Discuss “How Things Work: Air Traffic Control”

Handling over 80,000 flights each day, air traffic controllers in the United States guide aircraft from the ground to the sky and back to the ground.

Using radar and various types of computer software, traffic controllers are responsible for updating pilots on the weather, monitoring traffic flow, and ensuring that planes in the air and on the ground maintain enough distance between one another.

Between the time that an airplane takes off and lands, information concerning the flight of that airplane passes through many different controllers. In fact, the pilot submits a flight plan to the airport’s air traffic control tower at least 30 minutes before takeoff.

A flight data person, who is one of the controllers in the traffic control tower,...