What it is
Realistic ATC for the flights you actually fly
IFATC Companion generates a live, spoken ATC conversation built from your real flight — your position, altitude, phase and filed flight plan — using real‑world radio phraseology. Not a chatbot, not a recording: a deterministic ATC engine that follows you from the gate to the gate.
You fly the radio
You drive your own pilot calls — clearance, pushback, engine start, taxi, ready for departure, read‑backs and check‑ins — with on‑screen buttons or push‑to‑talk. Only the calls that make sense right now are shown.
The controller answers
Position‑based calls fire on their own at the right moment: your takeoff clearance when you line up, hand‑offs to Departure, Center, Approach, Tower and Ground, descent, cleared approach, cleared to land, and taxi‑in.
Everyone gets a voice
Each controller position has a distinct voice, and you have your own pilot voice — spoken by your device’s own text‑to‑speech engine, with a separate configurable voice for ATIS. On Android, a speech engine you have selected that synthesizes over the network does so under that engine provider’s policy and outside the app’s control.
Not affiliated with Infinite Flight
IFATC Companion is an independent, third‑party app. It is not created, endorsed, sponsored by, or affiliated with Infinite Flight Corporation or its products in any way. “Infinite Flight” and related marks are the property of their respective owners. Infinite Flight is required to use Live Connected Mode and is sold separately.
IFATC Companion is not staffed (human) ATC. When a real controller is on frequency, follow that controller — the app detects staffed ATC on multiplayer servers and stands by automatically so it never talks over a live controller.
The app
Five tabs, one flight
Everything you need on frequency, and nothing you don’t.
ATC
The live conversation — clearances, taxi, takeoff, hand‑offs, descent, approach and landing, with your read‑backs, read aloud as it happens.
Flight
Your live aircraft state at a glance: position, altitude, heading, speed, vertical speed, flight phase and route.
Weather
METAR, TAF, PIREP and SIGMET briefings, route weather analysis, a ride‑quality outlook, and a route map with radar precipitation.
Settings
Your Infinite Flight connection, controller and pilot voices, phraseology and units, custom profiles, and your subscription.
Diagnostics
Connection status and troubleshooting — plus the free Mock Mode toggle for a full offline demo flight.
Gate to gate
What the ATC engine actually does
- Reads your Infinite Flight flight plan. Your filed departure, destination and route feed your clearances and departure vectors. Manual overrides always win when you want to set something yourself.
- Real‑world ATIS. At the gate you can tune the departure airport’s ATIS and hear the current broadcast in proper phraseology; within 100 NM of your destination the arrival ATIS becomes available too. The information code you hear (“information Alpha”) is remembered and added to your taxi request and arrival check‑in, just like real life.
- Taxi map, routing and runway crossings. A dedicated map animates in after you read back your taxi clearance — your assigned route, your aircraft, gates, holding positions and upcoming runway crossings, drawn from OpenStreetMap airport‑surface data. It routes you to the correct runway end (and back to the gate after landing), tracks you along it, runs a simulated ground runway‑crossing workflow, and prompts a recalculation if you wander off route.
- Center sectors and en‑route hand‑offs. Above the TRACON ceiling the app knows which Center’s airspace you are actually in and hands you along as you cross the boundaries — naming the sector in the hand‑off, your read‑back and your check‑in. Coverage is worldwide and bundled with the app, so it works offline.
- Ramp as a first‑class facility. Pushback, engine‑start coordination and the hand‑off to Ground, modeled separately from ground control.
- Tune Frequency card. Change controllers yourself. It shows the controller you’re working plus the next one ahead — and once you start tuning manually, the flow waits for you to make each frequency change.
-
Call sign recognition. Enter
UA598orUAL598and hear it spoken as its real radio name (“United five niner eight”) from a built‑in airline database; tail numbers likeN123ABare spelled out phonetically. - Procedure‑aware. SID, STAR and approach names are recognized and referenced in your clearances.
- Push‑to‑talk. Hold to talk and speak your read‑backs and requests. The app asks for on‑device speech recognition wherever your device supports it; where it isn’t available, the platform recognizer — Apple’s Speech framework, or whichever recognizer your Android device uses — may process the audio in the cloud under that provider’s policy. Either way, nothing goes to us.
Phraseology
Wording you can trust
FAA by default, ICAO on request
Faithful FAA (US) phraseology out of the box, with a selectable ICAO pack — different digit words, “decimal” instead of “point”, QNH/hPa instead of inHg.
Safe, current wording — enforced
Outdated or unsafe phrases are blocked. Takeoff and landing clearances always include the runway, “line up and wait” is used instead of “position and hold”, and so on.
Custom phraseology profiles
Build your own call templates and airline call sets, save them as profiles, and share them as files with other pilots.
Weather
A real briefing, and weather you can fly around
- Aviation weather briefings. METAR, TAF, PIREP and SIGMET, sourced from free public NOAA data — no keys, no separate weather subscription.
- Route weather analysis and ride quality. A composite turbulence outlook that blends pilot reports, advisories and surface winds into a continuous ride index along your route.
- Route map with precipitation overlay. Your route, your live position, and precipitation where coverage exists — NOAA/NWS radar in the U.S. and a NASA satellite estimate elsewhere, with clear data‑source labels and coverage notes.
- Simulated weather deviation. When weather is detected ahead, ATC gives an advisory and you can request a deviation (“twenty degrees right for weather”), get a suggested heading and a rejoin point, then report clear of weather and be cleared back on course.
Simulation only
All ATC, airport surface maps, taxi routes, runway‑crossing instructions, sector boundaries, weather, radar and deviation features are for flight simulation, training and entertainment only, and must never be used for real‑world flight. Weather comes from free public sources, so availability depends on their coverage and uptime, some fields are best‑effort, and data may be a few minutes old or unavailable offline.
Convenience
Built for how people really fly
Background radio & live notification
Optional quiet, static‑wrapped ambient chatter on your tuned frequency keeps the app alive in the background, so calls don’t stall when you switch apps or lock the screen. Turn on the live flight notification for a Lock Screen card that updates in real time — with Read Back and Check In buttons right on the notification.
Saved flights
Save a flight and come back to it later. The app returns exactly as you left it: transcript, clearances, tuned frequency, flight plan, gates and callsign — with your position and the weather refreshed the moment you load.
Resume on reconnect
If Wi‑Fi drops or you relaunch the app, your in‑progress flight and conversation pick up where they left off.
Auto‑discover
Finds Infinite Flight on your local network — and keeps finding it. If the saved address stops answering because a new network handed your iPad a different IP, the app searches again and updates it on its own. An address you typed yourself is left alone.
Auto‑assign gates
Off by default. Turn it on and any blank gate field is filled with a real stand from the airport’s map data — including the one you’re already parked at. A gate you type is never changed.
Multiplayer awareness
When a human controller is staffing your airport on a multiplayer server, IFATC Companion detects it and stands by, so it never talks over the real controller.
Getting started
Try it free, then connect your flight
Mock Mode is free and needs nothing but the app — no Infinite Flight, no subscription, no network. Open Diagnostics, turn it on, and fly a complete simulated flight to hear every call, the weather flow and the map for yourself.
Flying with Infinite Flight — Live Connected Mode
Turn on Infinite Flight Connect
On the device running Infinite Flight, open Settings → General and enable Infinite Flight Connect. Note the IP address shown there.
Point IFATC Companion at it
On your phone, open the Settings tab and enter that host/IP and port (the default port is 10112) — or just use auto‑discover to find it for you.
Fly
IFATC Companion reads your live aircraft state and flight plan automatically, and the ATC conversation follows your flight from the gate.
What you’ll need
Infinite Flight running on another device on the same Wi‑Fi network, and Live Connected Mode unlocked. Infinite Flight is sold separately and is not included.
Pricing
Free to try. Unlock live flying when you’re ready.
- Mock Mode is free and never requires a purchase — explore the full experience offline, as long as you like.
- Monthly or annual subscription unlocks Live Connected Mode, with pricing shown in your local currency in the app. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account or Google Play subscription settings.
- Lifetime — a one‑time purchase that unlocks all Live features permanently, with no renewals.
Payment is charged to your Apple Account or Google Play account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless auto‑renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; you can manage and cancel them in your account settings at any time.
Privacy
Private by construction, not by promise
There is no back end. There is nothing to sign into. IFATC Companion has no servers of ours for your data to sit on.
No accounts
No login, no sign‑up, no profile. Install it and fly.
No ads, no analytics
No advertising, no tracking and no third‑party analytics SDKs.
No AI or chatbot
Every call is produced by deterministic, real‑world‑style phraseology on your device.
No servers of ours
The only connections are the local link to Infinite Flight on your own Wi‑Fi and free, public, keyless aviation services.
Speech never reaches us
Push‑to‑talk uses your platform’s recognizer — on‑device wherever your device supports it, otherwise that provider’s cloud service. Audio is never recorded, saved or sent to us.
Aviation data only
Outbound requests carry aviation identifiers or a small map area — never an account, name or contact info.
Public data sources: NOAA aviation weather, NOAA/NWS and NASA GIBS radar and precipitation imagery,
FAA Digital ATIS via datis.clowd.io, and OpenStreetMap airport‑surface data via a
public Overpass API. Full detail is in the
Privacy Policy.
Good to know
Questions, answered honestly
Do I need Infinite Flight to use this?
Not to try it. Mock Mode runs a complete simulated flight with no Infinite Flight, no subscription and no network. You need Infinite Flight (sold separately) only for Live Connected Mode, where the app follows your real session.
Does this replace real (staffed) ATC?
No — and it deliberately doesn’t try. It is a personal companion for your own situational awareness and immersion. It never impersonates live controllers, and when a human controller is staffing your airport it detects that and stands by.
Which devices does it run on?
iPhone and iPad on iOS 17 or later, and Android 10 (API 29) or later. The typical setup is Infinite Flight on a tablet with IFATC Companion on your phone, both on the same Wi‑Fi network.
Does it work offline?
Mock Mode, the ATC engine and the worldwide sector dataset are all bundled and work offline, as do the voices with any offline text‑to‑speech engine (on Android, a cloud‑based engine you have selected needs a connection). Live weather, radar imagery, real‑world ATIS and airport‑surface downloads need a connection, and the app degrades gracefully without one.
How accurate is the phraseology?
It follows real‑world FAA procedures by default, with an ICAO pack available, and unsafe or outdated phrasing is blocked outright. It is still procedural: it doesn’t model every real‑world situation or controller decision, flight‑phase detection occasionally misjudges a transition, and push‑to‑talk accuracy depends on your device and microphone.
Where does the map data come from?
Airport surface maps, taxi routes and runway‑crossing instructions are derived from OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. En‑route sector boundaries are adapted from the VATSIM VATSpy Data Project under CC BY‑SA 4.0. Sector frequencies are simulated.
Questions, bugs or feedback?
We read every message and we’re happy to help — support comes straight from the people who built it.
[email protected]