Following our late-autumn holiday, returning to our dearly loved capital city’s even more beloved airport, we once again struck the strings in the thick of life. There was no time to get bored, in part because of the frequent foggy weather but even more, since air traffic control’s history had entered a new phase. Apparently all obstacles have been removed and the second part of November saw work starting in the new air traffic control centre, ANS III.
For starters, we were given a short orientation course that covered the process of transition. We then went to gape at the new control room. My first impression was that the place had become much more colorful. The red wall to wall carpeting did cause some differences of opinion among the colleagues however. There were those (among them myself) who liked it, while others though the color was too bright.
The room does not appear to be substantially bigger but there is more light a fact approach controllers will not like much since the windows cause reflections on their screens. I guess curtains will make sure that the Sun will not shine often in this new room either. We did not get to see the other areas and one can only hope that the colleagues will have plenty of space also for relaxation and rest.
Obviously, with all this going on, the Tower is not left unaffected. We too are getting new software and this will be phased in as the transition progresses. We have two additional monitors… two more things to watch! The various offices under our feet are also evolving to line up with the new requirements. One of our rest areas was moved into an office previously belonging to the boss… I wonder whether his ghost will be watching over our heads as we slumber and rest.
As part of the transition we had been asked not to schedule leave in the period the work is underway. As a result, we are coming to work with an elevated minimum complement and this will stay like this until the new center goes fully operational. Aerodrome controllers are not affected by all this in any substantial way although we do have a role in feeding the new system. In practice this means that we too need to enter data in parallel into both the old and the new system. In phase one, things are in shadow mode, i.e. we are working with the old Mathias system, both in the tower and in the control center ANS I and the new Mathias system only gets data with people keeping a watch on the traffic as it is processed by the new system. In phase two, the new Mathias in ANS III will get the leading role with controllers working traffic from there and other colleagues watching traffic on the old system.
A guess the news software will be swapped with the old one at this time also in the tower and the old system will be watched by a colleague specifically assigned for the task. So, we are not getting bored, that is for sure. Traffic is just right for a transition like this, neither too little, nor too much and there is every hope that by Christmas things will have settled down to a normal routine and everyone can relax. This includes also the technical crew to whom our heartfelt thanks for all the hard work… We controllers will also be less stressed once normal operations resume.
Here is another subject… something curious… or strange? Who knows? The story started back in 2011 when I applied to become an incident investigator. In my article “A quiet summer, summer quiet” I wrote about the humiliating feeling when a twentysomething HR gal was allowed to decide who should be the Tower expert. They did not pick me in spite of my 28 years of experience. They picked a couple of colleagues whom I like very much in spite of their far lower level of experience. I had some difficulty digesting this and had an exchange of mails with the department concerned. The bosses there could only offer a cold shoulder, claiming that this was not their decision but that of Human Resources. By the way… HR these days have become demi-gods in most organizations and in spite of the word “human” in their name, they decide about the fate of human beings devoid of all feeling or compassion. Is this the way it should be or should technical management also have a role in making the decisions? For me the answer is clear and so I do not understand why things are so upside down.
Anyway, in the course of the past year, the tower experts originally selected gave back their commission one after the other and who is the tower expert to-day??? ME!!!! It is difficult to decide whether to cry, laugh or be mad. Is that foolish little gal still there at HR? May be it is better that I do not even know. I am not going to even think about that aspect of the work and will simply jump into the task at hand. Luckily, we have not had events that would have required serious investigation. On the main we had to investigate together with the committee requests born in the context of Just Culture issues. Most of these concerned minor infringements of separation minima. We drew the necessary conclusions from each, generated recommendations and the material was made public for all the colleagues to read. I like this process, since it is not about making life miserable for someone but learning from events and thereby improving out work. This is something that can be called “HUMAN” as opposed to what is being done in the so called “human resources department”.
Our human activity makes a lot more sense.