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How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

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Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#41

Post by ubernostrum »

noobermin wrote: post #13
jtchang wrote: post #3

Being able to deal with a stressful situation calmly is a mark of solid training and a work culture that emphasizes level headedness. In addition to training though I wonder if those working in ATC all share similar personality types.

I think what is impressive is not just their ability to maintain their composure but how readily they enter "emergency mode" from what was most likely a boring, normal day. Their ability to context switch AND maintain a level-head through it and afterwards is commendable.

Well, there are multiple levels here.

One very important one is the ability, when the tower is told "runway 13 is closed" with just very bare-bones information, to just accept that and start doing what needs to be done to close it down. The human tendency is to want to know more about what's happening, what needs to be done down on the ground, the condition of the aircraft and the passengers and crew, etc., but the trained-in response is to automatically trust that someone else is taking care of that, so stop thinking about it and do your job.

So the controller goes immediately from talking to the car that reported the crash, to issuing go-around orders, not knowing how bad the crash is, how long it's going to take to clear up, just trusting that "OK, I handle the planes that are still in the air, they'll handle the one on the ground".

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#42

Post by ubernostrum »

teraflop wrote: post #22
grendelt wrote: post #11

Pedantic alert: ATCs don't close the airport. They can take a runway out of service, but they can't close the airport, that's the airport authority's job.

Less pedantically, I thought it was interesting that the call to close the airport came directly from "Car 100" aka the ground crew. No stopping to report the incident to superiors or waiting for confirmation about what to do. The guy on the scene just says "OK, airport's closed now" and ATC immediately makes it happen. That's pretty impressive in its own right, from an organizational point of view.

1) There may be additional communications we don't hear; all we're getting is what the tower hears, which is not necessarily everything.

2) Aviation is, in large part by necessity, built around the concept of knowing who has authority to do what, and listening when the person with the authority gives an instruction. When the tower hears "airport is closed" from someone with the authority to say it, then the airport is closed, full stop. Arguing about "well, why is it closed" or "I'll close it when I check with my supervisor" eats time that can cost lives, so organizationally it's set up to avoid having that happen.

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#43

Post by ZoFreX »

signa11 wrote: post #30
vishnugupta wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank for providing these insights! I used to play a neat little terminal game named "atc" in Linux (it's a part of "bsdgames") which I thought simulated air traffic controller's job to a decent level of accuracy. It was fun to start off with but I just couldn't cope up for more than 30 minutes. There were just way too many variables to hold in my working memory. E.g., an incoming plan that could potentially miss lan…

> I used to play a neat little terminal game named "atc" in Linux there is a pretty cool "train control" game on ipad as well, where you guide trains across a bunch of crisscrossing train-lines. you control the lights at these intersections etc., overall game-play has a let's-solve-this-puzzle kind of feel, using minimal number of stoppages for all the trains etc. pretty nice overall...

I don't suppose you remember the name of that game? It sounds fun...

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#44

Post by a3n »

teraflop wrote: post #22
grendelt wrote: post #11

Pedantic alert: ATCs don't close the airport. They can take a runway out of service, but they can't close the airport, that's the airport authority's job.

Less pedantically, I thought it was interesting that the call to close the airport came directly from "Car 100" aka the ground crew. No stopping to report the incident to superiors or waiting for confirmation about what to do. The guy on the scene just says "OK, airport's closed now" and ATC immediately makes it happen. That's pretty impressive in its own right, from an organizational point of view.

It has the feel of procedures adopted after a "lesson learned." Guy at the scene knows what's going on, take action on that and save lives and seconds. Let's make that policy.

If they had to go up and down a chain of authority, that following flight 1999 would have landed into the emergency.

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#45

Post by frandroid »

rl3 wrote: post #29
adam wrote: post #8

I had an opportunity to visit the Chicago regional center a few years ago to meet some of the controllers and learn how their systems work. Everything about the space is meant to keep these guys calm and focused on their job. It literally feels like being in a bit of a cocoon. Dark lighting, very large screens at each workstation, some physical controllers to quickly modify their on screen views. Their training also…

>Their training also focuses quite a bit on constant recall of what they're looking at (in the event their systems suddenly die, they need to always know what planes are in their sequence and where generally they are) ... That seems brutal. Wonder why they don't do something like a continuous print instead.

If the systems suddenly die, they don't have time to consult a printout, they need to KNOW which planes to shuffle off or else there will be accidents; reading the information off a printout is way too slow. If the system RAM dies, the humans are the effective backup RAM.

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#46

Post by DanBC »

logicallee wrote: post #21
leriksen wrote: post #18

I used to be an ATC (in Australia, 7 years), and there is definitely stress there, but its like being in an insane asylum - you don't recognise that you, and everyone else, is mad. There is also significant peer pressure to excel at your job. Not just be good, but to competently handle everything that comes. The regulations state that the purpose of ATC is to provide for the "safe, orderly and expeditious operation o…

>The hardest test in the selection process was a combined map course plotting task, where you had to accurately plot out a course of about 15-20 waypoints, but every 60 seconds the examiner would read out a logic problem "if Jane wears blue on Tuesdays and green on weekends, what would she wear on the day before Monday ?" - stuff like that This reminded me of a typical open office environment for a programmer...

Normally without the deaths of 400 people if you make an error.

Although, software errors can kill or cause harm so it'd be interesting to see if anyone has costed the benefits of open plan vs offices.

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#47

Post by leriksen »

vishnugupta wrote: post #23
leriksen wrote: post #18

I used to be an ATC (in Australia, 7 years), and there is definitely stress there, but its like being in an insane asylum - you don't recognise that you, and everyone else, is mad. There is also significant peer pressure to excel at your job. Not just be good, but to competently handle everything that comes. The regulations state that the purpose of ATC is to provide for the "safe, orderly and expeditious operation o…

Thank for providing these insights! I used to play a neat little terminal game named "atc" in Linux (it's a part of "bsdgames") which I thought simulated air traffic controller's job to a decent level of accuracy. It was fun to start off with but I just couldn't cope up for more than 30 minutes. There were just way too many variables to hold in my working memory. E.g., an incoming plan that could potentially miss lan…

More like 2-3 hours, though another dis-similarity is you play the game by yourself, controllers generally work in pairs, or teams. In the tower there is usually 5 people.

1. senior tower controller. 2. approach/dep controller (sorry its been about 25 years since I did the job, I think its a diff title, but basically its his job to say 'clear to land/take off' and really mean it - it really is 'clear'). 3. coord - link man between everyone in the tower and most people on phone 4. ground controller - moves the planes from the apron to the runway. Does not control apron - sometimes that a separate controller (surface movement controller), who lives in the little tower you might see on the terminal itself. 5. flight data - transcribes all the incoming plans into manual 'flight strips' - dull job but essential, if radar etc go away, the accuracy of the flight strips is essential. Most junior operator sits here.

In the ACC (Area Control Centre) there could be 100 controllers, some on shift, some just finished, some on breaks, most in teams of at least 2, a dozen flight data operators, and 5-6 seniors - big boss is the SAC - senior area controller (in Australia). Next boss is the SADC - senior app/dep controller, in charge of the team that generally operates exclusively within 30 miles - could be 15 people doing that all up.

Re: How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport

#48

Post by signa11 »

ZoFreX wrote: post #43
signa11 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to play a neat little terminal game named "atc" in Linux there is a pretty cool "train control" game on ipad as well, where you guide trains across a bunch of crisscrossing train-lines. you control the lights at these intersections etc., overall game-play has a let's-solve-this-puzzle kind of feel, using minimal number of stoppages for all the trains etc. pretty nice overall...

I don't suppose you remember the name of that game? It sounds fun...

here is the game i was talking about: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/train-control/id888290929?mt...
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