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As can be seen from the picture above of the apron at Terminal 1, slow taxiing or static aircraft fitted with radio communication are fairly easy to marshal. But once airborne the safety of each jetliner depends on its own inviolate "box" of air that - although capable of being temporarily stacked over a destination airport - is incapable of standing still or staying in the sky forever - unlike a train waiting at a red signal!
Indeed, although the pioneers of aviation in the decade after the Wright Brother's first flight often used railway lines to navigate, this practice led to at least one mid air collision when two pilots followed the same line at the same altitude from opposite directions.
As a result Britain - and most of the developed World - has air traffic control with different altitudes and locations reserved for different kinds of aircraft. Much British airspace is given to military traffic and other lower levels - within the reach of open cockpit and unpressurised general aviation - are controlled from regional and local airports.
Above this however, pressurised commercial jets can often be seen from the ground - either directly or as a dot at the end of long white contrails - as they make their way along air corridors between internationally recognised beacons. And now, it has been drawn to my attention, there is a website to make sense of these movements: http://www.radarvirtuel.com/
This allows the viewer to locate their own location (or anywhere else in
the World) click on the nearest aeroplane symbol and gain information
about it.
For example, as I write these words, I notice that a British Airways
Boeing 767 - G-BNWT - en route from London Heathrow to Baltimore has
just passed over Stroud and is heading toward Cinderford at 27 949'.
Have a look, it's fun!
As it happened, the same batch of emails also brought a request from Mr
V.M. England of Gloucestershire who wonders if anyone reading this
remembers his father RAF Squadron Leader P.F. England and his role in
setting up Britain's air traffic control? Unfortunately the Squadron
Leader is no longer with us and his son can find no documentation to
back up his involvement, but if you do know anything, please
email me.
VOLCANIC ASH AT 10 O'CLOCK
The back story behind Terminal 1 of Britain's newest airport is that it was built for flights diverted due to terrorism, bad weather or mechanical problems, although in 2010 volcanic ash was added to that list . In an abridged version of an article published that year, journalist James Delingpole tried his hand at air traffic control:
At Heathrow Airport it's a bright, cloudless day and and behind a bank of screens in a control room with 360 degree views of all the hangars, the five terminals and, of course, both runways. I'm directing the hapless passengers aboard a succession of Boeing 747s, 777s and Airbus A340s.
"Speedbird 62 taxiway Alpha hold at A3 short of Runway 27R"
That's a British Airways 747 taxiing down to its holding station.
"Shamrock 12 Yankee contact London Control Frequency 120.55"
Which translates as me handing the Aer Lingus that has just taken off and is now at 3 000 feet to the regional traffic controller at Swanwick in Hampshire.
"Springbok 224 cleared for take-off runway 27R surface wind 270 three knots."
It's all clear for a South African Airlines Airbus 340 to take off."Midland 2PK cleared for take-off runway 27R surface wind 270 five knots"
That's the order for the BMI flight to take off after the South African Airways flight.
It might sound as if I'm in total control of the airport traffic, but in reality I've already failed. If I let a medium sized aircraft like the BMI A319 take off after a large one like the SAA, it will get caught in the vortex wake and be dangerously destabilised. To make it safe I've got to wait an extra minute. What I should have done is put it behind the Aer Lingus and it wouldn't have been a problem.
And I can't let the BA flight take off after the BMI flight, because they are taking the same exit path and the BA's faster than the BMI, which means I've got to wait even longer....
My supervisor, Jon Proudlove - an air traffic controller (Atco) of 30 years experience and general manager of the Heathrow ATC operation - is on my case. "What's the problem?" he says, "We've had four airlines just calling in asking why their traffic is moving so slowly."
"Tricky winds," I tell him, which is the standard excuse I've been primed with - even though, in truth, my weather screen tells me flying conditions are nigh-on perfect. At least they were 30 seconds ago. But now what's this? Sleet is lashing down on the runway, getting heavier as the clouds darken. Visibility is only half what it was and it's worsening by the second. Where once there were nearly five square miles of airport clearly in view, there's now nothing but a thick, grey fog. But still all those planes are on the taxiways, some lining up for take-off on the runway, all of them dependent on my commands for a safe departure.
The pressure is horrendous: with one aircraft taking off or landing every 70 or 80 seconds, and five or six more on the taxiway preparing to join them, it means that every ten seconds I'm having to issue a new instruction. Imagine if something really bad were to happen: an aircraft crash-landing short of the runway, as one did in January 2008; or an IRA mortar attack, as happened on three separate days in March 1994; or a threatened Al-Qaeda surface-to-air missile attack ( 2003 ); or a terrorist bomb like the one that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to JFK over Lockerbie in 1988. I lean across to my supervisor and ask him what the worst of all worst-case scenarios might be. Proudlove shrugs his shoulders, so I suggest one myself.
"Unlikely," says Proudlove, explaining that a terrorist would find it hard to smuggle more than a tiny amount of explosives onto an aircraft, making it much more likely he'd want to blow it up for maximum effect when it was at high altitude and full of fuel -definitely not while it was landing.
All right. What was his personal nightmare scenario? Proudfoot racks his brain for a moment. he can't think of one. "I'd like to think there was nothing that would be beyond the capabilities of my unit," he says, in that calm, measured and mildly cocksure voice so many air-traffic controllers have.
They even have a "virtual contingent facility" in the same building where I'm being trained. This would take over if for any reason the control tower was taken out of action. Even though it's a short bus ride away and has no windows, this emergency centre could keep the airport running.
As I pull my headphones across my perspiring brow, hands still trembling slightly from the panic and anxiety of just ten minutes on the air-traffic control simulator, Proudlove casts me a look he must have given all too often over the years to candidates for possibly the World's most demanding job. It's a look that says "It takes a special breed to be an air-traffic controller. And you, my friend, do not have it..."
NATS did not independently take the decision to ground flights after the recent volcanic eruption. it was simply following procedure. And even at the height of the volcano ban, the Atcos turned up for work as usual.
"We carried on as normal because we had no idea how long the problem was going to last," says Jonathan Astill, head of operations at NATS Prestwick. "It was very odd. Even in the dead of night, there's normally no period of more than ten minutes when there's nothing on the radar screens. Yet here we were in the middle of the day with our screens empty. I can't say I found it relaxing, because I was rushed off my feet preparing for when the ash cleared. But some of our controllers found the experience less than stimulating.
Besides being the World's third busiest airport ( after Atlanta and Beijing ) with more than 5.3 million passengers per month, Heathrow is the most congested, having just two runways to play with, whereas its international rivals all have at least three. It should be the perfect place, you might imagine, to experience at first-hand all the clichés that have become so familiar from films such as Airport 77, Airplane and United 93: the knuckle gnawing tension, the endless cups of coffee, the grizzled controller talking down the novice pilot who has never flown a jumbo jet before. In Pushing Tin, with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, all air-traffic controllers were stressed out, sped to work on Harley Davidsons and sweated for hours and ate doughnuts to recover...
"Yes, people have a funny idea of how glamorous and exciting our job is" says Adrian Dolan, 31 who has been an Atco at Heathrow for nearly a decade.
And while it's true that disasters almost never happen in the tightly regulated World of air-traffic control, the consequences when mistakes are made can be truly horrendous. Probably the worst was the mid air collision over Uberlingen in Germany in 2002 between a cargo jet and a plane full of Russian schoolchildren. In the subsequent inquiry, a Swiss Atco, Peter Neilsen, was found partly to blame, having mistakenly ordered the pilots to perform the opposite of the evasive action they were ordered to take by their plane's in-built traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS). Two years later, Nielsen paid with his life for the error - murdered on his doorstep by a grieving Russian relative of three victims.
Nothing remotely similar has ever happened over British airspace, whose Atcos are generally recognised as the best trained and most effective in the World. ("Oddly enough, probably the worst aren't the Spanish or the French but the Americans" claims a former pilot, "They all talk like characters in that Seventies CB radio movie Convoy.") And among the reasons for this is the rigorous vetting procedure, which weeds out 97 per cent of applicants - and that's before the medical tests and security vetting. ("We don't want to be wasting our time with people who can't make the grade," says one Atco supervisor. )
The minimum academic requirements aren't high: a degree is preferred but five GCSEs including English and maths will do. More important, perhaps, are the physical and mental attributes: no psychiatric conditions, no fondness for recreational drugs, good eyesight, hearing and general health, plus an "appropriate aptitude" which is hard to define but which the NATS College of Air Traffic Control in Bournemouth Airport is good at spotting.
"It's less about qualifications and about more than interests, " says Proudlove. " A lot of candidates already have flying licences, for example. And they're good at effective decision making in pressured situations; good at being adaptable when a plan needs refinement. Numeracy helps, too It's extremely unlikely nowadays ina radar environment that you'll have to work out time, distance, and speed in your head. But it does show you have the right sort of brain".
Once they've been accepted, candidates have eleven months intensive training in everything from meteorology, navigation, and the various acronyms of the trade ( reputed to be as many as 6 000 ) plus every aspect of air law and procedure. After this they go for final "validation training" at the unit where they are going to work - perhaps Swanwick and Prestwick, perhaps at any number of airports, the toughest being Heathrow.
"You always know at college when the head of training from Heathrow is coming to visit. That's the day when all the boys put on their shirts and ties and the girls put on their best dresses. Yes, we do think that Heathrow is the best job to get. There's no view in the World to match the one you get from the control tower, with the Gherkin and the London Eye and Canary Wharf all visible to the east and Windsor Castle to the west" says Dolan.
The pay is very competitive. Salary on completing training starts at £ 29 443; within thre years of becoming an Atco your pay rises to a minimum £42 061; and at places like Swanwick and Heathrow you c earn upwards of £ 90 000. It's even better in Spain, where it's reported controllers can earn as much as £25 000.
It's bad enough that there is only one runway for taking off and one for landing ( meaning there's nothing spare for emergencies) but more difficult still is the manoeuvring between hangars. That's why at Heathrow, on any work shift, there's only one controller in charge of each runway ( one mostly doing take-offs, one landings ) but three controllers and another planner dealing with ground movement. But the ones in charge of the runways, of course, have the greatest responsibility.
There are three main screens an Atco has to look at: the aerodrome traffic monitor ( the local radar that shows air-traffic movements within a 30-mile radius of the airport, including height, position and direction of the aircraft), the advanced surface movement guidance control system ( the radar that shows you where the planes are on the ground - for when it's foggy and you can't see out of the control tower ); and, most importantly, the electronic flight progress strips screnn showing all the planes as they take off and land ( orange for inbound, blue for outbound, black for planes being towed, green for vehicles.)
Your job as an Atco is simply to manoeuvre these into position in a calm, clear voice at the rate of 1 300 take-offs and landings per day.
Where it gets hard is when things go wrong, which could happen quite without warning at any time. This could be a major international incident, like the Icelandic Volcano, or the grounding of all flights ( and forced turning back of those already in the air but not yet half way to their destination ) on 9/11. Or it could be a more common mishap, like a missed approach ( where, say, a pilot pulls out of a landing because the runway isn't clear ) or a burst tyre. Either way, suddenly the point comes where Atcos start earning their generous salary, for it requires special talents, superb training and enormous presence of mind to negotiate round potential disaster.
Dolan says, "You'll be sitting there totally relaxed chatting about Match of the Day last night and telling a Kuwaiti Airbus to turn right and contact ground, when the pilot tells you he can't because his tyres have burst. Suddenly you're thinking "The brakes are hot, and there could be leaking hydraulic fuel around them, which means getting the fire service out and puts all the other planes on different headings and levels." And then, eventually, after experiencing this massive spasm of excitement you realise you've sorted it all out and the problem's over."
Just like soldiers they find that in these situations the training kicks in so efficiently there's no time to worry.
"I remember once my wife came to visit me and everything was calm just like it is here now" says another young Atco in Prestwick, "And she tells me suddenly I stopped talking because some crisis had arisen and for the next 20 minutes I was utterly absorbed in concentration. Then when it was over I continued our conversation at exactly the point where I'd broken off - as if nothing had happened."
"There's not a single possible incident we haven't trained for," says Dolan. "We have safety committees for our safety committees. We've had 50 to 60 years in which to form contingency plans for anything that could go wrong. And the moment that any new risk is identified, we plan for that one too."
This explodes the common misconception about air-traffic controllers: that in a crisis they're flying by the seat of their pants. In fact, as former RAF trainer, commercial pilot and aviation expert David Learmount points out, even in extreme situations - such as in communication with United Airlines 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks - Atcos always maintain their cool.
"If you listen to the recordings, there's no panic there. Just puzzlement. "What's going on, Why has he gone off the radar?" It's very calm."
So calm, indeed, that your first visit to an air traffic control room can be quite disconcerting. This is my impression at Prestwick, whose controllers are responsible for 700 000 square miles of airspace, handle more than 900 000 flights a year, yet barely look as if they're working at all. I study them for a while, noting that they're all quite young - mostly in their twenties and thirties - and come in any number of shapes and sizes. The atmosphere makes me think of a mid afternoon at a student union cafe than the hub of Britain's air traffic for all northern flights between 28 000' and 66 000'.
The controllers work six days on and four days off, and are not allowed to stare at a screen for longer than 90 minutes at a go. When asked about the stress of their work, many of them deny it, saying that unlike many other jobs, as soon as they leave they can completely switch off.
"You wouldn't want it to be like a trading floor would you?" says a supervisor, noting my surprise, "It wouldn't be safe.. if someone's blood pressure were raised in a normal situation, they'd be taken off the job."
David Learmount is more forthright. "The truth is that air-traffic controllers are very boring, stable people. Nerdy anoraks. They have been chosen because if they weren't they wouldn't have been chosen for the job."
Perhaps he's being a bit harsh. Pilots are sniffy about air-traffic controllers ( "There's no magic in what they do. It's all terribly logical and simple" says Learmount) in much the same way that air-traffic controllers take a dim view of pilots ("Who'd want to be a commercial pilot? There's nothing to do. Planes fly themselves these days" says one Atco )
But there's an underlying truth in what he says. Air traffic control, when done correctly, is the very opposite of exciting.
For visitors hoping to witness nail-biting tension you see in the movies, you're liable to be gravely disappointed by the prevailing calm, competence and health-and-safety obsessed dullness. But if you're a nervous flyer, you wouldn't want it any other way.
