One year after the Haneda accident…A series of accidents has brought the “work of air traffic controllers” into the spotlight

Brain at full speed, full concentration at peak times.”

On January 29, a U.S. military helicopter and a small airliner collided in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. All 64 passengers and crew on board the aircraft and three U.S. soldiers were killed in the catastrophe, which CBS News reported at the time of the accident as “being handled by one air traffic controller when it should have been handled by two. Although the cause of the accident will be left to future investigations, such as analysis of the black box, the accident has brought renewed attention to the existence of air traffic controllers.

However, while pilots and cabin attendants are well known in the airline industry, the work of air traffic controllers is not widely known. Picture them atop a glass tower in an airport, watching a monitor, communicating with pilots, giving them instructions and permission for takeoffs and landings, and so on. Mr. Towerman, a former air traffic controller and author of “Air Traffic Control: Overcrowded Airports Alert,” describes the work of air traffic controllers as follows.

At Haneda and Narita, we communicate with dozens of pilots in the air and on the ground to ensure efficient and smooth takeoffs and landings. Of course, maintaining the safety of the runways and taxiways is a prerequisite. Our brains are fully occupied and we are aware of everything that is going on.

I rotate between being in charge of the runway, ground, and coordination, taking breaks every 40 to 50 minutes or so. During peak hours, I concentrate on my work with all my attention. When I am not working at my desk, I sometimes glance at my watch to see when the work is finished, but at the site, I don’t even have time for that, and time flies by in a blink of an eye.

He says that predicting and making moves based on the movements of the aircraft he is in charge of and the information on future operations is similar to the feeling he gets when he plays chess. Air traffic controllers endure stress while performing complex and difficult tasks without hesitation. Not only at major airports with heavy traffic, but also at regional airports, there are always situations where you can’t relax.

Some people find it enjoyable, others find the pressure severe, and so on. Some air traffic controllers are so relieved to get home that they fall asleep at the door, and the next thing you know, it’s midnight. However, the exhilarating feeling of being released after working as a team to get through a tough situation and finish the job is something I have only experienced in that job.

Air traffic controllers are national civil servants.

On-site work for air traffic controllers is done in shifts, and at airports that operate 24 hours a day, working hours vary from the early shift to the late shift to the night shift.

At the time I was working at the airport, I rarely had to work overtime, and I was paid well. On the other hand, the working hours are irregular and I cannot take time off according to the calendar. I had to devise my personal life according to my shift, such as going to bed early the day before an early morning shift and preserving my energy during the day on night shift days.

In order to recover my brain, which was exhausted from using my concentration, I would dare to take the stairs down the control tower during breaks to get some light exercise, or I would change my mood by immersing myself in a smartphone game. I think everyone is preparing for this by managing themselves in a balanced manner so that when they return to work, they can make split-second decisions and give instructions calmly.

Pilots are highly paid professionals, earning over 20 million yen for each airline they work for. However, air traffic controllers are national civil servants of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Naturally, their salaries are not as high as those of pilots. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, the average annual salary for “communications equipment operators,” a job classification to which air traffic controllers belong, is around 5.5 million yen, according to the National Personnel Authority’s national civil service salary scale.

If you work in central Tokyo or Osaka, you receive a regional allowance, and in Hokkaido and other areas, a cold-weather allowance, and an air traffic control allowance of 240 yen or more per day, depending on the office and the nature of the work.

The overtime allowance is particularly significant, and is paid not only for overtime work, but also for work on holidays and at night, etc. If your night shift falls on a day that falls on a national holiday, such as GW, you can earn almost 1.5 times the daily allowance for several days.

An interesting story about air traffic controllers is that they tend not to get paid for holidays in order to enjoy holiday pay. No one wants to work during the year-end and New Year holidays, but air traffic controllers have been calculating and waiting since the summer or so to see if their team’s shift pattern will fall on the year-end and New Year holidays (laughs). Nevertheless, I feel that the income is low for a job that supports air traffic, which is highly important in terms of both livelihood and economy in the island nation of Japan.”

The more I hear about it, the more I think it is a very special profession. Speaking of peculiarities, it can be said that all communication with pilots is in English. Even communication with Japanese pilots at Japanese airports is conducted in English. I wonder if communicating in Japanese would cause any problems.

We communicate by radio, relying solely on our voices. Under such circumstances, English, the world’s lingua franca, is the most suitable language for reliable communication.

At some airports in China, Chinese pilots and air traffic controllers communicate with each other in Chinese. A Japanese pilot told me that he felt uneasy because he could not understand the instructions given by the controller, or even whether the instructions were given to the pilot or to the driver of the ground vehicle other than the pilot. In fact, they may be giving instructions to the plane right next to them to come toward them.

It is not advisable to communicate in Japanese just because it is a Japanese airport and cause anxiety and suspicion to pilots who do not understand Japanese, and it is also important for air traffic controllers that third-party pilots understand what they are communicating. Being able to point out a pilot’s misdirection is a great help in preventing mistakes, such as when a pilot is waiting for takeoff and is entering the runway, but ATC mistakenly gives the pilot permission to land.”

Homonyms peculiar to the Japanese language are also unsuitable for communication. The Japanese words “tai-ki” and “kouka” can be translated as “standby” and “atmosphere,” respectively, and “kouka” can be translated as “descent” and “effect,” which can lead to momentary confusion in conversation. The Japanese language, with its ambiguity in interpretation, does not seem to be suitable for handling a large number of takeoffs and landings.

It seems to me that English simply has shorter speech sounds. Let’s say you communicate ‘American 111, wind 360 at 10 runway36 cleared for take off’ in an example sentence of takeoff clearance. If we were to create a standardized Japanese ATC instruction, it would be something like, “American Airlines Flight 111, wind 360 degrees (true north wind), wind speed 10 knots, runway 36 cleared for takeoff.

The sense is that when uttered at an appropriate speed that can be understood, English takes about half the time of Japanese. At a large airport, the same phrase is used for hundreds of flights in a day, and if you include the pilot’s recitation, it is even double. If they were told to do it all in Japanese, there would be a huge panic.

And because it is a Japanese airline, the pilots are not necessarily Japanese, and it is like adding another weight to an already difficult job, such as having to use both Japanese and English for each airline.

How to clear up “misunderstandings” between air traffic controllers and pilots

Haneda is a huge terminal with four runways and 1,300 takeoffs and landings per day, with an overcrowded schedule of 90 slots per hour. Inbound flights are booming, and the number of flights to and from regional airports is expected to increase. Safe, efficient, and complex demands will be placed on air traffic controllers and pilots. Mr. Towerman points out the importance of close communication between pilots and air traffic controllers.

I’ve never flown an airplane, and the pilot has never done the job of an air traffic controller, so there is always a lack of understanding between the two. For example, there are always incidents that occur as a result of following the air traffic controller’s instructions, where the wingtips of the plane and the wingtip hit each other.

It is only my imagination, but I feel that some pilots assume that air traffic controllers even check the safety of the wingtips and give instructions. This is not to say that air traffic controllers do not look at all, but it is physically impossible for them to look from a distant control tower to the very edge of whether the wingtip will hit or not, as they may be in a blind spot.

The Civil Aeronautics Law stipulates a clause called the pilot’s duty to look out, and it is the operator’s responsibility to prevent wingtip contact and rear-end collisions from directly behind.”

But pilots have a lot to learn as pilots. If there is anything that can be done to promote understanding between the two, Towerman points out, it is to increase contact between air traffic controllers and pilots.

It’s all about getting to know each other’s job through a steady exchange of ideas,” he said. It is not as easy or real-time as a social networking service. The system is not as easy or real-time as a social networking site. I feel strongly that there needs to be a place for an online community that operates only among pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics, and ground crews.

Today, the safety of the skies is protected by the tireless efforts of air traffic controllers.

Air Traffic Control: Overcrowded Airports Warn” by Towerman (KAWADE Yume Shinsho)