Welcome to my Nightmare

I have this recurring dream. I am watching a big airplane falling out of the sky, plowing into the ground near my house. I am standing there as the nose of this massive cargo jet impacts the ground, and I feel the rush of heat as the fuel ignites and creates a fireball that spreads out and occludes my view of the growing crater as several hundred tons of aluminum dislodge dirt and rocks as it compresses, disintegrating into the earth. When the cacophony of the impact echoes away, I am standing there with my FAA badge, my cell phone in hand calling 9-1-1, telling them that I am on the scene of a crash. I describe how he tried to turn away from something, how the airplane seemed to stall, and then just fell out of the sky.

When? That is my question. When is one of us rookies going to get two airplanes together? You see, most of us rookies in training have already had a deal, whether is has been called or not. A "deal" is when two (or more) airplanes get too close because of an error on a controller's part. But when is someone going to finally be the cause of "aluminum showers with intermittent falling bodies?"

It has already happened that someone goofed (more than just once), and disaster was averted thanks to TCAS. TCAS (Traffic and Collision Avoidance System) is the magic box in the airliners (and many other planes) that tells them someone else is too close. It has its limitations, but is mostly effective. I know it has saved a few lives in its day.

I could not even begin to explain the myriad of ins-and-outs of ATC to you non-ATC people, but there are a few rules you might want to know. First off, with certain other qualifiers, airplanes should be separated by either three miles horizontally and/or a thousand feet vertically in a terminal environment. A thousand and/or five miles in the En-Route Center environment. "Well, Controller X," you ask, "how do I know what is what?"

Let me explain it in a nutshell: Control towers control small chunks of sky right around the airports. Forget what you think you know about how the tower controls EVERYTHING, because they do not. Above and around them, guiding airplanes descending from high altitudes and climbing up, are the approach controls. Sometimes, they are in the tower building, a few floors below the tower cab. More often than not, they are located in a separate building which may be miles away from the airport. For instance, flying into San Francisco, your approach controller is actually in Sacramento. But, how do they do that? The magic of telecommunications, of course. Above about fifteen thousand feet, you are in Center territory. They control the high fliers.

Now ATC does not talk to EVERY single airplane flying around. There are airports without towers, and there are areas of the sky where pilots can fly freely, without the perceived annoyance of ATC. But for our purposes, and for simplicity's sake, we are going to talk about the regularly scheduled airline flights with which most non-aviation types are familiar.

Here is how it works. You push back from the gate. The pilots are generally talking to ground control at this point. They get instructions to the runway, and then you switch radio frequencies to the tower controller. The tower controller is the one who ensures there is no traffic landing on top of you as you get on the runway. When they say, "Cleared for takeoff," it means the runway is open for your exclusive use. Bang, zoom, you blast off. By the time you are asking what those bumping sounds are (which are the wheels locking into the fuselage), the tower controller has told the pilots, "Contact departure, good day."

The pilots call in to the departure controller, most often the radar guy, who identifies the airplane through the magic of the ATCRBS and ARTS or STARS (I'll explain later). The departure controller's job is to get the airplane up and on course. Then, once he has done that, he transfers the airplane's data to the center controller. When you hear those dings, and they say you can use portable electronic devices, your pilots are now talking to the center. That is when you will climb up to the flight levels (yeah, they tell you it is 30,000 feet, but we call it "flight level 3-0-0;" impress your pilot friends), and get your peanuts and soda.

Then it all goes in reverse, since what goes up, must come down. Center passes you to approach, who passes you to tower, and then to ground.

I got a little sidetracked, though. If you REALLY want to know what an air traffic controller needs to know, off hand, at ANY given moment, try this link:

http://www2.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/ATC/

This little gem, FAA Order 7110.65S, is our Bible. It is roughly the size of a dictionary, and contains all the rules we use. We need to have these rules in our heads, like doctors and anatomy. But, this only scratches the surface of EVERYTHING we need to know right away. We don't have the luxury of time to flip through this tome when a situation occurs, asking ourselves, "How do I do that again?" We gotta know it, RIGHT THEN.

And they are putting high school kids to work here. No kidding. Check out this link if you don't believe me. Jay Leno was joking about it, too.

http://www.gadling.com/2008/07/23/air-traffic-control-in-crisis-federal-aviation-administration-l/

More later. Feel free to email me. I will be happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

controllerx@gmail.com

Happy flying. Try first class because the drinks are free before takeoff. You might want a couple.