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This is Heathrow Airport—Britain’s Busiest.
Each day, about 650 flights take off from one of its two runways.
At the busiest times, this represents one aircraft every 45 seconds.
Of those 650, about twenty flights daily head to Frankfurt.
Between British Airways and Lufthansa, flights on this route depart more than hourly throughout
the daytime.
This makes Frankfurt one of Heathrow’s most frequently served destinations.
Despite the unremarkable nature of such a flight, the complexity of even this one hour
hop is enormous.
It takes dozens of people spread out all across the continent to coordinate and navigate just
one of these flights safely to its destination.
This is everything that happens within the 90 minutes it takes to for a plane to get
from its gate at Heathrow to its gate in Frankfurt.
Hours before the flight is scheduled to take off, British Airways will have sent a flight
plan to here—Eurocontrol’s Network Manager Operations Centre in Brussels.
Now, Eurocontrol is an intergovernmental air traffic management organization.
“Prissinotti: [00:01:57] Well, Eurocontrol is an intergovernmental organization of 43
states in Europe and beyond and we do air traffic management service transversal.”
What that means is that Eurocontrol deals with a variety of different aspects of the
job of managing air traffic in Europe.
One element of that is what’s called network management.
This function essentially involves, from this room, making sure that flights make their
way through Europe as safely and smoothly as possible.
That field is headed up by Lacopo Prissinotti—Eurocontrol’s Director of Network Management.
“Prissinotti: [00:05:53] So here you see that's our operational room.
The scope is to provide services to 43 air navigation service providers, to provide services
to more than 500 airports, and to provide services to more than 1000 airlines over the
network.”
One corner of this room is devoted to checking those flight plans that airlines send in.
Now, what they need to check is that these plans are following the rules.
You see, to aircraft, the sky does not look like this, but rather this.
At least in most of Europe, there are thousands upon thousands of pre-defined airways each
with their own rules on directionality and routes and more so aircraft not only need
to fly on these roads but they also need to follow the rules of the roads.
Looking at this map, you can see why, for example, you won’t see many planes flying
over this area in the east of England—there just aren’t many airways there.
Eurocontrol sends the fight plans through a program to check that they follows these
rules but if the computer rejects it, then it goes to these people in about 2% of cases
who coordinate with the airline to fix it manually.
From there, they’ll distribute the flight plans to all the air traffic control centers
that each aircraft is expected to fly over.
That process happens before the flight has even taken off.
Going back to that British Airways, Heathrow to Frankfurt flight, once their plan is approved,
the plane is fueled, loaded, and ready to go, the pilot will get approval from British
Airways’ flight dispatcher and Heathrow’s ground control to push back.
Ground control at Heathrow is responsible for navigating all the vehicles and planes
safely across the apron up until when they reach the runway.
The moment an aircraft gets to the runway, they are then the responsibility of tower
control which, assuming all is well, clears them for takeoff.
As the plane reaches altitude, it will be passed off to the London Terminal Control
Centre located near Southampton which navigates aircraft through the complex London-area airspace
until they reach 24,500 feet, or flight level 245, which for this flight should be just
about when it reaches the coast.
From there, they’ll be transferred to the London Area Control Centre, which is physically
located in the same building, to navigate them across the channel.
Once they reach about halfway across, however, they leave the UK’s airspace and enter Belgium’s.
With that, they are now the responsibility of the Maastricht Upper Area Control Center—also
managed by Eurocontrol.
“Santurbano: [00:00:20] We are a European nonprofit.
A cross-border military civil air navigation service provider.
And, uh, yeah, our job is that we handle safely and in an efficient and performed way all
traffic above flight level 245—24,500 feet.”
To reiterate, they handle traffic across this whole area, above 24,500 feet or 7,500 meters.
“Santurbano: [00:01:45] So we manage, what, more or less 1.9 Million of movements per
year, so between 5,000 and 5,700 movements depending on the on the season and the day,
per day.”
It’s one of the busiest and most complex airspaces in Europe especially as it receives
a significant amount of traffic climbing from or descending into four of of Europe’s five
busiest airports—Heathrow, Schiphol, Frankfurt, and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
Every single one of those flights, as long as it’s between flight level 245 and 660,
is in contact with the people in this room.
Now, the Maastricht control centre’s airspace is divided into three sector groups—the
Brussels, Hannover, and DECO sector groups.
Each sector group is staffed by their own set of controllers who only work on their
group—a Brussels sector group controller would very rarely switch over to the Hannover
group, for example.
Many controllers spend their entire careers working at one control center within one sector
group.
This allows them to really learn the design of their airspace in depth.
Each of the sector groups is then divided into sectors themselves.
Now, sectors can be divided both horizontally and vertically.
For example, there’s the Luxembourg sector, between flight level 245 and 355, and also
the Luxembourg High sector, above flight level 335.
At the very busiest times, each sector will have its own dedicated set of controllers.
At less busy times, though, they can and do combine the upper and lower sector together
so they’re staffed by one set of controllers.
At the least busy times, such as in the middle of the night, they’ll often combine a number
of sectors.
For example, the entirety of Belgian airspace is typically controlled by one set of controllers
in the dead of night.
In charge of each sector are two controllers working as a team.
One is in charge of talking to pilots, the other is in charge of talking to their counterparts
at other sectors to coordinate handovers.
Now, in practice, for that London to Frankfurt flight, before it enters Maastricht’s airspace
in the Koksy sector, they’ll receive info on where and at which flight level it will
arrive.
They’ll also get info from the flight plan on where it’s supposed to exit their sector.
An aircraft also might enter at one altitude and be planned to exit at another.
The task is then to safely navigate the aircraft from the entry point to exit point and deliver
it to the next sector at the desired altitude.
Now, assuming no added obstructions such as weather or airspace closures, the main obstacles
planes need to avoid at this altitude are other planes.
There are rules about how close a plane can be to another in order to avoid any chance
of midair collision and the controller’s job is to make sure that these rules are not
broken or, if they are, to get to the correct level of separation as soon as possible.
An aircraft must be either vertically or horizontally separated from all others at any given time.
What this means is that typically, a commercial aircraft cruising at this altitude can be
as little as 1000 vertical feet or 300 vertical meters away from another.
That’s vertical separation.
Alternatively, an aircraft can be horizontally separated.
They have to be at least 5 nautical miles, 6 miles, or 9 kilometers apart if they’re
within 1000 feet vertically.
Now, in order to achieve the goals of getting the aircraft to its exit point without breaking
minimum separation, there are three factors the controller can instruct the pilot to change—speed,
altitude, and direction.
That is essentially what a controller spends most of their time doing—determining where
the aircraft needs to go, how to get it there, and communicating that to the pilot.
Soon enough, after just a few minutes, as the aircraft reaches its exit point from the
sector, it will be passed onto the controller of the next sector.
In this case, it’ll go into Nicky Sector, then Olno sector, then it will move onto airspace
beyond what the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre manages.
As the plane starts to descends it will be passed onto the controllers dealing with lower
airspace, then approach and tower control to guide it into landing.
All told, on just this hour long flight, more than a dozen air traffic controllers will
have dealt with this aircraft.
But that’s what happens when absolutely everything is going right, which is rarely
the case.
You see, back at Eurocontrol’s network manager room, the second thing they do with the flight
plans they receive is make sure that once an aircraft gets flying, there are actually
enough air traffic controllers to manage it.“Thomas: [00:01:50] So, air traffic control, they decide
on their capacity i.e. how many flights can safely be handled in one piece of airspace
by one air traffic controller.
That's their decision based on their staffing, based on their infrastructure, their tools,
and that is communicated to us.”
So, there’s a limited number of flights a single air traffic controller can handle,
but there’s also a limited number of air traffic controllers.
It’s no secret that Europe, along with much of the world, is suffering through an air
traffic controller shortage right now.
Simultaneously, also along with much of the world, Europe has been experiencing a tremendous
increase in its number of flights.
This supply and demand mismatch has consequences.
In 2018, 60% of all en-route delays—as in, while the aircraft is actually flying—were
because of not having enough air traffic control capacity.
Part of Eurocontrol’s job, therefore, is to utilize the limited resource in the most
effective way possible.
Often, they reduce overall delays by delaying flights.
Sometimes its just for a few minutes, sometimes it’s for longer, but if you’re flying
in Europe and you hear that your flight is delayed for air traffic control reasons, that
decision was probably made in this room.
It’s just like a ramp meter on a highway—they let a manageable number of flights fly at
any given time when there are capacity constraints.
Now, when a flight receives a delay by Eurocontrol, the airline essentially has two choices—accept
the delay and wait it out or fly a different route.
Airlines have access to Eurocontrol’s system to help them make this decision.“Thomas:
[00:09:26] For instance here is a flight, it's a Thomas Cook flight from Manchester
going to Antalya in Turkey and they have planned this blue route here.”
This is the route that Thomas Cook has decided is best for them—it’s the least expensive
considering fuel costs, overflight costs, and everything.
Given that it flies through capacity constrained areas, though, to fly this route, they would
have to sit through a delay.
“Thomas: [00:10:05] Through our system now they can look at to see OK where our routes
that do not give them delay.
Those are all the blue routes you can see here and actually then there is a gray route
here which is the shortest of the blue.
A system says if you want to avoid your route which is delay you can take Blue routes or
the shortest blue which is the grey and it's up to you.”
The airline can then go and decide whether it’s worth it to them to fly the alternate
route or wait out the delay.
Eurocontrol’s network management role really is most applicable on the worst days for flying
in Europe.
Their job is to make the bad days as ok as possible.
An example of a really bad day for flying was Thursday, May 9, 2019.
The main issue was a large-scale French air traffic controller strike meaning there was
very little air traffic control capacity in French airspace—one of the busiest areas.
“Celik: [00:03:56] If you look at this map, that shows the magnitude of the impact on
the sectors.
The color red means that there were delays in the order of 45 minutes or above per flight.”
On days such as this, many airlines will choose to fly around France as to be less delayed
but, of course, the ATC centers in the surrounding countries need to be able to cope with demand.
“Celik: [00:04:30] Starting from three to four days before this event is confirmed we
would coordinate with Spain, North African countries, Algeria, Tunisia, we would coordinate
with Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Karlsruhe, we would coordinate with Maastricht and UK
to be able to get extra capacity for all those who has to go out.
So one alternative route from UK to go down to south of Spain and continuation on that
what we called Tango route.”
Tango route takes planes way out west into oceanic airspace to take a wide curve around
French airspace and is commonly flown when French airspace is restricted.
It is, of course, not efficient.
A flight from Alicante to London, for example, which normally takes just two hours, would
take over three by using Tango route but overall, it would typically arrive earlier than if
they waited for approval to fly through French airspace.
What made the 9th of May even worse is that drones were spotted at Frankfurt airport meaning
all arrivals and departures were stopped.
“Celik: [00:14:02] What we do we immediately get in contact with all the airports around
if you like.
You know this was the case in Frankfurt.
We contacted Amsterdam, Munich, Paris, Brussels immediately to try to understand incoming
flights, so live traffic, where they could land.”
Eurocontrol will get information from the surrounding airports on how many diverted
aircraft they can handle and passes this information onto airlines so they can quickly book a diversion
slot for their aircraft.
All told, there were over 300,000 minutes of delays on May 9th, but initial calculations
determined that there was the potential for over 1 million minutes of delays which means
that Eurocontrol likely succeeded in their task of improving the day.
Eurocontrol’s network manager room is expected to be quite busy in the coming months.
Right now, in early June, they already know summer 2019 is going to be messy.
It’s the busiest period of the year for flights and there’s actually less air traffic
control capacity than there was in summer 2018 when they had 26 million minutes of delays.
They fear this summer could be worse but, they made their action plan months ago, and
will be here nonstop through the coming months to make the summer travel season as smooth
as it can be.
Overall, this room, air traffic control centers, and the rest of the world’s air traffic
management infrastructure are crucial tools to make sure that routine, uneventful flights
like London to Frankfurt stay uneventful.
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