Air traffic control: a world-class juggling act case exercise
Air traffic controllers have one of the most stressful jobs in the world. They are responsible for the lives of thousands of passengers who fly every day in and out of the worlds airports. Over the last 15 years, the number of planes in the sky has doubled, leading to congestion at many airports and putting air traffic controllers under increasing pressure. The controllers battle to maintain separation standards that set the distance between planes as they land and take off. Sheer volume pushes the air traffic controllers skills to limit. Jim Courtney, an air traffic controller at LaGuardia Airport in New York, says: there are half a dozen moments of sheer terror in each year when you did something else for a living.
New York – the worlds busiest airspace
The busiest airspace in the world is above New York. Around 7500 planes arrive and depart each day at new yorks three airports, John F. Kennedy , LaGuardia and Newark. The three airports form a triangle around Newyork and are just 15 miles from each other. This requires careful coordination of traffic patterns, approach and take-off routes, using predetermined corridors in the sky to keep the planes away from each others. If the wind changes, all three airports work together to change the flight paths.
Sophisticated technology fitted to most of the bigger planes creates a safety zone around the aircaraft so that when two aircrafts get near to each other their computers negotiate which is going to take acation to avoid the other and then alert the pilot who changes course. Smaller aircraft, without radar, rely upon vision and the notion of ‘little plane big sky’.
During the passage into or out of an airport, each plane will pass through the hands of about eight different controllers. The airspace is divided into sectors