Are you someone who has always stopped to look up when you see an airplane flying overhead? How about when you see all the airplanes at the airport, do you ever wonder where they are all going and how they get there? The Pilot's Guide to Air Traffic Control offers a rare glimpse into the hidden world of Air Traffic Control (ATC)! With hundreds of pages of real-life ATC stories, this book will interest anyone from the airline passenger without enough leg room to the professional pilot!
For decades, pilots have learned how to communicate with ATC from their flight instructors, who learned from their flight instructors. Have you ever had the chance to learn radio communication technique from an air traffic controller? What about from an air traffic controller who is also a pilot?
Prior to diving into the information packed chapters, the book begins with a detailed prologue that walks the reader through a basic understanding of the air traffic control system. It includes the various types of ATC facilities and services, different types of airspace, radar systems, plus how controllers work together both in their own facilities and between facilities.
Next, The Pilot's Guide to Air Traffic Control has 32 chapters, all with multiple stories, telling real-life, behind the scenes stories of what really happens.
Topics include:
- Learn what constitutes an emergency and how being assertive can help you land safely even during peak traffic times at major airports.
- Find out how pilots land on wrong runways, and even at wrong airports, and what you can do to avoid that vital mistake
- Discover a simple technique you can use to avoid Spatial Disorientation, which has claimed the lives of so many pilots and passengers
- Hear from an aviation fire expert on what to do if you encounter a smoking battery from cell phones, tablets, wireless earbuds, etc.
- Learn how ATC handles pilot requests around thunderstorms
- Discover which word from the pilot/controller glossary the author has identified that controllers and pilots interpret differently, and what you can do to avoid collisions because of it
- Uncover an easy tactic on how to make a request which will give you the best chance for ATC to approve it, one which many airline pilots don't know
- Learn how to streamline your radio calls using examples in the Phraseology Appendix
- Find out how ATC saved a flight crew who were suffering from a lack of oxygen
- And so much more!
The Pilot's Guide to Air Traffic Control teaches from cover to cover. Aviation enthusiasts will have a much better understanding of all that ATC does to keep the flying public safe and pilots will gain a deeper understanding allowing them to perfect their craft!
The perspective and opinions given are that of the Author alone and may vary from those of the Federal Aviation Administration.