There doesn't seem to be many games at all based around air traffic control. There's probably no demand for it since, generally speaking, not may people are aware of what air traffic controllers do, specifically radar approach controllers, which is you what you play as in this game.
So here's how I think it'd work (I haven't worked out a lot of the ideas yet so this is an extremely rough draft)..
In this game you, and potentially more players, will be separating aircraft and sequencing them to an airport represented by runway(s) on the board. It will play out as a tactical movement game. To win the game you will have to last a number of rounds without losing too many points.
Points are earned by getting the aircraft safely to the runway without losing separation, and you will lose points by losing separation at any point throughout the game.
Imagine the board full of hexes, just like a Battlelore game. On the board will be a runway, or several, in which you will be sequencing your arrivals. The thing to look out for will be departures coming off the airport whom you will need to miss. The planes will be represented by cards of 3 sizes to depict the differences in aircraft. Each type will have a characteristic such as it goes fast (moves 2 hexes on movement), it's slow (moves a single hex), it takes longer for an aircraft to turn, etc. This is thematic because in air traffic, the variety of aircraft is immense, and control instructions for 1 may not work as well for another.
Control Instructions: Playing as the controller, you will be giving orders to the aircraft to give them instructions which will be represented by several stacks of cards. (These can be from a face down draw deck, or open and you have to correctly choose which cards to play) Let's say you play a card out of your hand that says, "Turn Left," to an aircraft. You will choose which aircraft you're giving this order to, and place the card onto the plane on the board.
Here's the tricky part..
Since airplanes don't stop moving for instructions, there has to be some form of timed mechanic in this game. What I came up with is after a specific # of orders given (which represents talking on a frequency, and having the pilot read back the instructions) time will pass and ALL airplanes will move. So the strategy to the game is giving instructions to the correct aircraft so when the planes move (after let's say 5 card plays) you don't have planes entering a hex where another aircraft already is.
Again this is a very rough draft, and just some spewed out ideas. If this seems interesting to anyone please let me know, and thank you for reading all of this.
Great idea! Something I had thought about before were power up cards, but wasn't sure how to implement them. Example, a power up card that reads COFFEE or CAFFEINE, and let's you work faster. Good idea, I will definitely think about making it not a realistic simulation.