Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Air Traffic Control Center in Bremen 29th November 2003 in Bremen, Germany




Today Anja and I went to visit a friend at the Air Traffic Control Center in Bremen. Anja is interested in being a controller for a living. It was absolutely incredible to see how everything really works and what it is like to work in this sort of job. They place was a lot bigger than I originally expected. There are about 180 people employed at this site. The service a large portion of Germany from Kassel up to Denmark and West towards Holland. I was surprised by the equipment in the room. I"m used to going into offices and seeing loads of PC"s but here everyone was looking at circular green radar screens. Our friend Barry who works there showed us how all the controls work, the basics of the rules involved, plane separation, tracking, prediction and all the extra"s like amateur pilots who don"t listen to air traffic control and military airspace (seems to be a lot of that). He also explained how a flight from say, Hamburg to somewhere in Spain would be passed along a conveyor belt of air traffic control along the entirety of it"s journey and what the procedure is for pilots who aren"t within reach (e.g. flights from Los Angeles to Auckland).

At one point I got to punch up some numbers into the equipment to find out the airline names of the aircraft that were flying around and details on them. I also figured out the procedure for using stripes with flight details on them for cases where radar fails. We had a really good chat about everything that goes on there and how to become apart of it. They put a lot into safety so people are never overworked. I wish I had that in my line of work, it feels like they are doing tests of human agility most of the time with the amount of hours we put in. It seemed a foreign concept to me when Barry told me that when work is done, it"s done and he doesn"t have to worry about it in his off time. I wish I could have that but programming has a lot to do with finishing something by a certain deadline and chasing contracts.

Afterword we went into town and ate at the Mongolian grill which was really nice as well. The restaurant looked like it was put together by a Scandinavian designer. After that we walked around some stores, the Weinachtsmarkt and visited one of the guys from our quiz team at his shop in town. He told me about when he was in University in Dublin and how they used to go to the Guinness factory for the tour (and 2 free beers) and how you can see a really good panorama of Dublin from the top of the Guinness Factory.

Bremen is really beautiful this time of year, I really miss being able to walk around there all the time and take in all it has to offer.


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