Grass strips. Crossing runways. One aircraft at a time.
Play Hold Short — free, in your browser
Air traffic control on a country aerodrome. Tap an aircraft, pick the runway it should land on, and it flies the pattern itself — your job is the order they go in. Stack them by altitude, hold the ones that can wait, interleave the departures, and keep the strip clear, because two aircraft cannot use the same tarmac. Four fields, from one grass runway in the afternoon to a night airport where the runways cross.
You are the tower, not the pilot. Tap an aircraft and choose a runway end, and it flies the entire approach on its own — downwind, base leg, final, touchdown, rollout and taxi. What you decide is the ORDER, and that is the whole game: which aircraft goes first, which one waits, and which one you move out of the way.
A runway can only be used by one aircraft at a time, and it stays blocked until that aircraft is physically clear of the tarmac. A strip in use is outlined in amber. At the fields where runways cross, a strip also blocks every strip it crosses, because they share the same concrete — you cannot land on 15 while somebody is still rolling out through the middle on 09.
Every aircraft holds its own altitude while it flies the circuit, and only descends once it is established on final. Two aircraft one level apart cannot collide, so assigning a level is the quickest answer to almost any conflict. The number under each callsign is its altitude in hundreds of feet, and the shadow on the grass tells you the same thing at a glance: the higher it is, the further its shadow falls.
The wind decides which runway you can use. The dial in the corner shows which way it is blowing, and an end with a tailwind will refuse the clearance outright rather than let you find out on short final. The wind swings during a shift, so the runway that was right ten seconds ago may not be now.
Departures wait in the yellow box beside the taxiway and block nothing until you clear them — and then they own the strip your arrivals want. Interleaving the two is where the job actually gets hard.
Not every aircraft does as it is told. Geese fly as one blip until an approach turns them too hard, and then they are three. A crop duster will abandon your clearance for a low pass. An ultralight panics and bolts if anything comes near it. A hot-air balloon takes no instruction at all and simply rides the wind — route everyone else around it. An air ambulance needs no runway: send it straight to the pad.
Three strikes ends the shift. A strike is a collision or an aircraft you lost — losing separation costs points and your streak, but nothing has touched and both aircraft fly on. Land enough at one field and you are transferred to a busier one.
Hold Short is a free browser-based air traffic control game set on a country aerodrome. You tap an aircraft, pick the runway it should land on, and it flies the whole approach itself — downwind, base leg, final and rollout. What you actually decide is the order they go in: which aircraft lands first, which one waits, and which one you move out of the way. It runs in the tab with no download and no signup.
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download, no account and no paywall.
No, and that is the point. You are the tower, not the pilot. Give an aircraft a runway and it flies the entire pattern on its own, correctly, every time. The difficulty is never in the flying — it is that four aircraft want the same strip and only one can have it.
It is the instruction a tower gives to keep a runway clear: hold short of the runway, do not cross it, somebody else is using it. The yellow markings the game paints where two runways cross are hold-short lines, and the rule they represent — one aircraft on a strip at a time, and a strip blocks every strip it crosses — is the whole game.
Every aircraft holds its own level while it flies the circuit and only descends once it is established on final, so two aircraft one level apart cannot collide. Assigning a level is the quickest way out of almost any conflict. The number under each callsign is its altitude in hundreds of feet, and the shadow on the grass says the same thing without reading: the higher an aircraft is, the further its shadow falls behind it.
Because of the wind. An end with a tailwind is refused when you ask, rather than letting the aircraft fly a full approach and then go around — the dial in the corner shows which way the wind is blowing, and the menu marks every end that is unusable. The wind swings during a shift, so the right runway ten seconds ago may not be the right one now.
You lose points and your streak, but both aircraft fly on. Losing separation is a reportable incident, not a crash. A strike — and you only get three — costs you an actual collision or an aircraft you let leave the sector unhandled.
Because not everything on a country field does as it is told. Geese fly as one blip until an approach turns them too hard, and then they are three. A crop duster will abandon your clearance for a low pass. An ultralight panics and bolts if anything comes near it. A hot-air balloon takes no instruction at all and simply rides the wind, so you route everyone else around it. An air ambulance is the one piece of good news: it needs no runway, so send it to the pad.
Three, and all of them work. Career runs the ladder of four airfields, from a single grass strip in the afternoon up to a lit night airport with a parallel pair and a strip through the middle of it. Endless puts you on any field you have reached and keeps adding traffic. The Daily Shift is a fixed six-minute shift with the same field, weather and traffic for everyone that day, ranked once.
Yes, and none of it is a sound file — everything is synthesised in the browser as it happens. There is a room tone, an engine bed whose loudness tracks how busy your sector is, tyres and reverse thrust on every touchdown, and rate-limited conflict alarms that stop the moment the conflict does. The radio chatter is the unusual part: each aircraft has its own voice, and a transmission is shaped to the rhythm of the message rather than pretending to be speech, which is roughly what a real radio sounds like from the next desk. Volume, chatter and everything else is in Settings.
Yes. Tap an aircraft and the order panel opens under your thumb. In portrait the airfield rotates so the main runway runs down the long axis, and the sector slides up so the panel never covers the runway you are choosing. Turn the phone sideways and the panel moves to a rail down the side instead, because a landscape phone has width to spare and no height at all.
Yes, and it is played rather than read. It walks you through selecting an aircraft, clearing it, watching it land, holding a second one, separating two by altitude, and launching a departure — each step waiting until you have actually done it. It takes about three minutes.
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