Flight Zone Board Game



Flight Zone Board Game: This game grew out of recognition of the perils that Navy pilots had to endure while attempting carrier landings in World War 2. Young men needed to be made of the right stuff and were required to land their planes on the decks of aircraft carriers, far out at sea. Carrier landings were dangerous. Hazards included pilot fatigue, bad weather, and poor visibility. 

Airplanes of that era did not have modern technology to assist landings. Naval pilots skillfully landed their planes using only stick and rudder and their wits. They relied on visual perception and the signals of the flight signals officers to guide their planes safely onto the carrier’s pitching, oily deck.

Flight Zone Board Game - Instructions

The Flight Zone Game includes…

  • 2 hand drawn Game Boards.
  • Detailed Instructions 
  • Colourful top down view of plane playing pieces.
  • Pilot’s view cards

Object of the Game

  • Your task is to be the first player to safely land their aircraft onto the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Preparing to Play

  • Play begins on the Game-Board which features the six instrument gauges in the centre. Each player are encouraged to first read the flight instrument panel featured next page before they prepare to play Flight Zone.

What You Will Need

  • The game requires four trainee aircraft, and four WW2 era aircraft.
  • All of the aircraft are available in the appendix. The aircraft can be printed, cut out and glued onto card or laminated for extra durability. 
  • A favored method is to laminate each aircraft and stick onto thick card. This gives each aircraft a nice separation from the board, which makes them easier to grasp and move. And it creates the illusion that the aircraft are flying.

Flight Zone Board Game - Materials

Dice

The game requires two six sided dice. Dice can be purchased for very little money from toy stores or newsagents or borrowed from other board games.

Game Boards

The Flight Zone game has two game boards. The trainee pilots must first navigate their way around game board one and learn the basics of flight such as instrumentation, take-off and landing and flight dynamics. Game board two features the long slim profile of a World War Two era aircraft carrier, which players must land on safely to complete the game. 

Click on Image to Download Game-Boards

(I recommend printing as A3 size)


Pilot View Cards

Each player has a pilot view card, which provides a visual reference of what the pilot sees from the aircraft as he approaches the aircraft carrier.


Aviator Cards

Aviator cards allow player to make decisions during the course of the game. Players are free to choose when they use their two aviator cards. Each card gives a bonus of some kind. The players must decide whether to use the cards early in the game or keep them until the exciting and risky final stages, when they attempt the carrier landing. 

The aviator cards represent a pilot’s courage or skill, and the role of initiative and daring in correcting mistakes. This quality is known as the right stuff. Please note, aviator cards can only be used from Maiden flight Zone onward.

Flight Zone Board Game Download

Flight Zone Board Game - Oral Language Activity

I've used the Flight Zone board game as an oral language activity many times over the years. The game has elements that relate to story and story sequence. Also a number of vocabulary words can be slotted into the game without too much effort. There is also a really useful sentence building activity which can be used to explore simple and complex sentence use. It does require a lot of cutting out and assembling sentence fragment tiles, but is worth the effort, in my opinion.

David

Click on image to download the Flight Zone - Sentence Builder Activity



Updated 11/09/2020