From take-off to an immensely repetitive safety demonstration, to an in-flight snack and then landing. That is how we, as passengers, or even flight crew, might view our experience with air travel. We know that the pilots must be incredibly skilled, and we know that they need extensive training to be able to traverse the friendly skies. But what about what happens on the ground? What about the other people who are incredibly skilled and well trained that keep us safe at 36,000 feet?
Air Traffic Control might seem to us like a radio-only traffic cop, but their job is deeply important and is incredibly multifaceted. Air traffic controllers manage take-off, including giving clearance to aircraft to move from the gate to the runway and then when it is safe for the aircraft to take off. They manage everything enroute, including passing the aircraft off to different controllers as the plane passes from region to region. They manage decent, instructing pilots of safe routes and maintaining separation. But finally, they manage the approach so the pilot can line up with the runway and then give final clearance to taxi and pull up to a specific gate.
Canadian Air traffic controllers manage around 18 million kilometers of Canadian and Oceanic Air space. It is a job that is done 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is done sometimes from a control tower looking out at an expansive airport or on a radar screen from a control center.
There are two different areas an air traffic controller might work in. Tower controllers manage the take-off and landing of aircraft and give instructions to the pilot to manage safety and keep an orderly flow of traffic. NAV Canada operates 42 control towers across the country ranging from large international airports like Vancouver to small training airports like Villeneuve. However, there are also Area Control Centers that view air traffic from radar screens and communication systems that track flights in their regions and issue instructions to pilots. They ensure aircraft are kept at a safe distance and they provide any other important or pertinent information that the pilot may require.
There are only 7 Area Control Centers in Canada, and they are located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Moncton and Gander. The Edmonton Area Control Center covers the largest land mass, it encompasses all of Alberta, northern parts of B.C. and Saskatchewan and all the Territories. It makes the Flight Information Region of Edmonton incredibly large on a global scale. Gander also controls a great deal of North Atlantic Air space, bordering with Shanwick Oceanic Control Area (OCA) which is part of the United Kingdom, the Reykjavik OCA out of Iceland, the New York OCA from the U.S. and the Santa Maria OCA from Portugal.
One may think that flying is just cramped leg room and in-flight pretzels, but the effort and information passed along from one area to another ensures that we, the passengers, remain safe and blissfully ignorant to the inner workings of air traffic control.
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