The Room Where It Happened: Inside the FAA Command Center

Drive 45 minutes west of Washington, D.C., and you’ll find pastures, goat farms, and a massive, modern federal government complex suddenly springing up in the middle of a vast agricultural area. and rolling hills.

Welcome to the David J. Hurley Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, a key facility for the Federal Aviation Administration, the nerve center of the National Airspace System.

No one at this facility spoke directly to any of the pilots. Instead, the facility is designed to ensure that the NAS runs as smoothly as possible, day in and day out, by creating action plans for anything that could slow down air traffic. . With extreme weather, space launches, military operations, VIP travel operations, and personnel constraints all complicating the smooth operation of national airspace, regulators and Industry stakeholders work together to make sure everyone is on the road as quickly and safely as possible.

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“You have to have someone see the big picture,” command center director Joe Dotterer told TPG during a visit in September.

The current command center is actually the third iteration of the facility. The command center was originally opened at FAA headquarters in the southwestern quadrant of Washington, DC, in 1970. It was later moved to Herndon, Virginia, in 1994. It was located from the Herndon facility, where on September 11, 2001, by order. fame is given to the ground all civil aircraft flying over the United States

The current facility in Warrenton opened in 2011 next to the Potomac Unified Terminal Radar Access Control Authority – a more conventional facility where air traffic controllers actually talk to aircraft. This special TRACON ensures planes to and from airports in the DC area are safely segregated.

A collaborative process

If there was one word to sum up what happens at the command center, it would be “collaboration”.

“We decided as a group what we were doing,” said Chris Citrola, a national transportation official.

That means different stakeholders are present in the room. These include the International Air Transport Association, which represents airlines globally; Airlines for the United States, representing the largest carriers of the United States; and the National Corporate Aviation Association, which represents corporate aviation.

At the heart of the command center’s collaborative efforts is teleconference planning. That big call, held every two hours from 7:15 a.m. to 9:15 p.m., saw representatives from major air traffic facilities, airlines and others calling to discuss how handle restrictions in the airspace.

On the day TPG visited, the NAS was relatively quiet, despite the usual problems. A computer problem has resulted in Alaska Airlines requesting a grounding of its flights – which the FAA will do when the airline requests it – and Hurricane Fiona just hit Puerto Rico, affecting airspace due to the aircraft’s aircraft. administration in the Caribbean. The weather in Boston was also expected to cause problems later that day, and it was determined that another call would be held to develop an action plan for that.

At its core, the command center manages scarcity. There are only so many runways available at major US airports on the best weather days. Add low-visibility weather or some other situation – e.g. a presidential “movement” asking flight traffic to stop at an airport – and that scarce resource becomes more scarce. The plane has to be stretched more, and the whole system will slow down – or the last resort is to stop. A similar situation occurs at higher altitudes when a major storm affects the number of routes air traffic controllers allow for their aircraft.

When there’s weather – or any other type of situation that could reduce the number of guests that can arrive – managers work with airlines and others to determine what kind of tools they will use to reduce traffic speed. They also have to decide to what extent the traffic will slow down, known as “speed”.

“Proportion has always been a matter of contention, underscoring the tension between different stakeholders at the command center that can sometimes arise,” says Citrola.

Some tools – known as traffic management initiatives and sometimes called “programs” – can be invisible to passengers and are the first choice of command center staff. Flights may be delayed en route to the airport or rerouted according to the weather to reduce airport arrival rates. While passengers may arrive at the gate a few minutes late, the overall disruption is minimal.

Then there are more breakthrough solutions, such as the “ground delay” program. That’s when traffic to an affected airport is kept on the ground at its departure airport and not allowed to leave until a specific time. The computer will assign these times to achieve the desired arrival rate. Then there is the aforementioned “ground stop”, when flights to the affected aerodrome are held on the ground at their departure aerodrome; they don’t get new departure times until the stop is up and running. Ground stops are often short-lived and become grounding delay programs.

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Command center staff always prefer something less disruptive if possible, Dotterer said. No one likes it when people are forced to sit on the ground two hours late, he noted.

Space launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida are nothing new – they have been successful since launch. Discoverer 1 in 1958. What was new was the frequency of the launches. Due to the proliferation of private space launch companies – especially SpaceX – launches have been steadily occurring. In fact, launches happen so often that the FAA officially cites them as one of the causes of air traffic delays in Florida.

When a rocket is launched – from Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or elsewhere – the airspace must be closed for safety reasons. The command center coordinates the closure of that airspace and determines exactly where the closure will be. Those managing the space efforts work directly upstairs from the main room of the command center in a room called the Challenge Room; It is dedicated to the seven astronauts who perished on the space shuttle in 1986.

Inside the Challenge Room, which opened in 2018 as conventional space missions ramped up, are two rows of desks where staff monitor air traffic and rockets in real time during launch.

“To say this is a special room is an overstatement,” said Duane Freer, director of space operations at the FAA’s Air Traffic Foundation.

The big innovation is FAA Spatial data integrator – a tool that debuted last year and allows the FAA to receive telemetry directly from a commercial launch operator. SpaceX, by far the most frequent launchpad, is now integrated. The agency is working with other launch data providers like Blue Origin to add them to the system. With SDI, the FAA can help manage airspace launches and support in real time.

Previously, Freer said, the focus was on safety, not effectiveness. Before the FAA takes on more active roles, it will free up the airspace for the range – the US Air Force – in chunks. The FAA can now proactively manage airspace from the Challenge Room and take a more precise approach to closing the airspace without compromising safety. What used to be an hour-long process has, in some cases, been reduced to airspace closure in just eight minutes: five minutes before launch and three minutes after.

Freer spoke specifically about how the agency has partnered with SpaceX and, with its many trusty Falcon 9 rocket launches, has narrowed down some of the danger zones associated with those launches. safe.

Without a doubt, the Challenge Room-based space operations team will grow in importance – and see workloads increase – as the commercial launch industry continues to grow.