Air Traffic Control

Have you ever looked up what jobs are the most stressful? Well, if you have you probably saw Air Traffic Control (ATC) near the top of every list. One of the things that makes this job stressful is the fact that they must keep accountability of a lot of moving parts and one small mistake could cost the lives of hundreds of people. It is for this reason that ATC is split up into a few different entities so that all the responsibility is not just put on one person or group of people. The two that we will focus on are the Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) and the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON).

                                                    


ATCT mostly deals with all the ground traffic, this includes movement to the gates, movement on the taxiways, and aircraft taking off or landing. TRACON deals with their assigned airspace and all aircraft that are in it, this includes when they enter and leave the airspace. TRACON’s assigned airspace could include multiple airports, for this reason, it is important that TRACON and ATCT keep close communication with each other. ATCT can inform TRACON when aircraft are taking off and TRACON can inform ATCT when aircraft are getting close before landing. Although each of the ATC entities have different jobs, it is very important that they are able to work with each other and more importantly communicate with each other.

Copy Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. "How Air Traffic Control Works" 12 June 2001. HowStuffWorks.com. https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/air-traffic-control.htm 11 March 2022

Kenneth S. Lindsay and Francis N. Sutton. "Workload Assessment of Terminal Radar Approach Control Performance," AIAA 2019-0985. AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum. January 2019.

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