Mechanic to Flight 38, stat! Enormous dookie-monster blocking rear lavs!

(General Electric) Terminal Control   

General Electric are probably best known for making jet engines and the nimble F-16 Fighting Falcon. Now, they've made an online flash game letting you take control of an airport's ramp (the bit where the planes park)...

It seems a bit of a departure (hahaha) from their usual day jobs of making supremely powerful jet turbines for airliners and military aircraft but there is method in their madness. The idea is to show off all the steps that need to take place to "turn an aircraft around", that is, once a plane has landed and arrives at the ramp it needs to be emptied of its self-loading freight (passengers), cleaned (probably not with a broom like depicted in the almost-Theme-Hospital-style controls) and fuelled. A flight plan then needs to be filed and finally it needs to be given clearance to leave the ramp area and head out to the runway.

There's also a step to handle the baggage, but I've watched enough episodes of Airline to know that's optional at best.

When I first heard about the game on episode 159 of the Airplane Geeks podcast I immediately did a search for the game. The problem was the game is called "Terminal Command", and when I tried to Google it all I got was a list of results on Linux shell scripting...

Adding some cunning extra terms to my search ("general" and "electric") took me straight to the game.

In the episode of Airplane Geeks, you can hear the Jet Whine blog Editor, Rob Mark, trying to beat Things in the Sky blogger, Dan Webb's score.

A single level demo of the game is available for free at:

http://www.ge.com/thegeshow/future-flight/

Be warned, it's very addictive.

I managed 3,300 on my first go, post your scores in the comments below!