My New (Air Traffic Control) Office

[WickedPenguin]

As a few people here know, I'm working on becoming an air traffic controller. I just found out I'm getting assigned to Pensacola TRACON, which runs Pensacola NAS (where the Navy's Top Gun school and Blue Angels are based), Whiting NAS (which operates about 10% of the Navy's global aviation hours) and around 50 other airports in the vicinity. Low-and-slow trainers mixing it up with afterburners - woohoo!

A lot of people have asked me questions about it. I know there's quite a few flight sim enthusiasts here, and real-world pilots as well, and there seems to be some "mystery" as to what controllers really do. So...I figured I'd post some info here so you could get a look at the other side of the picture (the "flick" as controllers call it).

For those who don't know, there are three main kinds of ATC facilities: Tower, TRACON, and Center. Here's a breakdown:

• Towers are, well, the control towers everyone sees at an airport that guide planes in the air and on the ground within a 5 mile radius of the airport. Towers use a combination of visual and radar techniques to keep aircraft separated.
• TRACON's are radar-only facilities that control the airspace within 50 miles of a major airport. They control the approachin and departing traffic, and get them lined up with active runways or guide them off on their routes. A TRACON can either be attached to a tower (like Miami's, which is located at the foot of the tower) or be a stand-alone facility (like Potomac TRACON in Virginia, which controls the D.C.-area airports including Dulles, Reagan National, Andrews AFB, and Richmond).
• Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC's) control everything around the two above and their airspace is typically massive. For instance, Miami ARTCC controls everything from Orlando, FL down to Puerto Rico. These are also radar-only.

Whenever you fly somewhere, you're handed back and forth between the facilities above. I read somewhere that when an airplane flies cross-country, they'll typically talk to around 18 different controllers from takeoff to landing.

Here's some shots of where I'll be working, Pensacola TRACON. They've got old-school round monochrome scopes which hopefully will be replaced at some point with the full color STARS scopes.
http://www.wickedpenguin.com/images/mdc_dc_trip/pensacola/P31_Shot1.jpg
http://www.wickedpenguin.com/images/mdc_dc_trip/pensacola/P31_Shot2.jpg
http://www.wickedpenguin.com/images/mdc_dc_trip/pensacola/P31_Shot3.jpg
http://www.wickedpenguin.com/images/mdc_dc_trip/pensacola/P31_Shot4.jpg
For some real visuals, I went to Miami TRACON on Jan. 19th as part of a college tour group. Surprisingly enough, I was allowed to video tape inside the TRACON itself, with no restrictions. I got shots of the STARS radar simulators, the Traffic Management Unit (TMU), and - amazingly - controllers working live traffic.

Here's the edited footage of the video, with explanations of what's being shown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rqKVSdiw8M

When you fly, the pilots are in control of the airplane, but it's the controllers that keep all the airplanes organized and safe. Fiery aluminum showers are not conducive to controller career advancement.

 

[odin1899]

Was that flag especially lowered halfway the pole to welcome you as a future employee? Actually I'm hoping to get into an AFIS-course. Kinda like a poor man's ATC education.

 

[[-project.rattus-]]

hehe, you work in a 70ies SF set ^^
Just remember the most important star trek rule: when someone unimportant starts to talk, watch out for randomly exploding consoles in his vicinity!

 

[Hyperion2010]

We need more ATCers Glad to see you are joining the ranks of some of the most important behind the scences guys in the world

 

[Ralfst3r]

I bet you browse the forums on that top screen, don't ya!

 

[Coey]

How much trouble would you get in for messing with your pilots?

 

[SchutzeSepp]

don't make planes crash against each other, because some guy went to switzerland killing the airtraffic controller who made the plane of his wife and daughter crash by accident!

just so you know

 

[WickedPenguin]

Was that flag especially lowered halfway the pole to welcome you as a future employee? Actually I'm hoping to get into an AFIS-course. Kinda like a poor man's ATC education.

More like mourning the loss of sanity! Actually, if anyone ever wanted to study ATC, now's the best time. All of the folks who got hired in 1981 after the big strike are now getting ready to retire, so the FAA's hiring 10,000 new controllers over the next 10 years. You just need to attend one of 13 colleges that offer an ATC program - several are 2 year degrees, with most students actually finishing in a year or two.

hehe, you work in a 70ies SF set ^^
Just remember the most important star trek rule: when someone unimportant starts to talk, watch out for randomly exploding consoles in his vicinity!

Ironically, that equipment is about as old as Star Trek: The Original Series. . And... it has been known to fail at random times. Not quite exploding, but a similar effect when you've got 15 planes under your watch.

How much trouble would you get in for messing with your pilots?

Short answer: lots. Depending on traffic load, you can joke a little bit, but you can't "do" anything. For instance, if a pilot pisses you off, you can't send them off into a holding pattern somewhere til you feel like landing them. When it comes down to it you're dealing with people's lives, and that's not something you can or should mess with.

don't make planes crash against each other, because some guy went to switzerland killing the airtraffic controller who made the plane of his wife and daughter crash by accident!

I've read and discussed that incident quite a bit. That controller actually had a lot going against him.

1. He was working two positions several feet apart due to understaffing.
2. He was distracted by a problematic aircraft
3. The primary telephone system in the facility was being worked on, and the backup had failed (unknown to everyone at the time).
4. At least one other facility saw the impending crash, but couldn't reach him due to the phones being down.
5. The controller saw the impending crash with 1 minute to spare and told the Tupolev to descend.
6. Aircraft nowadays have TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) which tells them to climb or descend to avoid dangerous traffic. Seconds after the controller's instruction, the TCAS in the Tupolev started commanding a climb. Instead of listening to the TCAS (which by law he should have, instead of following the controller's instruction) the pilot of the Ukrainian aircraft violated the TCAS alert and kept descending. TCAS is simply more accurate since it's closer to the action.

So...yes, the controller is partly to blame, but it wasn't completely his fault. There were a lot of contributing factors that wound up in a horrible tragedy. The worst part is those kids weren't even supposed to be on the flight - they had missed an earlier one.

Apparently the guy who killed the controller was one of the first family on the scene. He found his daughter's body intact... and what was left of his wife and son. It's easy to see how he would have lost his mind, after losing everything else of worth to him.

 

[radix]

...

1. Instead of listening to the TCAS (which by law he should have, instead of following the controller's instruction) the pilot of the Ukrainian aircraft violated the TCAS alert and kept descending. TCAS is simply more accurate since it's closer to the action.

...

I'm not an expert but I think this is not a law in the east europen countries. There the traffic controller has bigger priority than the tcas and they are just debating if this should be changed or not.

But I can be very wrong ..:/.

 

[PUTZ]

I've got a fellow train ethusiast friend that makes his living as an Air Traffic Controller out of Sterling, Virginia. Rides around in a faded-green Explorer so he looks like he's with the Dept. Homeland Security as he's also got a ****load of antennas for varying hobbies...

 

[WickedPenguin]

That is actually what happened - a confusion as to what was priority. The Tupolev had a western pilot in the left seat, apparently in training. In the copilot's seat was one of the Ukrainian airline's senior instructors. When they started their controller-ordered descent, the Western pilot was in command. When the TCAS ordered the climb, he listened and pulled the plane up. However, the senior pilot overrode him and forced the descent.

That reaction doesn't suprise me. Lots of Russian airline pilots are former military. The Russian air force was highly dependent on radar vectoring to reach their targets, so it's quite possible that "controller is right" mentality carried over here.

Just sad and stupid.

 

[Nimsky]

Oh man I'd hate to do that job. Way too many numbers, figures, variables... I've always hated math! Talk about information overload. I'm much happier with a job that involves creativity and not too much theoritive thinking.

Still, it's a job that has to be done and I respect the people that do it.

So Wicked, do you still continue your graphic design company or what? Why this suddden career switch?

 

[WickedPenguin]

Oh man I'd hate to do that job. Way too many numbers, figures, variables... I've always hated math! Talk about information overload. I'm much happier with a job that involves creativity and not too much theoritive thinking.

Still, it's a job that has to be done and I respect the people that do it.

So Wicked, do you still continue your graphic design company or what? Why this suddden career switch?

I am going to continue doing design, but on the side and at my own pace. I'm honestly really tired of it right now - too many 12 hour days, too many non-existent weekends trying to get stuff out the door. I feel like I'm simply tapped out. Stressful as ATC may appear, I'm going to welcome the stabilty that comes from working a job where you show up, work 8 hours, and you go home. The job doesn't come with you and doesn't sit there staring back at you everytime you're hop on your computer.

Ironically, I think ATC's about as creative a career as you can find. There's not a lot of "hard math" in it (I hate math too, btw - I openly **** at it). You just need to have good spatial awareness and a sense of timing. The only real formula you need is Time * Speed = Distance. If you can bang that formula out in your head quickly, you're good to go.

For instance, say I've got two 747's on a 15 mile final with 7 miles between them, and this 737 is coming in from the south to land on the same runway. The 747's are coming in at 200 knots.

747 - - - - - - - 747 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - == RUNWAY =======


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .< . . 737 . . . .

I need 4 miles between them all for safety (747's have NASTY wake vortices). How the hell can I fit the 737 in there?

First, calculate how many miles per minute the 747's are going. 200 knots / 60 = 3.3 miles per minute. So... I tell the second 747 to reduce speed to 180 (3mpm), and tell the first one to speed up to 220 (3.6mpm). After 2 minutes, the space between them will increase by 1.2 miles ((3.6mpm-3mpm) * 2 min) and at that time they will still be around 8 miles from the runway.

I've got over 8 miles between the 747's, so I can just vector the 737 in there, no problem. Once they're in sequence, I can tell them all to reduce speed to 180 to keep their separation distance intact.

- - - - - - - 747 - - - - - - - - 747 - - - - - - - - == RUNWAY =======
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ^
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .737
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

That's exactly what those guys were doing in the video. You can hear them calling out all different kinds of speed adjustments - for instance, to the Continental airplane.

I'm just hoping this career works out and I get through training and all that stuff. There's a long road to getting signed off to work traffic "solo". 100+ hours of training on each position - woo, fun...

 

[Wolfsglen]

Very cool Pengy.

I love how a flightless bird still found a way to be involved with flying somehow

Best of luck though, potentially awesome and challenging career for the future jus' waiting to happen

 

[{YBBS}Sage]

Cool stuff! Sounds like fun, though I'm sure I couldn't manage to do it.

 

[Boogerhead]

Penguin, good luck!

I volunteered with a Habitat for Humanity chapter whose big pusher and supervisor was a guy working outta Hampton, Ga., which covers the world's busiest airport.

He'd been awarded Air Traffic Controller of the Year some time before. They gave the award in ... Kansas City, maybe?

Anyway, he never went to get the award. You see, he doesn't fly ... =)