A TYPICAL ARRIVAL RUSH INTO ATLANTA'S HARTSFIELD JACKSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

From your friends at ATCMonitor.com.  © 2006 - Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Editor note:  Thanks to this real world air traffic controller who prefers to remain anonymous for providing this account of a typical summer day at his work. ”About 5 times a day, there is a totally chaotic and sometimes out of control rush of arrivals into the Atlanta airport”.  Let's take a look at the 5:30pm rush on a typical day in the summer time. Around 5:00pm, the paper flight strips start piling up on the sector. The person working the sector starts to get a little bowed up, knowing that they are about to get their “ass waxed”. Most of the time, this is when you take a break if you are worn out or you start getting serious if you are going to stay and work it. All eyes will be on you for the next hour. Atlanta traffic management calls the supervisor and tells them to run the first 10 arrivals at minimum entrail (5 miles) and then go to 15 miles entrail after a certain time.  This is needed because the airport will be at full capacity and we will need to slow the rush down a little in order for the tower to be able to keep the 100% arrival rate going smoothly. (at least, that’s the plan…) The first arc of arrivals begins to flash “handoff” to your sector (arrival sector that works the Macey arrivals is called Logen - same frequency you are listening to now on this website). The supervisor assigns a second controller to the Logen sector to help with the flight progress strips and listen for correct read backs from the pilots. The first 3 or 4 arrivals have been sped up to 330 knots or greater in order to get them out in front. The frequency gets busy with Delta pilots checking on. You answer each pilot with the standard phraseology ”Delta so and so, Atlanta Center Roger, cross Womac intersection at and maintain one three thousand at 250 knots." The pilots are assured by your commanding voice and they read back your clearances quickly and accurately.  Then you get a handoff on an east west transitioning flight of military C130's at 22,000 feet. These aircraft are going to be in the way of everybody and you know it so you store that in your head and watch out for the upcoming conflictions.  Two or three more “speed bumps” (transitioning aircraft at very in-opportune altitudes) start coming into the mix as you start to get real serious. Ding, Ding, Ding!  Come the departure messages alerting you to several flights that have departed off of surrounding airports and will be climbing through your Macey arrivals from every direction. The lump starts to form in your throat but you push it down a little bit further in your gut to add it to your already formed ulcer which is yet to be discovered at your next physical exam. Your voice starts to get a little higher pitched and faster as you start working your magic with these arrivals. The first 10 or 12 get vectored and speed up to form a "ballet in the sky" and you are 10 feet tall and bullet proof. Then you hear the words "Uh, center this is Delta so and so, we need to deviate around a little thunder bumper that's over the Macey intersection". Oh crap, you think, here it comes. "OK, Delta so and so, deviate right of course as necessary, and go direct Womac when able.."  Then of course, all of the other pilots on the frequency start to tell you that they are also deviating around weather. Then the turbulence reports come in and every pilot tells you that they are slowing down because of chop or deviating around weather. Your beautiful plan for the arrivals has turned into a complete out of control mess.  Of course you knew it would and this is just the way it works. You will still make it work and give the public that cute little line of planes that they can see from the interstates surrounding the airport. It looks so easy to them.  The orderly push you had started just a few minutes ago is now turning into a free for all where nobody is on course anymore and all of the sudden, the conflict alert feature activates and your scope starts flashing like a cheap Christmas tree.  The next three batches of arrivals are already descending into your sector and all of the sudden; you have 22 arrivals and about a dozen over flights. It is time to bail out before you have an operational error. You start to set up the holding pattern at Macey.  It is much safer to have airplanes spinning in circles over Macey than it is to hope they keep themselves separated while deviating around weather. The first holder gets to Macey and says "uh, center, we can't hold at Macey due to weather." Then you scramble to make up a new holding fix on the fly. You decide to hold them at Womac, or Foothills VOR, or wherever. Any other point is going to interfere with something else that is going on in the airspace so you just do the first thing that comes to your mind. OK, they can hold at the Foothills 245 radial, 020 mile fix. That is better than nothing so you start to clear everybody to this new fix. Of course giving a detailed holding clearance rather than "hold as published" quadruples your frequency congestion as each pilot has to read back this 30+ word clearance. Most of them have to be told twice because of the non-standard nature of this clearance.  Uh-Oh, over in the northeast corner of the Logen sector, there are two over flights headed right at each other at the same altitude. You have to stop what you are doing with the arrivals and issue a couple of panic vectors to these flights to save them from a midair collision. In the time it takes to assure their read backs, the entire holding pattern that you are trying to set up at that Foothills VOR has gone done the drain and the scope is now flashing like crazy. The supervisor finally stops talking to his buddy about the Georgia-Auburn game and sees that the Logen sector is out of control. He/she assigns a "tracker" to the sector. The trackers sole responsibility is to watch out for mid-air collisions that may occur and warn you a minute or so ahead of time. By this time, you have reverted to your primal ATC instincts. It no longer matters where any flight is trying to go, or who might be getting chop or whatever. You now are in survival mode. The only thing that matters is that all of the little blips get out of your sector without hitting any other of the little blips. The pilots seem to sense that you are sunk and they stop any idle chatter or superfluous requests. They know that the #&$@%! has hit the fan and they are concentrating on flying the plane and watching the TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) radar in the cockpit.  Eventually, you get a few arrivals out of the pattern and on their way to the Atlanta approach control boundary. Once they are off of your frequency, they no longer exist to you. They are now someone else's problem. Every other sector that is feeding you has stopped the flow of arrivals. There are now a couple of thousand people across the country who are complaining to their gate agents about the 30-minute delay they have just announced to Atlanta.  OK, you think, it is getting somewhat back to normal, everybody is in the holding pattern and safe.  You start to peel the arrivals off of the bottom of the stack and flash the handoffs to Atlanta approach.  Pretty soon, the pattern empties out and you start to take a few of the surrounding sector arrivals off of their hands.  The settling spreads out to these sectors and soon the trackers are removed form all of the sectors and you are back to a manageable mess.  As the sector is calming down, people start patting each other on the back and looking at you with worried looks hoping for your reassurance that everything went smoothly. You laugh it off and say "Man, this #&$@! is hard…" and go on to your next ATC task which of course is a cigarette/diet coke break of extended duration.  You finally get offered a break, and buddy, you better take it! Out in the break room, you light up about 20 cigarettes and drink a few cups of coffee or coke. Another day, another dollar in en route ATC..