ATC Radar Systems

ATC's are under a lot of pressure. They have a lot of contacts on their radar screen to keep track of. Their environment should be distraction free and they should be focused on their screen.

Ask yourself this, "How long can you stare at a black screen with a bunch of green dots with a little ID tag and not get bored?"

They get paid lots of money and they have to be on top of their game at all times communicating with the different aircraft. There are a lot of ATC's in that control room but they are still maintaining several contacts each.

A distraction might involve having an argument with their wife earlier that day or some idiot almost causing a wreck with them on the way to work. They should be thick skinned to those kinds of things but they are only human.

I worked in Combat Information Center on Naval Ships. Part of my job was to watch air search and surface search radars. We also supplied the Air Intercept Controllers for the fighter planes. That job used to be done by ATC's, however to many had trouble with that role because it was in direct conflict for what they were trained for.

Years ago I was demonstrating the Cossor Raytheon Compass 9000 Secondary Surveillance Radar System at an 'open day'.

I was going through my spiel when this little kid says..

'Mister, what can you do if two planes are going to crash into each other?'

....errrr. 'We can warn them to take evasive action'

'Yeh, but what can you do...?'

Out of the mouths of kids eh..... ?

Del

I onced watched a tv movie about an mid-air collision that was investigated. They found that most air traffic control systems were using old technology and the pace of upgrading was proceeding very slowly. I'm not sure if that's true but it sure explains how mid-airs can happen.

With all the computing power and programming geniuses around, you'd think that it would be easy to design an automated air traffic control system. If we want humans to be around, then just have the system make a recommendation and the human can decide if he wants it or not.

Or as Guest OP said, have the system warn the controller of an error. The only potential problem I can see with that is that if multiple errors or potential collisions are impending, they can easily swamp the poor guy.

If we want humans to stay out of it, then let the system give instruction to the pilots directly (or to the planes for that matter). The human will be there just to talk to the pilot if necessary (how're you doin' today?).

First to be clarified is this ATC control system have radar control or not .

In some small airport, there are not equiped with ATC radar and the controller is work only at ADC / tower. Nornally ATC controller works with strip line procedure, to queue the aircraft for take off and landing and it is safe .

Some near collision hapen because one of the commuter is not report to ATC controller, so the ATC controller not put this commuter in strip line

If the ATC control system equiped with radar ( Approach control ) , normally the radar processing included the anti collision processing which is asked in ICAO regulation to warn the controller if the collision will hapen by blip on screen and audible alarm

Yes, the radars have proximity warnings. Additionally most commuter aircraft also have collision avoidance systems. All commuter aircraft are equipped with transponders. The transponder provides secondary radar returns to the air traffic controller. The secondary return provides the "tag" that displays the aircraft's tail number/call sign and the altitude readout. Due to the fact these were commuter aircraft they were most likely flying under instrument flight rules (IFR). Also, due to the location Ft. Wayne they were most likely being tracked on two separate radars. The center radar and the approach control radar. Three possible causes: 1. Pilot didn't properly following controllers instructions. 2. Improper hand-off from center controller to approach controller or tower. 3. Equipment failure, one of the aircraft transponders failed. 4. Controller distraction as stated in an earlier posting. An "incident" such as this will be investigated by the NTSB. During the investigation audio tapes will be played back, copies will be made and transcripts will be generated. Also the radar tracks will be played back with comparisons to the audio, time lines will be developed off the time code imbedded on the audio and video tapes.