- Niner four golf, runway two seven, clear to land.
(triumphant music)
- I'm at the top of Schiphol air traffic control tower.
- I guess that was a VFR departure.
- So the one I'm actually interested is the Orange Pride.
- Yeah, that's the special livery of KLM.
- LM five eight niner, QNH, one two to one five.
- You have five runway, and the small little runway here.
- We have six in total. - Six.
- KLM eight two four, turn left heading two two five.
- So, we want to see how you guys work,
give us some behind the scenes stuff.
- Yeah, we'll do that, just follow me
and I'll show you around.
- Hey, welcome to Amsterdam, guys!
Right behind me, the Schiphol airport tower.
One of the busiest air traffic control tower.
Today I'm having a tour.
Let's check it out, guys.
(light music)
- Hi, Yost.
- Hi, Sam. - How are you doing?
- I'm really good,
how are you? - Wow.
I'm at the top of Schiphol air traffic control tower.
- Yeah, it's really great to have you here.
It's our pleasure.
(upbeat music)
- KLM five eight niner, taxi to runway two four.
- 360 degree views.
How many runways here, look at how many planes here.
How many runway there is?
- Well, Sam, we actually have six runways which we can use.
Normally we're only allowed to use three runways
at the same time because of noise abatement.
Averagely we do on a daily base, we do 1500 to 1600
departures and landings and our hourly rate
is about 110 to 120 aircraft.
- [Sam] That's a lot.
110 to 120 per hour?
- [Yost] Yeah, yeah, it can get pretty hectic here
in the summer.
- Yeah, just to let you know, Yost is an AvGeek
and I'm an AvGeek, so when two AvGeeks meet
in the control tower, this is a playground.
What's a special plane today, show me.
- [Yost] One of the special planes is the first visit
of the EgyptAir 787.
- [Sam] Ah, EgyptAir.
- [Yost] Yeah, they just changed from a certain fleet
or the A330 on the normal line.
- Oh, I saw my favourite, 747, KLM, 747 taxiing out.
- This is the top of the airport, the tower.
We just renovated our tower.
We went up from ten working positions
up to the 15 we have now.
We build an extra level which where you're at
at the moment right now.
And at the moment we have five controllers working.
We have the tower controller working departures
and landings lighting centre.
In 18 left, we got assistant controller here.
He's doing the tow traffic.
This is one of the ground controllers.
He's doing all the pushback and taxiing traffic
on the north side of the airport.
This is the outbound planner.
She makes sure that everybody has a departure clearance
before he's going to get pushback.
And she makes also sure that there's enough traffic going
onto the departure runways and not too much, as well.
Here at Amsterdam we like to absorb the delay on the ground
at the gate because it's better for the environment.
And the last position here on the first level is
the ground controller which is responsible for
the traffic on the south part of the airport
so at the moment she's working all this traffic here
and she's making sure that everybody can pushback safely
and taxi to the departure runway and to his gate.
(upbeat music)
- I guess that was a VFR departure.
We have some VFR traffic on station,
that's police helicopters and Coast Guard Dornier.
They do pollution control on the North Sea
so he just departed Amsterdam, he's going to the west.
- In Amsterdam the challenge is the wind change a lot
so I have seen now a lot of runway change.
Every few hours there's a runway change.
Now I see the planes approaching from the north.
Earlier was approaching from the south and
it's very fast paced moving here.
- Sam, I'll tell you a little bit more about
the workflow we have here in the tower.
For instance, we have the KLM 589 which is the Orange Pride
which you will see departing in a couple of minutes.
KLM 589 is a departure of 18 left going to Accra today.
And you can see here the digital flight strip,
we changed from paper strips to digital fight strips
about half a year ago when we refurbished
the tower, as well.
All the details are on the strip, we got
the KLM 589 departure runway 18 left and his SID code
a one echo departure.
Also type of aircraft is triple seven.
- So this strip, it pass from one controller
to the next controller as the identification
of the aircraft.
- [Yost] Exactly.
Now we have great visibility today so we actually don't use
the strips--
- [Sam] So when it's clear weather, you can also visualise,
you can see the plane, right?
- [Yost] Exactly, yeah.
The basic work here in the towers is just on visual,
you do visual control.
There's a visual control room over here.
You see the delivery controller here.
He will tell the departure airway clearance
to all the pilots when they call him.
- [Sam] So he's the first person to talk to the Captain.
- [Yost] Exactly, this is the start of the flight.
- So the one I'm actually interested is the Orange Pride.
The orange and blue triple seven 300, right?
- Yeah, that's the special livery of KLM.
- There's a list of planes, he's a busy man here.
This is a busy position.
- [Yost] Yeah, at the moment we have two runways in use
so that means about 80 departures an hour
so he'll be giving 80 departure clearances this hour
so yeah, this is quite a busy position.
- That's challenging, that's a very busy position.
- Exactly.
- KLM five eight niner, QNH one two to one five,
information whiskey, contact ground 121.805.
- [Pilot On Radio] 121.805, KLM 589,
(speaks foreign language).
- KLM 589 cleared on startup and push, pull approved.
- [Yost] Sam, you just heard KLM 589 got his clearance
for pushback, so he'll be pushed back, straight backwards,
and then pulled out.
After the pull out, he will start up his engines
and give his call when he's ready to taxi to the runway.
- [Controller On Radio] KLM five eight niner, in sequence,
line up and wait, 18 left, echo six.
- [Pilot On Radio] Line up and wait, echo six, KLM 589.
- [Controller On Radio] KLM five eight niner, runway 18L,
echo six, cleared for takeoff, wind is one six zero,
one three maximum one niner.
(jet engines roaring)
(light upbeat music)
- KLM three one november, the wind is two four zero degrees,
two one maximum, three one on the two four seven five,
cleared for takeoff.
(jet engines roaring)
- Niner four golf, runway seven, cleared to land,
the wind is two four zero degrees,
two one maximum three zero.
- What you just saw was the outbound rush,
a lot of heavy departures and you can see all the gates
are clear now.
For the next hour and a half, all the inbound rush
will start and then we have all the gates filled up again.
What you see on this screen, about 80% of all passengers
here in Amsterdam, they don't actually leave the airport,
but they just only transfer from one plane to another.
- Yeah, I think Schiphol is one of top three busiest
airport in terms of movement in Europe, right?
- [Yost] Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Even in passenger wise.
- [Sam] In passenger wise, number three.
That's huge.
- [Yost] Yeah, it's really busy.
- [Sam] Huge for a small country like Netherlands.
- [Yost] Exactly.
- So 18 right, this is the Polderbaan runway,
it's very far, right?
But it's really good for spotter taking pictures, right?
Good access. - [Yost] Yeah, it's really
really good access, you can take beautiful pictures
down there, but most pilots they don't like to land on
that runway because you have 15 minute extra taxi down
to get here.
- [Sam] Right, long taxi back to the main terminal.
- [Yost] Exactly, yeah.
- [Sam] Right, you're closing down 27,
avoiding runway crossover with departure runway.
- [Yost] Exactly.
We like to avoid runway crossings where we can
because it's a potential hazard and to avoid that
we closed down 27 and start landing 18 right again.
- It's a bit complicated because here has got six runways,
you got to know your bearings because you got 18, 36,
zero nine, 27, zero six, 24.
18 there are three runway, left, centre, and right,
so, and there's zero four and 22, so, you know,
because the wind, there's all runway directions can
be in use to battle with the crosswind.
- [Computer Voice] Go around two seven.
Go around two seven.
- Do you see a lot of this go around at
the tower every day?
- No, it doesn't happen a lot.
Normally the pilots know how to vacate
and they do exploit vacate the runways here
because we have close separation on final.
- [Sam] What's your separation like, 45, 60 seconds.
- [Yost] We're up to 80, 90 seconds.
- [Sam] Up to 80, 90 seconds, okay.
- [Yost] Yeah, for landings.
Departures, it's about 50 to 60 seconds between departures.
I really hope you enjoyed your visit here in the tower.
I actually have a bunch more colleagues working air traffic
but not only in the tower but also in radar
and area control, so I'd like to invite you to
the eastern part of the airport where our radar centre is.
(light upbeat music)
- Hi, Sam.
Hi, nice to meet you,
I'm Maggie. - Nice to meet you.
- Welcome to the radar control centre at Schiphol airport.
I'd like to show you how it works.
- [Sam] Let's check it out.
- Yes, this is where all the magic happens.
(overlapping controller chatter)
Sam, this is a radar screen and it gives you
a representation of the airspace that we work.
Have you ever seen a radar screen before?
- No, to be honest, I only saw flightradar24
on my cell phone but this is a real radar.
- This is a real radar and this is the Dutch airspace.
The Dutch airspace is worked by myself and
the other colleagues from the ground
up to 24 and a half thousand feet.
So as you can see on the screen, all the white targets
are aircraft, the labels.
And all the little green blips that are moving,
those are all aeroplanes .
The ones with white labels are ones we are working
and the ones without is traffic working with other sectors
so you can see it is a pretty busy airspace.
- [Woman In White Shirt] Niner six R five,
climb to flight level two seven zero
and proceed direct to Girming now.
- Let's check out, I'm really interested, I want to see
this one, KLM eight seven seven.
- Yeah, yes.
- What kind of aeroplane, because you can tell--
- Yep, everything's on here. - The speed, oh!
The 787. - It's a Dreamliner.
- Dreamliner.
- Yep, it's going to Bombay.
- EHAM to Bombay. - Yep, to Bombay.
- EABB. - Yes.
And all the details are there, so it'll be
the time he gets airborne. - So he's already departed.
- He's outbound, yeah, he got airborne at 11
so ten minutes ago.
Now he's already going to be working with
the Maastricht sector.
- What's the speed, it show here, right?
- His actually speed that he's doing is indicated
as 345 knots, that's actually what he's flying
because this is the information we get directly
from the aeroplane.
The pilot-selected level is flight level two five zero,
so that's what he's been cleared to by us.
The heading he's flying, and then his rate of climb
at the moment, 1,700 feet.
So we have all of this as backup information to make sure
that what we are saying the pilot is doing,
that he selects the correct level,
it's a added safety measure that we have.
- Anything up to 24,500 is in the radar here,
controlled by here. - Yes, yes.
- But on the radar screen, there's lots
of green dots, as well.
Those are also within the vicinity in the Dutch airspace.
- Our area only goes up to 24 and a half thousand feet.
Anything above that is working with the next sector
which in this case Maastricht Eurocontrol.
They're in Maastricht and they have upper area sectors.
- So the high flyover traffic is controlled by
Eurocontrol in Maastricht.
- I will work with him and at a certain point,
I'll hand him over to the next controller,
so it's basically a chain of controllers
from the minute the pilots request startup
to the minute his engine shuts down at his destination,
there'll be a chain of controllers that he will go through,
starting at a ground controller, a tower controller,
an approach controller, an area controller,
and then vis a versa when he descends.
- [Sam] So you're the area controller?
- [Maggie] We are area control--
- [Sam] And there's a higher area controller,
Eurocontrol in Maastricht.
- Yeah, and they sit just above us and then the English
will be just next to us, and the Belgians will be south
of us and the Germans to the east.
So everybody has their own frequency and
when he's finished with me I say now contact
my colleague in Germany on the next frequency
and then I say goodbye, and he'll call up
in the next sector and the next sector will say hello
and take the flight to the next section.
- [Woman In White Shirt] KLM nine eight seven november,
further left onto heading one zero five.
- We can show you an example of a flight
that's currently working with us is
a KLM one zero seven four.
He comes in from the UK to Amsterdam.
He enters the airspace via one of
the three initial approach fixes that we have,
so basically all the highways in the sky meet
at three points and from those three points
our approach colleagues put them behind each other
on the runway that they can land.
So the task of an area controller is to take them
from all different directions, all different aircraft types,
put them behind each other, similar speed, similar height,
and then the approach controllers will take those streams
and make one stream out of that, or two streams,
depending on how many runways.
At the moment, as you can see here, we have
one landing runway and the two departing runways
so it's outbound peak.
And later on when it gets busy, that swaps around.
We'll have one departure runway and two landing runways.
And that rotates through the whole day,
depending on the peak of the day.
- (speaking foreign language) charlie, expect ILS
runway one eight right.
- KLM one eight two four turn left heading two two five,
descend two thousand feet, cleared ILS one eight centre.
- Sam, sitting behind us are our approach control
controllers for Schiphol.
They will speak to the aircraft just after they're airborne
before they hand them over to us on area control
and also just before they land so we will sequence them
from area and the approach controllers will put them
on final approach for the runway to land.
- So the plane took off, they spoke with the tower,
tower hand over to this area.
- Affirm, to approach, they will then climb them
to a certain level and then they will hand them over
to area and vis a versa coming inbound,
we will hand them over to approach,
approach will descend them, position them onto
the final approach for the runway,
and hand them over to the tower controller who will
then clear them to land.
- Right, so the name is approach but really they do
both departure and landing as well.
- That is correct.
They do the airspace directly around the tower itself,
so whether that's incoming or traffic going out,
they will work the area--
- So, can I say, it's almost like level one is actually
the tower and level two is here and then the next level
is the area control, is level three.
- We see it a lot like little cake tins.
We have the tower controller, that's the first cake tin,
the approach controller, that's just above that,
and the area controller, that's above that,
so it works in layers.
- Thanks so much for explaining all the feature radar room
because I always thought that was rocket science.
It's like looking at a screen.
At a tower, people get to visualise the view, the traffic,
but in the radar room you just basically looking at a screen
talking to the plane, you know.
Tough work.
- It is but I love it.
I've been doing it for over 20 years and
it is very interesting.
People always associate air traffic control with
the guys that sit in the tower but
it goes much deeper than that.
There's those of us that sit behind the radar screen
with the little green blips, basically, and we keep
them separated, we put them behind each other,
we keep them safe from their departure points
to their destinations and it's a fantastic career.
I'm hoping maybe we can get some of the young people
that don't know much about air traffic control
but are interested in aviation to delve a little bit deeper
into what we do, it is a fantastic career, very exciting,
every day is rewarding and
I can highly recommend it. - Not as stressful not as hard
as people think, right? - Not at all.
The training is fantastic and if it's something
that you enjoy, and something that you can do,
then it actually is very simple.
- That's great but thank you so much for keeping
the sky safe for us. - Absolutely.
- Thank you so much for showing me today.
- Thank you, Sam, for visiting, it was a pleasure.