The role of the airports control tower

BLOG

What is an airport control tower?

A control tower is a very tall tower shaped building on top of which there is a control room from where the airport traffic is directed and controlled. Its location and height are essential to see the entire area to watch.

All airports have one and, besides controlling take-offs and landings, it keeps a fluid air transit managing dozens of aircrafts at a time.

What is the most important function of the airport tower?

The airport’s Air Traffic Control Tower is an essential element within the aeronautical operation. The importance of the tower role in order to achieve a fluid and safe air transit is crucial. Therefore, no aircraft can fly without being in communication with the towers and control centres responsible for organizing air traffic so that take-offs, flights and landings take place without incidents.

The control of each flight operation is structured in such a way that along each phase, the aircraft will be within an influence area corresponding to a control centre with which it will maintain contact in order to receive relevant instructions. Thus, we find:

Flight authorization control: issues the necessary clearances for the flight plan prior to take off.
Ground control: deals with all aircraft and vehicle movements on the airport surface.
Local traffic control: coordinates the aircrafts movements on the ground, authorizing takeoffs and landings.
Approach control: authorizes and instructs aircrafts in approach with intent to land so they do it safely.
Airspace control: controls all actions within its airspace.

What is the role of the air traffic controller?

The Air Traffic Controller is the person responsible for providing the air traffic control service, ATC – Air Traffic Control, directing the aircrafts traffic in the airspace of its responsibility and airports in a fluid, safe and orderly manner, giving pilots the relevant authorisations and instructions as well as the necessary information to avoid collisions between aircrafts or obstacles in their manoeuvres.

There are different types of controller according to the sector in which they work:

Authorization Controller (DEL): responsible for giving Flight Plan authorizations to departing aircrafts.
Ground Controller (GND): responsible for directing traffic through taxiways (TWY-Taxiway), from boarding gates to the runway, to other platforms at the airport or from the runway to the parking area. In short, it controls all aircrafts’ movements on the ground.
Tower Controller (TWR): controls the runway and its intersections, authorising landings and take-offs, and controlling the visual flight rules (VFR). It operates in the space known as ATZ with a range of 5 nautical miles (9260 m) and reports adverse weather, runway works or any eventualities that may affect the operation such as bird flocks.
The Approach Controller (APP): organizes traffic leaving and arriving at one or more airports. After taking off, it transfers them to the centre controller (ACC) before reaching the limit of its airspace in both extension and height. On approach the ACC controller transfers the aircraft to TWR as they approach to land.
The Route or Area Controller (ACC): controls the rest of the airspace. The boundaries between approach and route are established between the control centres by letter of agreement. In general, the route or area controller manages the traffic established at a flight level and the approach controller the traffic in evolution, both, ascending for the ideal flight level and descending to land at the destination airport.

In summary, the main tasks of ATC staff are:

Prevent collisions between aircrafts in flight.
Prevent collisions between aircrafts in landing or take-off operations within the same airport space or with geographical features or obstacles present in the area, such as antennas or buildings.
Streamline and maintain an orderly flow of air traffic.
Provide useful information for agile and safe flight management.
Report incidents to responsible organizations such as search and rescue operations.

How do aircrafts communicate with the control tower?

Aircrafts communicate with the tower via certain radio frequencies to keep airport operations safe. At larger airports, pilots receive their flight authorisations via a frequency called “authorisation” while at taxiways they communicate with a frequency of “surface”. For takeoff and landing approvals they talk on the frequency of the control tower. Once the aircraft has taken off, the pilots will communicate on a frequency of “departure” or “approach” and already en route, they will use a frequency of “center”.

Can you hear an airport control tower?

Today, there are applications and websites that share control towers live signal of the most important airports in the world and allow listening to the interaction of the air controller with aircrafts pilots. These tools can be very useful for people training for both air pilot and controller as it helps them to familiarize with the language used, as well as to understand what it is said in an audio usually hard to understand for those not used to it.

Latest news

What is an airport control tower really for? 1

Code Blue

Code Blue in Flight Blog What is a Code Blue in aviation? Code Blue is the term used to refer to time-dependent health incidents, that is, those in which every

Ground effect

Discover how this ground effect is generated in aircraft and how to control it on a flight if you are a pilot Learn how to avoid the well known balloon