Spending time with our ATC cousins

I only occasionally get to spend time with the ATC community but last week offered one of those chances. My co-facilitator in Jakarta was Tim Abberton, a very experienced "airservices" ATC'er and safety guru and at least half the course were members of the Indonesian DGCA's Directorate of Air Navigation. The combined course was an excellent opportunity for the airport and air navigation worlds to work together as well as compare and contrast their approaches to similar problems. The Indonesian airport/ATC environment is somewhat different to Australia's. They have more towers, three Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP) including the government and most importantly, at many of its larger airports, the airport operator and the local ANSP are the same organisation either PT Angkasa Pura I, PT Angkasa Pura II or the DGCA itself.

The fence between airport & ATC in Australia can be hard to scale - some locations appear to coordinate better than others. I often wonder what it would be like if airports had to operate their own tower. It would definitely create a tighter operation but I am fully aware of the economies of scale achievable with a single ANSP.

Anyway, thinking ATC reminded me of this hilarious youtube clip (its really only audio) of a New York Ground Controller having a pretty bad day.

Header image: Media Design and Media Publishing (via Pixabay)