed and records a new point every 10 units as you drag. Grabbing a plane again throws away its old path and starts a new one.

A plane steers toward the first point of its path, turning at up to 3 radians per second, which is a full circle in a little over two seconds. When it gets within 14 units of a point, it moves on to the next. When the path runs out, the plane simply keeps flying straight in whatever direction it was pointing.

Two practical consequences follow. First, very sharp corners are fine at this speed: by our calculation the plane's tightest turning radius is one third of the distance it flies in a second, about 10 units, so it can turn almost on the spot. Second, the last stretch of a path decides where the plane goes next. If your line ends pointing at the edge, the plane will leave the screen and cost you 10 points.

The landing rule

The airport is the box on the right edge, vertically centred, with a green arrow on its left side showing the landing direction. It is 50 units wide and 78 units tall, sitting 6 units in from the right edge.

A plane lands the moment its centre is inside that box while it is pointing within 50 degrees of due east, that is, toward the right edge. That window is wider than it looks: a plane can enter through the top or bottom of the box as long as it is heading generally rightward. A plane that enters pointing the wrong way is not stopped or punished; it just flies through and usually leaves the screen soon after, losing you 10 points. So the final segment of every path should be a short, straight run toward the right, ending inside the box.

The score can never drop below zero, but every lost plane is 10 points you have to earn back with a tenth of a landing. Deliberately losing planes buys nothing: it lowers your score, and the arrivals keep speeding up with time anyway.

What counts as a collision

Two planes collide when their centres come within 16 units of each other. The check only applies while both planes are inside the screen, so planes still entering from the edge cannot collide. Once both are visible, a single overlap ends the game instantly, no matter how close you were to landing either of them.

Because every plane flies at the same speed, two planes on parallel paths a safe distance apart will stay that distance apart. Danger comes from paths that cross, and especially from two planes queued into the same final approach. Two planes sent toward the same point from different directions will meet there unless they arrive at clearly different times, so give each plane its own entry point into the final approach and space them by at least a couple of seconds.

Routing habits

• Build a standard approach. Decide on one lane to the runway, for example a straight run from the middle-left of the screen into the box. Feed planes into the start of that lane one at a time, with at least a couple of seconds between them.
• Use the whole sky for holding. A plane that is not ready to land can be sent on a long curve along the top or bottom of the screen and brought back later. Paths have no length limit, so a wide loop costs nothing except your attention.
• Draw each path once. Redrawing is allowed, but every grab replaces the old route from the press point, which can create a sudden turn toward another plane.
• Grab with precision. When planes bunch up, the touch zone around each one overlaps. Press from the side away from the neighbour so the game picks the plane you meant.
• Keep the right edge clear. Planes heading east-ish near the airport but outside the box will fly off the right side. Keep landing paths aimed at the middle of the box.

Order of attention

A useful rule is to handle the plane that will cause trouble soonest. That is usually one of three: a new plane heading toward another plane, a plane whose path has run out and is drifting toward an edge, or a plane on final approach that is sharing the lane with another. Planes still far out and on harmless headings can wait a few seconds.

When a new plane appears every 1.3 seconds and each one needs around twelve seconds to cross the airspace, by our estimate around nine planes may be in the air at once if you are routing them across the whole width; at a gap of 0.6 seconds it is about twenty. Short, efficient routes reduce that number. The sooner each plane reaches the runway, the less crowded the sky becomes.

Long runs

There is no plateau. Past 25 landings the arrivals keep coming faster, and even a player who lands nothing is pushed along by the clock, so the sky fills up until two planes meet. In our tests a route-planning bot that predicts every plane's path and picks a clear route for each new arrival lasted between about 100 and 140 seconds and landed 29 to 52 planes in ten games; under the old fixed 1.3-second gap the same bot sometimes kept going past five minutes and 180 landings. Treat every landing as a real gain, keep a steady routine, and do not experiment with risky shortcuts. Your best score is saved on your device when a game ends, and any score above zero can be sent to the Hall of Fame from the end card. The board was restarted when the endless speed-up arrived, so old scores are not mixed in.