Conversion course – Does anyone understand the airlines?

My fascination with aircraft started at about age 5 and I first heard about air traffic control when I was 16. Gabi Nemeth who made music besides being an air traffic controller was on a TV talk show and he made a gallant effort to explain what ATC was all about… He must have done a great job because I for one understood what he was saying and from then on wanted nothing better than to be a controller. Being accepted to the physics faculty of a University in Budapest almost derailed my destiny but I corrected it soon enough and on my 21st birthday I issued the first landing clearance all on my own!
In the years that followed I collected just about every qualification a controller can have and added a bit of computer programming skill also. In time I exchanged the microphone for a desk at ICAO in Paris and later, for a post involved in building the new Amsterdam ATC system, AAA. But I never thought of myself as anything other than an air traffic controller. I was also very much convinced that what I was doing with or without the microphone, was the best possible course for our charges, the aircraft and their operators. Giving them directs, shortening the tracks wherever possible and the many other “treats” all appeared as going out of our way to help them.
My first exposure to IATA was at the very first Flow East meeting which was held in Budapest. We knew relatively little about this mighty organization or how it worked and were generally a bit suspicious of its motives… They sent a diminutive Swissair captain as one of their representatives and what he lacked in stature was more than made up for by his forceful personality and very clear words blasting us for the very poor job we were doing. He did not spare the civil aviation authorities either, drawing multiple color lines on a wall chart showing where the air routes should be in his view… Very few of the existing routes were where he thought they should be of course. His propensity for drawing colored lines earned him the nick “Tintoretto”. I remember how deeply hurt I felt by all the verbal abuse but also the feeling that may be, just may be, Tintoretto had a point. Had I known what profound effect his colored lines would have on my life many years later, I would have kissed the little captain on the brow for sure.

OK, most of Tintoretto’s lines traversed the airspace over Warsaw Pact military airports and as such had no chance in hell being approved at the time. But the idea of more dialogue with the airlines before decisions were made and money spent on new equipment did take hold and Europe’s first continuous descent approach procedure designed for and with Lufthansa for their spanking new 737s was one of the many results.

Although we did get closer to the airlines than ATC had ever been before, there continued to be strange demands, incomprehensible actions like scheduling flights in bunches that could never depart on time due to the capacity of the runways… Things that we as controllers tended to just shrug off with a forgiving smile. Who could ever understand the airlines?
It was during my time in Amsterdam many years later that I spotted an IATA recruitment ad in Flight magazine. They were looking for someone with an ATC background for their office in Brussels! Here was the chance to take my revenge on Tintoretto’s kin was my first thought but more seriously, the challenge appeared fatally attractive. Having started as a controller, then going on to ICAO and finally being on the technical development side, a stint with the airlines looked like the perfect next step. May be, just may be I would understand their quirky thinking…
Two months later we moved to Brussels and my education began.
My new colleagues in the IATA office, as well as the airline folks I got to meet, were very nice and very patient. They seemed to be very well aware of the difficulties an earth-bound controller might have in understanding the airline mind.
I grew up learning to focus on aircraft and keeping them apart. Here, I had to learn to forget about the aircraft… initially that is.
There were so many new ideas and concepts to absorb.

Although an airline may appear to be operating aircraft (they are even called aircraft operators), their most important asset is their network and the time table they develop to serve the network. It is a finely balanced and highly tuned something that takes a long time to perfect. Any disturbance sends ripples through the network and distortions cost money… big money!
While controllers mostly see individual aircraft only, the airline sees the network too and they work really hard to keep it intact. The air traffic management system’s decisions on individual aircraft translate to bigger or smaller ripples in the network of the respective airlines and so such decisions need to be carefully coordinated.
So what is the product the airlines are selling? I had to learn that they were in the business of selling the most perishable thing on earth, seats in an aircraft. Perishable? You bet. If you are selling tomatoes or eggs, what you do not sell to-day, you can always bring back to the market tomorrow or even the day after and if business is really slow, in the end you can push your ware with a discount. But a seat left unfilled when the aircraft doors are closed is lost forever, there is now way to earn revenue from it on that flight… it becomes dead weight with less value than a rotten tomato.
Those apparently crazy departure times reflect the need to be attractive to travelers targeted by the flight concerned and the attempt to limit the rotten tomatoes on every flight…
Pilots fly the aircraft, controllers separate them goes the old wisdom about who does what. But what is the aircraft? It is a very sophisticated business tool and the pilot is entrusted to operate it not only safely but also efficiently, to maximize the revenue from every flight. There is nothing wrong with that of course, an airline is a business after all and it has to show a profit for its shareholders.

But as air traffic controllers, do we also appreciate this? Do we feel, do we understand the implications? Controllers often say that they are primarily responsible for safety, and this is true. But so are pilots and yet they must also consider the commercial aspects of the operations. Controllers need to be the same. The trick is finding the correct balance where safety is never compromised but where neither is it a hindrance to efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
During my apprenticeship with IATA the airlines had gone through one of the most intense cost cuttings ever saw by the industry. In the aftermath of the fuel crises and 9/11, airlines fighting for survival had to lay of pilots and other highly qualified personnel by the tens of thousands even while they introduced scores of other measures to cut costs across the board. Lufthansa shaved off 40 % in less than four years!
As traffic dipped, air navigation service provider revenues took a nose dive but no controllers lost their jobs or had their pay reduced. I am not saying they should have… but being exposed a bit more to the fire like we were at IATA could have helped in making the providers of this essential service a bit more aware of how precarious a situation the industry was in.
Eventually, something did trickle down to the ANSPs and cost cutting was no longer seen as a four letter word usable only on the flying side of the business… But seeing the gusto with which expensive and outdated hardware like traditional radars are still being bought and deployed by some makes one wonder: did the message reach everyone?

In the end, my job at IATA fell victim to the same cost cutting the airlines were implementing. It did not feel nice but I understood. In fact, I consider myself lucky for having had the chance to learn to understand the quirks and pains of airline existence.
Obviously, it is not realistic to expect every controller to have a chance to experience the same up close and personal. But a bit more attention to the modus operandi and business characteristics of the airlines during ab initio and recurrent training would only make controllers better everywhere.
That they all mean well as it is cannot be questioned. But meaning well and truly understanding what the airlines need on the strategic as well as the daily tactical level are two very different things. And the gap will only increase as new technologies open up novel horizons for both sides.