Some players may experience severe crashing or freezing issues at very large airports such as:
IAD
HKG
LHR
and other busy airports with a very high number of aircraft on the ground.
This article explains why this happens, what causes the crash loop, and what we can do to help.
Why Does This Happen?
The main issue is RAM memory usage.
When an aircraft is assigned to a stand, the game immediately loads into RAM:
- Aircraft model
- Livery textures
- Animations
- Airport data
- Aircraft information
Modern aircraft models are significantly more detailed than older versions.
Compared to the first generation of aircraft models, the triangle count has increased more than 3×.
This means your device may suddenly need to render:
- 90+
- 100+
- or even more highly detailed aircraft at the same time.
Important About Device RAM
Even if your device has:
- 4 GB RAM
- 6 GB RAM
- or more
The game cannot use all of it.
Your operating system always reserves part of the memory for:
- System processes
- Background services
- Safety memory thresholds
Some devices are also more aggressive about protecting free memory and may force-close apps earlier.
We already implemented systems that try to utilize as much memory as possible safely, but physical device limits still exist.
What Causes the Crash Loop?
From our experience:
Devices with 4 GB RAM or less begin running out of memory around:
~90 aircraft on stands / ground
Once this happens:
- The game crashes due to RAM overflow
- On the next launch, the airport tries to reload all aircraft again
- RAM overflows again
- The game crashes again
This creates an endless crash loop where the airport can no longer load.
Why Did It Work Before?
Some players ask:
“But this airport worked before the update.”
This can happen because newer aircraft versions are much more detailed.
Example:
- Older A330 models used much less memory
- Newer V3 aircraft versions are visually far more advanced
So even if your device handled the airport previously, it may now run out of RAM under the same traffic load.
What Can You Do If the Airport No Longer Loads?
If the airport crashes immediately after loading:
Please create a support ticket and include:
- Your Player Name / Player ID
- The affected airport
- Your device model
At the moment, we are unfortunately not able to manually move landed aircraft back into the air from our side.
Because of this, prevention is currently the most important solution.
Emergency Steps (May Help Recover the Airport)
If you can still briefly access the airport before crashing:
Immediately try to:
- Disable ATC Audio
- Disable 3D Surroundings
- Set Graphics Quality to Fast
- Reduce active contracts
- Avoid assigning additional stands
Especially on iPhones, disabling ATC Audio can free up several hundred megabytes of RAM.
Important: Avoid ATC Delivery in Critical Situations
If your airport is already near the memory limit:
Avoid using ATC Delivery
Why?
ATC Delivery automatically assigns stands to all aircraft waiting for landing, which can instantly overload memory and trigger the crash loop again.
And this final paragraph should also be adjusted slightly:
Final Notes
We continue optimizing memory usage and improving performance, but modern aircraft detail also comes with increased hardware requirements.
Unfortunately, once an airport reaches an extreme memory overload state, recovery options are currently limited.
Thank you for your patience and understanding while we continue improving World of Airports
– The WoA Team