Professional Documents
Culture Documents
- Origin / destination
- type of aircraft
- estimated time of departure
- flight level intended to be used for cruising
- estimated arrival time at the destination
- times of crossing specified / designated wayside reporting
points
- alternate airport for diversion if unable to land at the
destination due unforeseen reasons
- aircraft on-board features capability to navigate the
chartered route
ATC will process the flight plan for the
availability of the flight level requested during
proposed flight and will clear the flight to the
available flight level, subject to the availability
of destination and alternate airports. ATC will
monitor the flight progress continuously after
take off with periodic position updatement.
World airspace has been divided into various
zones. A given zone may cover the airspace of
one country or more. It is the collective
responsibility of the country / countries to
provide ATC service in the zone. For this
purpose, the countries concerned have
subdivided the zone subzones, each subzone
being the responsibility of a country. The actual
boundaries of such subzones depend upon the
resources, infrastructure and skill levels available
in a country.
Even inside a country’s subzone, there may be
further subdivisions for operational
convenience. This again depends upon the
geography and the nature of resources of the
country. For example, Indian airspace has
been divided into 5 divisions, each being
called an FIR (flight information region). Sri
Lankan airspace has one FIR.
Positive control is the situation wherein the controller and
the pilot are in direct contact with each other over radio.
Controller is completely responsible for the safety of the
flights. For this purpose, VHF radio communication is
used. The coverage of such contact is limited by the line- of-
sight propagation characteristics of VHF radio. Typically,
the range would be about 200 NM. Sometimes, it is
possible to extend VHF radio coverage by remote control of
VHF equipment placed far away.
The system of creating zones / subzones of ATC units is to
provided positive control service as far as possible
.
Advisory service : In areas where the pilot and
controller are not in direct contact, the
responsibility of safety of flight is with the pilot.
Pilot is assisted by information given to him by
ATC regarding expected traffic, expected
weather, recent changes in the availability of
route aids and the facilities at the destination
aerodrome etc. These information are passed to
the pilot usually by means of short wave radio
through intermediary communicators.
A given ATC unit will have a finite jurisdiction.
The extent of jurisdiction depends upon the
traffic pattern and the geography of the
country in which the ATC operates. Since
flights go crossing the jurisdictions of several
air traffic control units, coordination between
the adjacent air traffic control units is a must.
Aerodrome Control (Tower Control):
• Aerodrome or Tower controllers work from Control
Tower, a tall structure with glass windows for good
visibility of the airport and its immediate surroundings,
located on the airport grounds.
• Usually, their responsibilities cover the ground
movements, take off and landing phases of aircraft
flight.
• They also separate aircraft and vehicles operating on
the taxiways and runways of the airport itself.
• Generally, they control air traffic 5 to 10 nautical miles
(9 to 18 km) depending on the airport procedures.
• 0-6000ft
Approach Control:
• This unit generally controls traffic between the
jurisdiction of control tower and about 50 NM
and flight levels upto 150 (15000 ft).
• Aircrafts are either in the climbing phase or in
descending phase.
• The climbing aircraft are put in their tracks
and the descending aircraft are guided to
align with the runway for landing.
• 6000-15,000ft
Area Control
Procedural control:
relies on the position information provided by the
pilots and other controllers.
This reporting is not continuous and hence the
controllers have to work out the positions of the
aircrafts in between the reporting by mental
calculations.
CPDLC (Controller to pilot data link communication):
• Similarly, to avoid voice stress to the pilots and the
controllers, as well as to eliminate problems due to
variations in regional accents, a digital communication
system has been evolved.
• A majority of the ATC conversations have been
formatted for digital or data communication between
the two.
• Such data communication can be implemented through
VHF or satellite medium.
• On-board computers and ATC computers facilitate
formatting and decoding air-ground ATC data
communication.
• This system is known as CPDLC (Controller to pilot data
link communication).
• ADS and CPDLC have their utilities but they
are not used in all situations.
• In the landing and take off phases, invariably
voice communication and radar control are
used, as the responding time in these
situations is small.
• Also use of satellite medium puts a lot of cost
on the navigation service provider as well as
the airlines.
• Therefore, generally ADS and CPDLC are used
during cruising phase in which data exchange
frequency can be reduced.
• English is the language used universally for air
traffic control service.
• It is necessary that controllers and pilots
understand each others’ talks completely to avoid
safety hazards due to misunderstandings.
• ICAO has in the recent past made it mandatory
for pilots and controllers to acquire a specified
level of proficiency in aviation English, as a part of
their job requirement.
• CPDLC helps to eliminate the situations of
misunderstandings, which may happen during
voice communication.