The Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) handles sixteen-million flights every year,
or approximately 44,000 flights on a daily basis.
And during peak travel times, there’s around 5,000 planes operating in North America’s
airspace at any given hour.
The responsibility for handling this huge operation falls on Air Traffic Control (or
ATC).
You’d think, with stakes this mind-blowingly high, that ATC would have to work with military
precision.
They must be well-staffed, highly-educated, and equipped with the latest technologies.
But, as you’ll find out in this surprising video, they’re actually a lot less organized
than you think.
First, some background: Air Traffic Control is an organization run by the FAA, which deals
with coordinating the movement of commercial and private aircraft.
They’re the sole point of contact for thousands of pilots tasked with getting you to your
destination safely and on time.
According to the FAA, there are 14,695 Air Traffic Controllers working in the United
States.
They work out of 518 ATC Towers, 21 Air Traffic Route Control Centers, and 154 Terminal Radar
Approach Control – or TRACON – facilities.
So, who are these people, and how do they manage America’s runways and skies?
You won’t actually see Air Traffic Controllers on the runway itself, guiding planes with
orange paddles.
That’s the duty of Aircraft Marshallers.
Nor will you see them preparing the craft for flight.
That’s the flight crew.
ATCs take a more hands-off approach.
It’s even possible for an Air Traffic Controller to never set foot on a plane.
What kind of person does it take to be an Air Traffic Controller?
Well, pretty much anyone.
There are no formal educational requirements for becoming an ATC.
While it helps, you don’t even technically need a college degree.
Succeeding in this line of work is all about temperament.
To be an Air Traffic Controller, you need to be young, focused, and have incredible
stress-management skills.
FAA rules dictate a mandatory retirement age of fifty-six years old, to make sure the mental
faculties and eyesight of ATCs never deteriorate.
People over age thirty aren’t even allowed to apply.
Many employees of Air Traffic Control are former pilots and ex-military, but this is
by no means a requirement.
Ideal ATCs have a decent grasp of mental arithmetic, and strong spatial awareness.
They’re also expected to pass numerous medical and psychological examinations from the FAA,
as well as completing a several-month training course followed by years of additional training
on the job.
The process is hardly streamlined, taking months or even years in some cases.
Every Air Traffic Controller in the United States is trained at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical
Center, situated in Oklahoma City.
They take a course known as the FAA Academy, where they’re trained to take on the various
duties of being an ATC.
These duties, by the way, are surprisingly broad.
From operating radar and communications equipment, to making sound judgements, to following flight
sequencing protocol.
Air Traffic Controllers even have their own special language, called radiotelephony, which
they’re required to learn comprehensively.
This process is known to be grueling, with experienced air traffic controller (and badass-name
owner) Vic Vector estimating that 25-40% of applicants drop out.
Still, this is for the best, as letting an incompetent applicant slip through the cracks
can have devastating consequences.
More on that later on in the video, when we discuss the darker sides of ATC.
Without Air Traffic Control, your flight wouldn’t even leave the blacktop.
While the plane taxis before take-off, ATCs in Air Traffic Control Towers observe and
direct pilots.
They coordinate taxiing planes to avoid collisions on the runway and sequence the flight for
take-off.
Once the plane has successfully taken off, jurisdiction passes from the ATC Towers to
Air Traffic Controllers in TRACON facilities.
These facilities use radar technology to handle what is known as “Approach Control.”
This means dealing with the flight’s ascent out of the terminal area, and ensuring planes
are safely out of each other’s paths.
When the plane ascends out of TRACON airspace, jurisdiction transfers yet again.
This time, to an Air Route Traffic Control Center, or “Enroute Center.”
These twenty-one Enroute Centers direct planes in the vast majority of US airspace, helping
them maintain their course.
They also assist the flight in reaching its final cruising altitude and preventing any
mid-air route conflicts with other planes.
When the flight makes its final descent towards the destination, jurisdiction passes back
to TRACON for the landing.
Finally, once the plane has made a successful landing, another ATC Tower guides it to the
proper terminal.
It may appear that the whole process is a real model of efficiency.
Every flight planned out to the minute, and attended to by thousands of devoted Air Traffic
Controllers.
While this isn’t technically untrue, it’s far from the full story.
Air Traffic Control is not an exact science, and the potential room for error on every
flight can be catastrophic if not handled correctly.
The following are just some of the insane scenes unfolding behind the curtain.
It might even make you think twice before booking your next vacation.
Firstly, you might imagine that most of the operations behind Air Traffic Control are
automated.
It’s a common turn of phrase to say that “These days, the planes fly themselves.”
However, the reality is that Air Traffic Control relies as much on the training and skills
of its employees as the technology they use on the job.
Take, for instance, the Air Traffic Control Towers that assist planes in taking off and
landing.
While you might expect these towers to be massive computer banks processing flight data
faster than a human mind can comprehend, in reality, they largely use a far older method:
Looking out the window.
The height of these towers gives Air Traffic Controllers a vantage point from which to
observe planes manually on the runway, a low-tech method particularly common in smaller airports.
This human element to Air Traffic Control Towers are why things as seemingly minor as
snow, fog, or even heavy rain can seriously disrupt your flight time.
The FAA has developed a number of technologies over the last decade to mitigate these issues
- such as the Low Visibility Operations/Surface Movement Guidance and Control System, and
the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X.
Using these systems gives ATC a greater degree of control over the runway in larger, busier
airports.
However, all this technology functions mainly as a back-up to Air Traffic Controllers staring
out of the window all day long and making human judgements.
This is part of why spatial awareness is such a crucial skill for an aspiring ATC officer
to have.
TRACON and Enroute Centers, on the other hand, are more technologically reliant by necessity.
Air Traffic Controllers working in these facilities never see the planes directly.
Instead, they perform their work with radar systems.
The groups of radar technicians, hunched over, staring at blips on their flashing screens,
are probably what you picture when you even think of Air Traffic Control.
What you might not know is, until very recently, the technology used for these radars was an
antiquated system called Host.
Developed over forty years ago, Host utilized what is known as a “point-to-point, ground-based
radar” developed all the way back in the 1970s.
To give you some perspective on just how old this technology was, the GPS you can use to
find a missing iPhone is considerably more advanced than the radars tracking our flights.
While the FAA are and have been attempting to improve this with the roll out of “NextGen”
– a modernization of their technological systems – this has also been messy.
Implementation came late, is still ongoing, and went five-hundred-million dollars over
budget.
As with any new system, there will also be a period of uncertainty while engineers work
out the kinks and Air Traffic Controllers adjust to the new demands.
Still, this is preferable to using a system less advanced than the average Xbox.
Beyond technological issues, the human component of Air Traffic Control is even more concerning.
You may think cabin pressure is high at thirty-thousand feet, but that’s nothing compared to the
pressure on the ATCs while you’re enjoying the in-flight movies up above.
Air Traffic Controllers often work brutal hours, with shifts ranging from the crack
of dawn to the dead of night, and everything in between.
Air travel never sleeps, and the same can sadly be said for many of the people responsible
for running it.
Air Traffic Controllers work weekends and holidays to get you where you need to be,
and it can take a real toll on them.
The dangerous consequences of this are clear.
For new employees, especially, the workload can be hard to adjust to.
In 2011, the FAA commissioned a study that found 1 in 5 Air Traffic Controllers had committed
a severe operational error due to fatigue.
What’s more, the study also found that a stunning third of ATCs believed fatigue poses
a serious risk to the safety of flights.
Worse still, outside of hiring legions more employees, not much can be done about this.
The aviation industry is booming, and as more people fly, the workload on ATCs will only
get more intense.
The psychological stress put on Air Traffic Controllers is made worse by the fact that
there is no average day on the job.
It’s a profession where disaster can strike at any time, and Air Traffic Controllers need
to be flexible in how they approach any given situation.
For example, in the Summer of 2018, unstable ground employee Richard Russell stole a commercial
plane and took it on an hour-long joyride.
Air Traffic Control, with the help of Seattle law enforcement, had to communicate with Russell
until his flight’s tragic end – crashing the plane near the Puget Sound.
In late 2018, Air Traffic Controllers in Ireland dealt with another bizarre situation.
They received a number of distressed communications from pilots in their airspace, seeing unidentified
flying objects passing across the sky.
Unlike the case of Mr. Russell, nobody was hurt, but the event caused considerable stress
and confusion for all involved.
Naturally, many conspiracy theorists claimed the UFOs were extra-terrestrial in origin.
Cooler heads in the scientific community, however, said the incident was most likely
a meteor shower.
Air Traffic Control just had to get on with their work, either way.
Aviation doesn’t wait up, aliens or otherwise.
Speaking of mysterious flying objects disrupting the work of Air Traffic Controllers, in late
December of 2018, sightings of a commercial drone brought London’s Gatwick Airport to
its knees.
A report of drone activity within a kilometre of the airport caused almost all operations
to shut down for thirty-three hours.
This caused approximately 140,000 passengers to experience serious disruptions.
The police and even the military were called in to remedy the situation, but neither got
concrete results.
In the end, two suspects were arrested and brought in for questioning, but were released
without charges due to insufficient evidence.
It’s just another example of how a seemingly tiny variable can disrupt the complex systems
that Air Traffic Control puts in place across the globe.
It goes without saying, considering what we’ve learned so far, that Air Traffic Control isn’t
quite the well-oiled machine we imagined it was.
Why does this matter, though?
Plenty of industries have a margin of error.
The real difference here is that, when Air Traffic Control messes up, the results range
from expensive to horrific.
As mentioned earlier, one of the key roles of the Air Route Traffic Control Center is
to maintain a safe distance between planes in flight.
However, technological or human error can sometimes prevent this from happening.
If all parties concerned are lucky, this can play out like the 2001 Japan Airlines mid-air
incident.
Due to errors on the part trainee Air Traffic Controller Hideki Hachitani and his mentor,
Yasuko Momii, Japan Airlines Flight 907 experienced a terrifying near-miss with Flight 958.
Thankfully, disaster was averted by quick-thinking and evasive action on the part of the pilots.
This, however, is not always the case.
More often, when mid-air collisions caused by ATC errors do occur, it’s with far more
tragic results.
In 1997, a German Air Force plane collided with a United States Air Force plane off the
coast of Namibia, killing thirty-three people.
This came as a result of ATC being unaware of the German plane’s presence in the airspace.
A similar issue occurred with a helicopter and a small private plane over the Hudson
River, New Jersey, in 2009.
Nine people were killed.
And in 2002, two commercial planes collided over Überlingen in Southern Germany, killing
seventy-one.
However, tragedies occurring due to ATC errors are not limited to mid-air collisions.
Runway collisions are often equally dangerous.
In more fortunate situations, we find examples like the 2005 Logan Airport runway incursion,
or the 2007 San Francisco Airport Runway Incursion.
In both cases, Air Traffic Control errors lead to extremely risky near-misses between
two planes that resulted in airport property damage.
But, like the mid-air collisions, people don’t always get off so easy.
In the infamous 1991 Los Angeles Airport Disaster, an Air Traffic Controller distracted by some
abnormalities caused two commercial planes to collide while landing in Los Angeles International
Airport.
Thirty-five people were killed in the process.
Air Traffic Control have some of the hardest jobs in the world.
Without them, national and international travel as we experience it today simply wouldn’t
be possible.
They do their jobs in spite of brutal hours, antiquated technology, and some of the most
stressful situations known to man.
Are they the peak of organization?
As we’ve learned in this video, absolutely not.
However, the fact that they’re able to operate this system at this scale – getting 44,000
flights to their destination every single day – Is an incredible feat of modern engineering.
The next time you’re on a flight, eating a gross in-flight meal and drinking some complementary
alcohol, spare a thought for the ATC.
If you think flying is stressful already, then you probably couldn’t do their job,
either.
Now we’ve got a tough job for you - picking which episode of The Infographics Show to
watch next!
Both are great videos that you’re going to love so it’s a hard decision but we know
you can handle it.