It’s no secret that the number of planes coming in and out of the capital has increased dramatically in recent years – Kieran O’Hare explains how a day in the life of an air traffic controller is anything but boring

Written by Laura Fulton

It’s the middle of the afternoon, but Kieran O’Hare’s day is just beginning. An air traffic controller with seven years experience, Kieran came to work for the Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC) as a tower and approach controller in early September 2009. While most people associate Kieran’s job with watching planes from a tall building overlooking the runways, tower control is just one of three types of air traffic control.

“The tower controllers take aircraft within a zone of about ten nautical miles of the airport for take-off and landing. Once the tower controllers lose visual contact, the approach controllers oversee a zone of 13,000 feet vertically and horizontally 40 to 45 nautical miles around each airport,” explains the Belfast born Kieran. “The area controllers who work for the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) direct all the traffic beyond 45 nautical miles from the airports plus all the aircraft that are just flying over the UAE without stopping.”

Comparing tower control to approach is like comparing apples to oranges, but while there are positive and negative aspects of each, Kieran prefers tower.

“Personally, I prefer the tower because I get to see the light of day – I’m not just stuck in a dark radar room. The tower is basically visual – I control take offs and landings, plus all the aircraft on the taxi ways. If you’re sitting waiting for departure, it’s me who gives you push back, taxi to the runway and clearance for take-off.

Here’s what Kieran would call a typical day – or more specifically, a typical night.

1.30pm: After a good sleep, Kieran wakes up in preparation for a night shift. His ‘breakfast’ might consist of soup and a sandwich. “I try to stay away from the Big Macs,” laughs Kieran.

3pm: While everyone else is at work for the afternoon, Kieran has the day to himself. “I might go to the gym or play a round of golf. Some people will say one of the drawbacks of working as a controller is the shift work, and night duties are a drag, but you do get a lot of time off.” A typical cycle for a controller consists of two morning shifts, two afternoon shifts and two night shifts followed by a sleep day and three days off.

6.30pm: Time for another bite to eat and a quick nap before going to work. Though Kieran can expect a break of at least thirty minutes every two and a half hours during his shift, he doesn’t like to give in to a short sleep on shift “because I just wake up feeling more tired”.

10.15pm: At work for the night, Kieran begins his shift with a briefing from the controllers who have been working in the afternoon. “If I start the night working in the tower, it can be busy with the final bits of the inbound rush that usually happens around 9pm or the start of the outbound rush, but the traffic always varies.”

What does he mean by rush? “When it’s busy, we’ll see a movement – that is, a take-off or landing – every 90 seconds or two minutes. The maximum number of aircraft we’re allowed on frequency is 11 in a ten minute period. It doesn’t often get that busy, but if it does, our training in Abu Dhabi is so good that we’re always prepared.”

3am: Every inbound rush is followed by an outbound rush within a couple of hours, then Kieran and his colleagues get a chance to catch their breath. “From three in the morning till about 5am it’s pretty quiet. We have access into the duty free areas; there’s a Starbucks and places to eat, and we can shop as long as we bring our purchases out through the proper channels.”

5.30am: It’s time for the next inbound rush, and Kieran is hoping there’s no fog. “The season for fog is October and November – you can’t see a thing and you’re controlling blind. When that happens, we have surface movement radar which is basically a map of the airport that shows any movement on the ground. Everything is slowed down due to poor visibility.”

6.15am: The morning shift arrives, so Kieran hands over his aircraft and gets his colleagues up to speed, then it’s home for a day of sleep. Kieran wasn’t an aviation ethusiast growing up, but besides the time off and the salary – which isn’t bad in Abu Dhabi – the biggest perk is that “there’s
no work to be done outside our
scheduled hours.”

Final thoughts: “When you’re controlling air traffic, there’s never two days the same – it’s a very dynamic job. You never know what’s going to happen or what the traffic levels will be like. It’s very interesting and you’re always learning something, no matter how long you’ve done the job. It’s certainly not like your typical office job.”