Hello friends well I'm back down here again at Melbourne's International Airport
we're here in the Airservices Australia complex. The last time I was down here
and I shot that 'Inside Air Traffic Control' video it did really well so
thanks to everyone out there who has watched it. But I did think that when I
was down here last time there was one big thing down here at Airservices in
the complex that we didn't cover in much detail.
That view right I have to not get distracted by that view and I have to
concentrate here because we're actually up now at the at the top of the Air
Traffic Control Tower. I've got Jason here, how are you Jason?
Welcome Stefan welcome to Melbourne Centre, nice to have you here today. It's so good to be here.
Jason's actually one of the controllers who works here
with Airservices up in the control tower at Melbourne Airport. Jason can you
just give us a quick overview what are some of your responsibilities in the tower.
In the tower, we're responsible for all the movements that happen on the ground so
the controller sitting on the right hand side there is the SMC or the surface
movement controller or referred to as a ground controller. They're responsible
for taxying aircraft and aircraft on the ground. The Aerodrome Controller who's
the next person on the left also known as the Tower Controller, they're responsible
for the runways. How many aircraft say on the ground and arriving and departing the
airport, how many would be under your control at any one time? In terms of the
Aerodrome Controller, the Tower Controller it wouldn't be uncommon to have two or
three on final at any one time that will be talking to the Tower Controller.
Potentially one or two that had departed before they've been transferred to a
departures controller. And then how ever many are at the holding point waiting
for their turn to depart. So probably five six maybe seven at a time.
In terms of SMC on the ground it can be a lot more. Melbourne ground it is quite
busy and as you can see out the window there there's probably up to a dozen
there that have either pushed back or are taxing that will be potentially plus
whoever's holding for a pushback which is limited by apron congestion and that
sort of thing. In terms of volume our ground position is probably the busiest.
20 or more could be under control at one time. Melbourne's got cross
runways here and there's something called LAHSO which we don't really use
very much in general aviation. Well LAHSO is quite a unique procedure
to Melbourne and essentially what it allows us to do is use two runways for
landing at the same time. In the case of Melbourne where we use runway 27 for
arrivals and runway 34 for arrivals at the same time. Essentially runway 27
is used as a single runway so we use that for departures and arrivals
with runway 34 being used for arrivals only. Aircraft arriving on runway
34 that are participating in LAHSO which is land and hold short operations
will be issued a clearance to land and hold short of runway 27. There's
quite a few restrictions on us to use LAHSO the first one being weather. So we
have to meet very strict weather conditions and if any stage those
weather conditions change and move outside of the criteria that allows us to use it
we have to stop immediately. The pilots themselves have
to be trained and and approved so both the or the pilots the operators and the
aircraft types and then of course from our point of view we have specific
training to be able to participate in LAHSO and apply those standards
ourselves. But essentially it doubles our arrival capacity so it's a great, when
we can use it, and we can use a day and night, it allows us to use two
runways. Do you have one person who's just always assigned to ground or do you
change between the different positions here in the tower? No we certainly change.
The goal is that every person who works here will be able to operate in all four
positions. As people start here typically they will train on SMC so ground
movement first and the clearance delivery position. Consolidate there for
a period of time and then move across to the tower positions ADC and the co-ord
which I didn't touch on earlier. The co-ord is a high responsibility job because
they are responsible for overall operations at the Tower. So they'll pick the
runways that we're using create ATISs liaise with external agencies if there
was an emergency that's the position who would be coordinating with external
agencies to work out the best response.
Now one of the key differences here in the tower compared to some other air
traffic control towers around the country, Moorabbin for example, is with
the strips for the aircraft which identifies which aircraft are where and what
order they're coming in to land, they're not actually paper strips here because
they're electronic. That's right so so we have electronic representation of
paper strips. The idea is that it should emulate exactly what was used in the old
tower or many other towers around the world that still use paper strips. To run
you through what we have here this is this is the setup for the ADC or the
aerodrome control tower position. So we have four screens as you can see there.
The screen and the center here that the one of the bottom is that is the primary
screen and this is the one that replicates what you would see in the old
tower in terms of a strip board. On the left-hand side here is pending departures
so they'll arrive there in a sequence that they've called ready when
ready they'll move across into the runway bay which will show aircraft that
are using the runway both arrivals and departures. And then above that is the
the inbound sequence so they're greyed out now because they're not talking to
the tower. Once they're talking to the tower those strips will become yellow
and to match the New Zealand one that you can see at the bottom there.
Departures on the right-hand side there are a reminder of the aircraft that's departed
and we can refer back to information there. There might be a wake turbulence
category or to check perhaps a SID that they've departed on, or tracking
instructions that sort of thing. On the top centre screen is the airborne radar
the arrival runway 27 there. The Velocity 1294 is the first arrival there so they
are talking to the control tower as shown by the yellow strip down the
bottom. And the dots there indicates nautical mile so that's at a six mile
final now for a runway 27. On the other side of course the departures which are to the
blue tags and those aircraft have departed Melbourne have been transferred
to the appropriate departure frequency. On the left hand side we have the
surface movement radar so the ground radar which gives us representation of
the airport layout and essentially what we see out the window. And everything
correlates there so once again blue tags for departures yellow for inbounds and
we have some other tags around there in Melbourne which are for works vehicles or
tows and that sort of thing - tugs that are towing aircraft for maintenance of what have you.
The last screen on the right hand side is essentially utility screen.
So this gives us information about lighting perhaps monitoring ATIS.
To start there on the top right hand side is the ATIS information Victor
there for Melbourne at the moment with the conditions you can see. We have
access to lighting panels here which will tell us what settings we have the
light on. In the case of today with some weather passing through
we've had the lights turn up to a higher intensity just to allow pilots every
chance of seeing the runway nice and early. As you can see here we have wind
indicators which are in the positions of the four windsocks at the airport and
they give us constant up-to-date information on what the wind's doing
obviously. And just to the right hand side of that there's a breakdown of
crosswind peaks, tracks, and what a mean wind has been over the last ten minutes as well.
One other question that someone was asking was emergencies. So what are
your responsibilities up here in the tower? I guess our primary responsibility
in an emergency is to be an information reporting service. With an
arrival, with an aircraft sorry that's inbound and some
time away so diverted perhaps to Melbourne for an emergency landing, we
would look to get as much information from that aircraft as possible on the
situation and what what their needs will be when they arrive here. And then to
start reporting people so of course we have our ARRFS, which is our Aviation
Rescue Firefighting Service on-site. Advise them and start to liaise
with all the external agencies so that will be the airport themselves the
safety vehicles on the ground rights through of course to external emergency
services ambulance fire brigade and police. I guess from there we then best prepare
the airport for their arrival and depending on the situation the pilots
might have a request for a particular runway which may be a non duty runway
and of course they have ultimate priority that point to to have which
every runway they would need. And then we then once again pass that information
across to the services so they can then best position themselves to receive
the aircraft and and help as best they can. In terms of examples, we do see
maybe a hydraulic problem or flap problem. That's not totally
uncommon and as said luckily full emergencies are very rare and almost
yeah in Aviation we're a very safe industry.
I've got to ask this question - is it stressful? How do you find the job like personally?
I love the job and I guess I'm very fortunate to like the job that I do. I
guess the one we see a lot is the weather. The weather will change
sometimes change we expect it to and other times it won't and reacting to that
I guess can be can be stressful at times because we you know trying to our best
to you know be on the right runway mode and to predict these things happening. So
yeah look it's it has its it has moments of course like I guess a lot of jobs do but
look, we wouldn't be here if we didn't enjoy it.
So back down now from the tower back on the ground level here in the complex.
I've got a couple of your questions which you submitted via Facebook and
Twitter so thank you to everyone who did that and Jason's now going to answer a
couple of quickfire viewer questions. So let's start with Josh. Josh says
have you got radar for tracking ground movements and how much do you rely on
that compared to actually looking out of those big windows? Good question.
So yeah we certainly do it and you would have seen a little bit of that upstairs
when we saw the console. So primarily our job is visual so if we can see the aircraft
out the window and we can apply a visual separation we can be a little bit more
efficient so we can operate in Melbourne right down to Category 3 ILS, so
essentially in full low vis procedures, in fog, and we can do that primarily
on the radar. We use a combination of both everyday though of course so while
we do do it primarily out the window we do confirm everything we see with what's on
the radar. So useful tool we use it every day and then we do rely it more heavily
in certain conditions. Paul asks, Paul said this made me laugh when you sent me this one
he said, do you find us general aviation pilots a nuisance at any time
and what's the one thing or maybe a couple of things that we could improve as GA
pilots to make your lives easier? Yeah good question of course at Melbourne
we don't see much in the way of GA traffic of course but metro D or
regional Towers it's an everyday occurrence of course. So no one's a
nuisance. I mean I guess at the end of the day what's our job? Our job is to
service the aviation community. Look what I would say is is be prepared.
I mean I remember well I'm a commercial pilot used to instruct people down at Moorabbin
and remember how you know fearful everyone is at their first
clearance their first radio call. But being prepared is the key. Read your ERSA
look at your charts ask the question I mean make the phone call. Those towers that
have a phone number in ERSA
if you're in doubt ring up and ask. Ask in plain English over the radio, better
to ask earlier I guess then they make a mistake later. I think the thing that
I've always been taught and it took me a while to learn in my flying career but it's
don't be afraid of asking Air Traffic Control. Absolutely. Because there's
human beings at the other end of the line there and
you know your your remit is really to help us pilots you know get back
to and from wherever we're going safely. So you know ask the question, ask it
confidently, but preparation is the key. As with everything is a key, yeah.
But if in doubt ask the question feel free don't be don't
be afraid to, not at all please don't. Next up this one's from Simon the old
control tower which is no longer used as an air traffic control tower. Simon's asking
can we get the control tower as a viewing area? Which I'd love! I'm sure many
would! Look I'm sure that would be very popular now unfortunately though because
it is inside the the complex it's not. But I have heard a story that there was
a company that was interested in turning it into a restaurant at one stage which
would probably be... That would be great! A very good view but unfortunately not I think it will
have to remain as it is. And then final question, this one is a silly question,
but I'm going to end on this one. Andrew asks what is your high score in
Flight Control? I don't know if you play it? Now I have before, probably not as good as it
should be. I'm glad my ability to do my job doesn't count on how high a score I've
had because it probably would be good! Oh yeah, you focus on this
stuff in the real world, Andrew you can get your own high score on Flight Control!
Absolutely. I won't challenge it that's for sure.
Thank you Jason. Thank you very much for your time. Anytime, thank you for coming along.
Tthat's so fascinating up there I've been wanting to go up that
control tower so much and the views from up there I don't think it will do it
justice on this film. The best way to get those views yourself is obviously to
become an air traffic controller yourself. If someone is watching this as
well Jason and they are interested in air traffic control as a career,
what's the best thing for them to do? The best starting point is to visit us
on the website which is AirservicesAustralia.com for information on the
career itself, vacancies and just general information. There is information on
there about air traffic control and how it works. Yeah maybe I'll be talking to you
next time on the radio when you're working up there
Thanks for time Jason. Anytime, thank you again. Cheers. Bye.