1) What about you? Do you think that you could handle the kind of stress that air traffic controllers face on the job? Why or why not?

No, I don’t think I would be able to handle the stress of being an air traffic controller. After reading the case study, I understood just how much pressure and responsibility that is put on their shoulders. According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), on an average day, controllers handle 87,000 flights. That’s a couple million people’s lives in my hands on any given day and if I make any kind of small mistake, 400 people could lose their lives just like that. On the last case study I was asked if I would want to manage an IKEA store because I didn’t think I could handle watching over all of the employees, so I definitely wouldn’t be able to or want to handle millions of people’s lives.

2) In your opinion, which causes of work stress, or organizational stressors, are likely to be among the most common experienced by air traffic controllers? Explain your reasoning.

I would say that Task Demands are the most common stressors experienced by air traffic controllers. I say this because they have such a highly demanding job which depends upon high levels of responsibility, quick decisions, and critical decisions. On the job, air traffic controllers have to make decisions quickly while realizing that the wrong one may endanger, or even end, the lives of hundreds and thousands of people.

3) Controller Pete Rodgers says that any gathering of air traffic controllers is ‘almost like a mini convention of Type A personalities.” Does this assessment surprise you or make sense to you? In what ways is it perhaps a good thing? A not-so-good thing?

This makes a lot of sense to me. Even if Pete Rogers hadn’t said it, I would have already assumed that air traffic controllers have Type A personalities