The renowned safety of air transport is dependent on three factors. These are the many safety and redundant systems built into modern passenger aircraft, the rigorous training and monitoring accorded pilots, and the multitasking skill of air traffic controllers (ATCs). Not surprisingly, therefore, ATC salary scales are very attractive early on for those with the right qualifications. Across the profession as a whole, pay scales range from $21,000 to $175,000, inclusive of base pay, overtime, bonuses, profit-sharing, and commissions (PayScale 1). Although bonuses, etc. may not apply at the Federal Aviation Administration, the single biggest employer of ATC’s, pay scales are the most lucrative at from $45,000 to the maximum of the industry range.
Other Career Considerations
An ATC is not a purely civilian career. The Air Force, Navy, and Army all hire ATC’s for their airbases. So do the Department of Defense for early warning and airborne intruder facilities. Since military pay ranges from $21,000 to $85,000 (and that excludes money-saving perks such as base housing), earnings can be satisfactory for one who wants to do his patriotic duty and see the world besides.
Air traffic control is convivial work and congenial for those who grew up in an age of intelligent electronic gaming. Nearly two-thirds have been on the job less than ten years. Since FAA qualification requirements are fairly modest – a four-year college degree or three years in a medium-responsibility position, attendance at the Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative (AT-CTI) program offered in no fewer than 31 sanctioned schools around the country, and a 12-week entry-level training program – this means that leisure and off-work interests are likely to be the same for men in their twenties and early thirties. On the other hand, the reason for such a young occupational profile is that the job does get very stressful.
The high turnover rate and perennially increasing air traffic mean there are always openings, notably at the country’s busiest airports: New York’s John F. Kennedy, La Guardia, Newark; Baltimore/Washington International, Ronald Reagan, Dulles, Chicago/O’Hare, and Seattle. As it happens, these are the same air transport hubs that offer the most attractive entry-level pay.
Applications of Probability
Collision Algorithms
An air traffic control system comprises not only the controllers themselves but also the interconnected equipment of radar that tracks aircraft between airports, short-millimeter ground radar for managing those on the ground and moving through the runways, guiding incoming and departing flights through safe pathways and with proper intervals between aircraft, instrument landing systems that guide aircraft at night and during low-visibility weather conditions. Through all these, ATCs must pursue efficiency and minimize delays.
Setting aside the less urgent concerns of ground or runway traffic control, the real priority of the entire ATC system is that of preventing mid-air collisions when aircraft are moving at variable heights and speeds of from 110 miles per hour (for single-engine, propeller-driven private aircraft) to supersonic speeds (in the case of multi-engine jumbo jet aircraft). Radar alone is not enough since this gives the only lateral distance from the airport. An ATC must be able to separate two aircraft five miles out but at different altitudes. This is the job of height-finder radar, a different piece of equipment altogether.
The data inputs from both radar types must be integrated on the main display of the controller, appended to the aircraft data block, and showing as well the result of another piece of radio equipment that continuously interrogates an onboard IFF/identity module for the aircraft. The mental strain comes from tracking multiple incoming and outgoing data blocks on a one-dimensional video display unit while envisioning three-dimensional space in the airspace surrounding each aircraft. To help somewhat with this task, full-automated ATC systems now include rudimentary algorithms that flash a collision alert if aircraft continue at the same speed and altitude.
Advanced Applications of Probability
New probability analysis is needed to improve visualization because uncertainty increases as a function of ever-increasing travel rates, delays caused by anti-terrorism measures, and equally unpredictable adverse weather. Hughes (1) reports that the European Commission recently commissioned the Hybridge project precisely to reduce uncertainty in air traffic control. One important element of the project was the involvement of systems analysts, mathematicians and electronics engineers to build artificial intelligence based on random (or stochastic) assumptions.
The colossal systems needed to run continuously updated stock markets and automated teller machine networks already work on such a platform: the assumption that the next situational or environmental state is not purely determined by preceding states and events. A second element involves coding much faster Monte Carlo simulations to predict aircraft collisions. This phase makes use of the inherent property of such simulations of testing multiple scenarios that take essentially-random events into account.
To make this task more manageable and avoid programming infinite random events, the speeded-up Monte Carlo simulations need only take into account all empirically-proven aircraft behavior that preceded a collision or near-miss. Yet a third element is the very same kind of “congestion management” that banks constantly strive to avoid in their ATM systems. To these three phases, planned for deployment in 2015, may be added work being separately undertaken to combine fuzzy logic and conventional signal detection theory into “fuzzy SDT” that would better predict aircraft collisions (Masalonis & Parasuraman 1046).
References
Hughes, David. “Doing the Math on ATC.” Aviation Week & Space Technology., 163 (2005) 3.
Masalonis, Anthony & Raja Parasuraman. “Fuzzy signal detection theory: analysis of human and machine performance in air traffic control, and analytic considerations.” Ergonomics 46 (11) 2003: 1045- 74.
PayScale Inc. “Salary Snapshot for Air Traffic Controller Jobs.” PayScale. 2010. Web.