Give Me the Clearance, Clarence
May 10, 2005 — -- How many times have you been tempted to throw a shoe at the screen because a TV show or movie includes a terribly inaccurate cinematic portrayal of your own job or profession?
Dramatic scenes of doctors using the wrong instruments in an operation, lawyers filing a petition that would get them laughed out of court, electricians doing something that would be inevitably fatal … The list is endless. And when it comes to inaccurate portrayals of aviation, no one fares worse than the poor air traffic controller.
No wonder we all get confused when an actor playing a pilot spends an entire (fictional) transoceanic flight talking to the same tower controller he left hours ago, thousands of miles back at his departure airport, using a radio that has a maximum range of 300 miles!
Because most folks don't know how air traffic controllers fit into the equation of an average airline flight -- and because too many Hollywood inaccuracies over the years have introduced myths and more confusion -- a little clarification is in order.
First, there are several basic divisions of ATC involved in every flight. One is the so-called control tower staffed by men and women who handle Ground Control, Tower Control and Clearance Delivery duties for a particular airport. They work in that glass fishbowl at the top of the tower structure where they can see what's happening.
Often in the same facility (but not in the glassed-in tower cab) are the controllers who guide airplanes into and out of the airport area using radar scopes instead of binoculars. They are usually called either Approach Control or Departure Control on the radio.
For the high-altitude monitoring as you fly across the country, there are 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers such as Denver Center, Seattle Center, Fort Worth Center, etc. An ARTCC is a large, windowless building full of electronics, computers and controllers who we've all seen depicted sitting at rows of sophisticated computer-generated radar scopes and talking quietly to the pilots flying through their "sectors," and handing off those pilots to the next sector controller at the appropriate time.
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