2025-07-30
34 分钟When air traffic controllers are on the job, they have to be totally focused.
I recently saw that firsthand.
I watched controllers training at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City.
For hours at a time, air traffic controllers watched these radar screens full of blinking dots.
Each dot represents an aircraft full of people.
Controllers are sometimes told to imagine their own family members are on board.
They can't miss anything.
They actually have to train their eyeballs to constantly move around the screens,
watching to make sure nothing goes wrong.
There's a special name for this in the industry.
That's Ryan Higgins, a 34-year-old dad of four.
Back between 2019 and 2021, he was in training to become an air traffic controller.
At the Academy, he would watch how veteran controllers kept track of planes on the radar screen,
how they developed their scans.
Everyone has their own method.
Like a lot of people, it's like clockwise.
Okay, I'm going to start up here and go around and...
make a full 360 and then do it over and over and over and over and over again,
and who needs something, what is this plane doing?
Just a lot of juggling.