When you’re taking a plane trip, how much thought do you give to the people working to keep you safe in the skies? I never considered it on my many flights as a traveler, but after I got my private pilot’s license some years ago, I had to learn more about the inner workings of the control tower. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration opened up the Honolulu tower to a rare media tour.
Firstly, you access the tower via the Hickam Air Force Base main gate. You go through three security clearances and two gated entry points before you’re even in the building. It’s more clearance than I encountered to see President Bush on a layover at Hickam. Here is a sign displayed at one of the checkpoints. I love the euphemism about “service interruption” causing “loss of life.”
The building is the Honolulu Control Facility, and is the headquarters of The Hawaii Pacific District which provides administrative oversight for the following Tower facilities: Honolulu Air Traffic Control Tower, Maui Air Traffic Control Tower, Hilo Air Traffic Control Tower, Kona Federal Contract Tower, Lihue Air Traffic Control Tower, Molokai Air Traffic Control Tower, Agana (Guam) Air Traffic Control Tower, and Sapian Air Traffic Control Tower.
Downstairs, there’s a dark room with all kinds of radar screens tracking the planes. Each moving dot is a plane in the air.
If you want to get into the tower, there is no elevator- you climb a series of narrow steps that reminded me of climbing to the top of the Tower of Pisa. These controllers have to be in pretty decent shape!
According to Robert Rabideau, district manager for the Hawaii-Pacific district, describes the air traffic controller's job as a traffic cop: “Except the planes don't have brakes, and there are no stop lights in the sky.” Pretty big responsibility, then, to keep all the aircraft separated!
The Honolulu International Airport is the busiest one in the state, so these workers have their job cut out for them. The Tower controls traffic on the airport movement areas and in the airspace immediately surrounding the airport. Movement areas include all taxiways and runways.
In 2006, the Honolulu Tower oversaw just over 317,317 pilots flying into or out of the airport. The FAA’s breakdown:
• Air Carrier 187,152
• Air Taxi (inter island taxi) 61,025
• General Aviation (private pilots going interisland) 52,553
• Military 14,963
• Local Pattern (private pilots flying around Oahu) 1,624
Separation between aircraft in the vicinity of major airports is 3 nautical miles (NM) using Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR). Areas using Air Route Surveillance Radar (ARSR) require 5 NM separation. Minimum vertical separation is 1000’. Oceanic aircraft (flying over the Pacific) outside of the radar coverage are separated by a minimum of 10 minutes. That’s because planes are flying about 500 miles an hour over the open ocean.
Robert Hong, Operations Manager for the Honolulu Control Facility, a division of the Federal Aviation Administration, says, "On an average day the controller will work 150-200 aircraft. Our facility alone does in excess of 1,000 aircraft a day. After lunch we have an afternoon push and sometimes the tower will take in an aircraft every 45 seconds. So it does get stressful."
If you’re sitting in the plane waiting to take off, but are running late, Hong lists the possible sources of blame. “It could be weather, an incident on the runway like a flat tire, a slow departure where one of the planes is not ready to take off when we thought it would be. It all has an effect on the stream.”
Oh- and that warning you’ve heard so many times you may have tuned it out by now about turning off all electronic devices so as not to interfere with the plane’s equipment? It’s true. "Some cell phones can interfere with those communications so it is quite a big concern for us," warns Hong. So turn off the phone and make it safer for everyone flying!
CELEBRITY SUITCASE: What they can’t travel without!
Bobby Curran, host of “The Bobby Curran Show” on ESPN 1420 and radio voice for University of Hawaii football and men’s basketball.
Bobby Curran has been a fixture in the Hawaii sports community for nearly twenty years. Twice named “Hawaii Sportscaster of the Year” by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (in 2005 and 2006), he is recognized as one of the hardest working sports announcers in the industry, spending hours of his “free time” poring over media guides and press releases, attending practices and watching game tapes, and interviewing coaches, players, officials and other insiders.
His must haves on the road? “Books and ibuprofen.”
Curran travels ten times a year with UH on road games. He’s been doing that since 1989, which he says was fantastic until he had kids (4 and 2 years old). “I really miss them,” he explains. The family also takes vacations in Scotland sometimes, because that’s where his wife is from.
