Hello and welcome to Andrew’s Articles! Today we are going to talk about my site visit.

For my Site Visit, I went to the Westchester County Airport Air Traffic Control Tower. When we first arrived, the manager of the Air Traffic Control greeted us and took us into his office. He explained to us how he and his crew operate the Air Traffic Control tower.

Then he moved on to tell us what a flight strip is, and how it works. Each plane that takes off and lands gets a flight strip because the airport has to keep track of all the planes that took off and landed.

When we went into the Air Traffic Control tower, their were several controllers talking back and fourth to the pilots. One was on clearance control. Clearance control is ground control, getting the planes to the terminal to unload their passengers and back on the runway to take off to their next destination. The other controller was on sky patrol, monitoring what planes are landing, and which ones are taking off, and to get the planes out of the their airspace.

To become a controller you would have to go have training anywhere between 1 – 5 years. You have to go a special school for aviation.

This taught me the job of the Air Traffic Control tower is very important, and plays a big role in aviation safety. Because it can help avoid runway excursions by keeping the planes a distance apart, and monitoring were they are on the runway.

That’s it for this post folks!