How Air-Traffic Controllers Sound When They Have to Close the Airport • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by jkaljundi » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 10:05 AM UTC

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.

Many ATC facilities do use backup printers for the good old flight progress strips. Basically a continuous roll of strips coming from the printer that usually goes directly into a garbage bin.

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

#32

Post by jon-wood » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 10:35 AM UTC

belovedeagle wrote: post #24

teraflop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought the same exact thing. I wonder if maybe it's a trick of the audio (someone else actually came on the line), or if that was actually what happened. It was pretty surreal if so, just like you said.

It sounds similar to manufacturing's authorisation for anybody to stop the line in the case of defects - its better to delay things for a short while and make sure everything is ok than it is to compound the problem by letting things continue. I imagine in the case of an airport with a plane stuck on the active runway this is even more the case, since the problem can quickly escalate into hundreds of people dying.

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

#33

Post by gort » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:11 PM UTC

9i9i9i9i wrote: post #4

Similar recording of the BA crash at Heathrow. I am always impressed how professional they do things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCK62U6Fob0 Another one of an engine failure at Manchester - the response of the ATC within 1 second of the mayday call is plain amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE

Slightly better audio of the Heathrow incident at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcGA3vRwzuE

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

#34

Post by omegote » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

Those of you who have english as your first language, do you clearly understand everything they say? Goddammit, I was barely able to understand the number 1999 for the first flight mentioned in the article...

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

#35

Post by leesalminen » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

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.

Car 100 could very well have been a Port Authority of NY/NJ officer. They likely do have the authority to enact a temporary closure of an airport under their jurisdiction.

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

#36

Post by micro-ram » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

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...

Similar Train game called "Rails". It is fun until you get so much going on there are trains crashing into each other everywhere.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rails/id556517203?mt=8

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

#37

Post by brohoolio » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:15 PM UTC

omegote wrote: post #34

Those of you who have english as your first language, do you clearly understand everything they say? Goddammit, I was barely able to understand the number 1999 for the first flight mentioned in the article...

Native English speaker here.

I barely understood the first time listening.

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

#38

Post by lisper » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:50 PM UTC

omegote wrote: post #34

Those of you who have english as your first language, do you clearly understand everything they say? Goddammit, I was barely able to understand the number 1999 for the first flight mentioned in the article...

Even native English speakers have trouble understanding ATC comms. The sound quality is poor and it's a very specialized vocabulary. But with practice it becomes much eaier because there is a very limited repertoire of things that the controller is likely to say, and once you know what those are it becomes a lot easier to decipher.

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

#39

Post by mikeash » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

jon-wood wrote: post #32

belovedeagle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same exact thing. I wonder if maybe it's a trick of the audio (someone else actually came on the line), or if that was actually what happened. It was pretty surreal if so, just like you said.

It sounds similar to manufacturing's authorisation for anybody to stop the line in the case of defects - its better to delay things for a short while and make sure everything is ok than it is to compound the problem by letting things continue. I imagine in the case of an airport with a plane stuck on the active runway this is even more the case, since the problem can quickly escalate into hundreds of people dying.

My glider club just had our annual safety meeting, and one of the things we repeat every year is that it doesn't matter how new or inexperienced you are, if you see something that looks unsafe, call it out or put a stop to things if you think it's necessary. Doesn't matter if it's your first day at the airport, speak up.

I imagine the same thing would be true here. If you think the airport needs to be closed, then close the airport. Doesn't matter if you just got hired five minutes ago for the lowest position in the whole place, if you think the airport is no longer safe then shut it down.

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

#40

Post by mikeash » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

rkoknar wrote: post #28

Oooooooohhhh. Woooooow. ATC controllers calm under pressure! Uh you do know that that's their job right?

An air traffic controller being calm under pressure is about as surprising as an anti-social nerd making fun of people for not being interested in the exact same things he is.