JBER Air Traffic Control Airmen control highways in the sky

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Anchorage, Alaska is a bowl filled to the brim with civilization. Office buildings stretch to the rim and Cessna 172s, Boeing 747s and everything in between circle around and above it on invisible highways more complex than any eight-lane freeway on the ground below.

The highways are stacked on top of each other thousands of feet up, the off-ramps are vertical, and the number of lanes changes constantly.

The dynamics of such traffic are too complex for mere stoplights. Instead, airborne commuters rely on the prowess of air traffic controllers in the Anchorage bowl to guide them to safety, even in the face of onerous weather. The controllers in the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson tower are among the best.

Air traffic control Airmen are trained and qualified to fill any potential role a tower may require. This ensures full operational capabilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Senior Airman Matthew Townsend, an air traffic control journeyman assigned to the 3rd Operations Support Squadron.

Put simply, ATC Airmen aren't assigned to a work station; their station is the tower and everything in it. The Airman charged with operational success of the tower is the watch supervisor, a role Airmen train into as staff sergeants.

"[Watch supervisors] provide a top-cover in the tower," said Staff Sgt. Alex Riley, an air traffic control watch supervisor assigned to the 3rd OSS. "We trust our guys, but we are there to make sure everything happens smoothly. We'll know the big picture before anyone else does because we're sitting back with a bird's-eye view."

Under the careful eye of the watch supervisor, the local controller coordinates the aircraft currently airborne in the immediate vicinity.

"Imagine a circle around the runway up to 3,000 feet,"  Riley said. "Our F-22 [Raptors] will come back at a certain altitude, then we might have a C-17 [Globemaster III] right underneath them at 1,200 feet, and then a Cessna at 800 feet. So we stack all the way up with different airplanes, on different altitudes, runways and procedures.

"The local controller is responsible for separating all of those aircraft. you can have upwards of 10 aircraft at one time."

Underneath it all, aircraft, snow removal equipment, de-icing gear, and service vehicles scuttle across the runways, each one with its own mission. Coordinating the efficient movement of these elements across and over the runways safely but without impeding the overall operational efficiency of the airfield is the ATC Airman who happened to be assigned ground control that day.

"The ground controller will monitor up to six frequencies all at once," Riley said. "So he's usually pretty busy. There are four frequencies for aircraft only, and one for vehicles only. We handle about 33,000 crossings a year, and that's just vehicles crossing the runway."

Because the tower is open 24 hours a day, the Airmen work in two alternating swing shifts. It's the leadership's job to coordinate manning in such a way that each shift has fully qualified personnel in each position, and that each individual is getting a diverse exposure to different positions in order to maintain proficiency across all capacities, said Master Sgt. Kory Lindsey, assistant chief controller for the 3rd OSS.

The individual in charge of this vital function is the crew boss. In a way, the crew boss is very much like a traffic controller for the traffic controllers.

Because the Elmendorf tower uses visual flight rules, the aircraft have to be able to see the runway and the tower has to get them in sight, Townsend said.

If the clouds dip below an approved threshold, or the aircraft are running night operations with their electronic footprint low, the tower may not be able to see them at all, Riley said.

Because of this, the weather ceiling has to be greater than 1,000 feet with three miles of visibility in order for the tower to operate under VFR.

If weather conditions do not meet these requirements, then the tower reverts to operations under instrument flight rules, and they will come in on an instrument approach, Townsend said.

In an instrument approach, the aircraft uses their navigation systems to land safely with tower-provided guidance regarding distance and traffic.

Each aircraft is traveling at different speeds, and different altitudes, along a different flight path, and each has different landing requirements, Riley said. It's up to the team of Airmen in the tower to make sure each aircraft lands safely on the runway.

"If a pilot has experienced in-flight malfunctions, they might only have radio and we can get them from 10 miles out to 200 feet above the runway and lined up on the centerline based off our [precision-approach] equipment," Townsend said.

The responsibilities of control are not light; coordinating military air traffic in conjunction with four other airfields within a seven-mile radius and producing more than 1,500 departures and landings a day means there are a lot of lives depending on effective communication.

How does the base ensure safety for these pilots and crews? With efficient training and the use of crew resource management, Townsend said.

Everyone is watching out for everyone else, and the ATC Airmen believe crew resource management is not just a skill, but a mentality.

"Situational awareness drops after four hours, so we rotate controllers out and ensure breaks are given. If someone comes in and is either not feeling well mentally or physically, they will be tasked to work in a different capacity until they recover."

When thousands of lives depend on one's competency in their job every day, safety cannot be underrated. By the same token, neither can the support of their teammates.

In any team-building workshop it's not long before someone puts on a blindfold and is led by vocal directions from someone who can see, or until someone places their back to their team and performs a "trust fall." That's what pilots place in ATC Airmen and their training - it's a 3,000-foot trust fall.

The unique weather conditions at JBER make the ground control position a completely different animal than that on other bases. There is considerably more activity on the runways as snow removal, deicing, and runway conditions readings are all necessary for the better part of the year.

Air traffic control technical school is 72 class days, which accounts for a total of roughly four months. But for ATC Airmen, that school is just the beginning.

"We go through a tower and a radar portion," Townsend said. "Then we go through some fundamental rules for air traffic. Once we're done with that we find out where we're going. Depending on the facility, training at the new base can take anywhere from six months to a year or more."

"Tech school for us is just to make sure you have the capability to learn air traffic control," Riley said.

In addition to the training, each Airmen must be compliant with Federal Aviation Administration regulations to maintain their license. Often, local command will add stricter regulations on top of those from the FAA, Lindsey said.

Regardless of where in the system one may find themselves, air traffic control is widely considered by many to be one of the most stressful jobs in the world.

The Airmen at the JBER-Elmendorf tower disagree.

"It's not stressful for us, its fun," Riley said. "When we have 10 planes in the pattern, it's not as crazy as everybody thinks it is because we're in control. Basically, some of us can be control freaks. If we're in control and we know what's going on with the picture in our head, we're having fun; it's not busy for us."

"The stress level is what you make of it," Townsend said. "You can come in and think it's going to be a really bad day and start hyping yourself up or you can look, sit back and realize the big picture. If you can keep paying attention and think on your feet correctly, it's not bad."

Highways in the air are an idea one may only expect to find in science-fiction, but to JBER's air traffic controllers, it's just another day at work.