Ethan Addess is an air traffic control specialist at Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center in Miami, Florida
During peak travel times, it can be 20 to 25 planes at once. It takes years of training to learn to keep all of the planes in your sector in order. But the number of planes you’re supervising varies, based on time of the day, day of the week, and time of the year. During off-peak hours, late at night, we’re talking five to ten.
It’s — you guessed it — the weather. Sometimes it cooperates, sometimes it doesn’t, and obviously we can’t control it. When there’s bad weather — thunderstorms, low clouds, low visibility on the ground — we need to provide extra spacing between planes in the sky so when they get to their destination, they can land safely. If a thunderstorm develops over the airport or one of the routes in, say, over the north arrival corridor, we’ll reroute it to approach the destination from a different direction, say from the west or the east. If we have to hold the aircraft, we usually do it when they’re still many miles out so they can plan.
Aside from training on regular operations, we also consistently train for emergencies: equipment malfunction, medical situations onboard aircraft. We hope there won’t be any problems, but with so many aircraft, so much weather variance, and billions of passengers annually around the globe, something will happen at some point across the skies — statistically, there’s just no way to avoid it. It isn’t common, though, and I know controllers who go their whole careers without handling an unusual situation. The key to the training is knowing how to handle one if and when it occurs.
Not really. I was once working an early morning shift when an aircraft flying to the Bahamas suddenly radioed that they’re declaring an emergency because there’s smoke in the cockpit, and they need to land as soon as possible. Now, getting an aircraft from 27,000 feet in the sky down to the ground is not as easy as just letting it descend and land — there are other planes in the air, airspace between our airport and the destination, and other controllers who are working those aircraft and airspaces. An emergency aircraft has highest priority, but we don’t compromise anyone else’s safety, so I had to coordinate with the other controllers. My partner talked to the pilot for more information while I notified the other controllers and my supervisor. This took, at most, 30 seconds. Meanwhile, baruch Hashem, the pilot was able to fix the issue. They continued on to their original destination without stopping, and we went back to our normal business. Looking back, I can say I was never scared, never wavered, and never doubted myself — and that’s really important. In this job, you don’t have time to think about what’s going on or to panic, you just have to do it instinctually.
Create a free account to keep reading.
