Abstract: An air conditioning system and control method to allow individual zone thermostats to directly control a variable capacity compressor and adaptively adjust the indoor supply air volume to meet zoning demands, without using static pressure or flow sensors or entering a set of pre-defined air flow values for each zone into a controller. The method controls an air conditioning system that is able to receive signals or commands from individual zone thermostats and give priority to a highest demand zone/thermostat. For example, a priority thermostat can be used to directly control the variable capacity compressor via an indoor controller and outdoor controller.