Air Traffic Control Entities

 

One of the challenges a Student Pilot faces in those early flight lessons is managing communications with various common airport frequencies like Clearance, ground and tower. Once you move forward in your aviation career, and hopefully onto faster and higher altitude flying under IFR conditions you begging to get acquainted with new and important actors of Air Traffic Control (ATC) and realize how this complex system works, handling a multitude of aircrafts safely 24hrs a day.

ATC works diligently providing a crucial service to Airmen, assisting them in the different phases of their flight, and it’s considered by Pilots as an External Resource that benefits operational safety.

After a Pilots copies the required Clearance, taxi instructions, and takes off while in contact with the Airport’s Tower frequency, there are two main entities he will contact during his departure, enroute and approach phase of the flight:

Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON).

both ARTCC and TRACON focus their efforts in providing safety alerts, traffic separation and an efficient traffic flow between the enroute to the approach phase. Both entities work closely together, sometimes overlapping their services and rely on effective communication between each other to achieve their objectives.

Although both entities are part of the ATCSCC, they play different roles and communicate with Pilots in different phases of flight:

ARTCC, commonly called by the Area or city plus the word 'Center' (for example: Orlando Center) work during the enroute phase of the flights, communicating with aircrafts at cruising altitudes.

 TRACON, takes care of the initial and final phase of the flight, which is Departure and approach. They are responsible for smaller but heavily congested areas, consisting of various airports close to each other, providing IFR departing traffic with initial Heading and altitude instructions, once the Aircraft is safely on its way, Departure will indicate them to contact the appropriate ARTCC frequency.

 

Reference

 

Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) | Federal Aviation Administration. (2022). Faa.gov. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/systemops/nas_ops/atcscc

 

Air Traffic Services | Federal Aviation Administration. (2022). Faa.gov. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/air_traffic_services