Air Traffic Control Entities

 

The aviation industry is a busy and highly task-saturated environment. Pilots are constantly running multiple checklists, monitoring aircraft performance, and maneuvering around hazards such as weather while operating the aircraft. Air traffic control entities help relieve some stress by controlling and directing the movement of aircraft on the ground as well as in the sky. This ensures that airports are operating as efficiently as possible while reducing the probability of an aircraft collision (FAA, n.d.) Ground control is the person that is tasked with all aircraft and vehicle movement on the apron and taxiways. Clearance works with the control centers and will ensure that your flight plan is valid and current. Tower's responsibility is to control all movement on runways and local airspace surrounding the airport, approximately 5nm (FAA, n.d.). Once you are airborne and outside of the local airspace, the tower will hand you over to an Air Route Traffic Control Center that control the air traffic for the section of airspace that they are responsible for before handing you off to a new control center's frequency.

The control tower is the home of both Ground and Tower. This allows the Ground controller to maintain visual contact with all the personnel operating on the apron and taxiways. Ground issues taxi engine start clearance, taxi instructions, and runway crossing clearance to both aircraft and flight line vehicles. The tower works with the ground controller and clearance to issue takeoff, approach, and landing clearances (Freudenrich, 2001). Tower also uses radar to sequence aircraft for landing to ensure that aircraft are not attempting to land simultaneously on the same runway.

Air Route Traffic Control personnel operate in large centralized control centers that control air traffic over a large section of the country. Each person will control a smaller section of that airspace and hand you off to the next controller, usually in the same building, if you are exiting the airspace that they are monitoring (Freudenrich, 2001).

References 

  FAA. (n.d.). Chapter 15 - Airspace. https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/phak/17_phak_ch15.pdf

Freudenrich, C. (2001, June 12). How Air Traffic Control Works. HowStuffWorks.                                                                 https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/air-traffic-control.htm