Photo By Joshua Cox | Air traffic control (ATC) Sailors work in the NAS Pensacola ATC tower March 12, 2020....... read more read more
Subscribe
Aviators who fly in NAS Pensacola airspace must place great trust in Sailors who work in the air traffic control (ATC) tower and radar room on the base. Managing aircraft traffic is a complex endeavor directed by the well-qualified and frequently tested Sailors serving on the ground.
For air traffic controllers like Air Traffic Controlman 1st Class Aaron A. Kelly, directing aircraft with his team is business as usual on a Thursday afternoon onboard the base.
Kelly is the branch chief in the NAS Pensacola radar room. His team monitors air traffic operating under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). In case of bad weather or poor visibility, pilots use the aircraft’s instruments to navigate through the skies, and rely on the air traffic control radar room to direct routes, flight patterns and altitudes.
“There’s a radar scope that we use for our final controllers,” Kelly said. “From ten miles out to the runway, the controllers are going to control the aircraft based on their elevation and their relation to the course of the runway. They are going to tell the pilots if they are too far left, too far right, too high or too low, and they are going to give them safety advisories.”
The ATC tower is all visual, so controllers are looking out of the windows and controlling aircraft based on what the Sailors can see, Kelly said. Normally, it’s when the weather is ideal.
“Sometimes they have to stop tower operations because the weather is just too bad,” Kelly said. “You can’t control what you can’t see, so that’s when radar gets busier.”
Kelly said the ATC tower and radar room often work simultaneously to control aircraft. This is often the case when student pilots are training to operate under IFR.
On a good day like today, there are pilots who are sent to the tower and the controllers are working them in a tower pattern, while simultaneously doing radar approaches, Kelly said.
“There’s a lot of communication that has to happen to make sure we are keeping things safe,” he said.
Kelly said air traffic controllers have 12 essential positions. For each position there is a checklist of competencies controllers need to know to be able to work that position at a qualified level. The Sailors are periodically evaluated by the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization (NATOPS) program.
“Whenever they (NATOPS) come down for an inspection, they are checking our facility (readiness) and how we are operating and doing business on a daily basis.” Kelly said. “For example, they check in on our controllers and check their knowledge level whenever they are on position.”
The ATC Sailors were recently evaluated by NATOPS, and the results of the evaluation were favorable for the crew and facility.
From what we were told, the amount of training we get done here is great, Kelly said.
“We had everything the way it should have been,” Kelly said. “Our controllers felt good about it. They were all nervous at first, of course, because people were coming down to check out our facility. For a lot of the controllers, it was their first time seeing an inspection happen, but we knocked it out of the park.”
Kelly said the rigorous ATC training the Sailors perform is non-stop, and attributes the training environment onboard NAS Pensacola to the success of the facility.
Being able to train the junior Sailors coming up and helping them understand the importance of our job is probably the most rewarding part, Kelly added.
| Date Taken: | 03.12.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 03.16.2020 13:30 |
| Story ID: | 365299 |
| Location: | PENSACOLA, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 339 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Air Traffic Control Sailors Successfully Complete NATOPS Evaluations, by Joshua Cox, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
