Health as one of the criteria of air traffic controller professional selection

No doubt, a person who would like to be an ATCO should have a good health. He must pass a lot of medical examinations. Having become an ATCO, he gets the Medical Certificate which must be renewed every two years. If an air traffic controller has got some problems with his health the Aero Medical Section decides whether Medical certificate should be issued or refused.

An air traffic controller’s job is very stressful and responsible. He is responsible for the safety of flights. Any condition causing pain, discomfort or irritation can distract an ATCO from his tasks and thus, affect safety.

According to European Air Traffic Management Programme there are a lot of medical certification requirements:

· Particular attention is paid to heart diseases. If a controller has any symptoms of heart diseases he should pass exercise electrocardiography and it should be investigated. It means that he shall have complete investigations. The ATCOs who have heart diseases are assessed as unfit.

· Psychiatric and psychological requirements are very important. If a controller has got any problem with his state of mind it can lead to unforeseen consequences. That is why, any progressive disease of the nervous system is disqualifying. A full investigation by a specialist must be made. The psychological evaluation is broad-based and includes medical history, life event history in addition to personality tests and psychological interview.

· A controller shall have a good vision and shall not possess any abnormality of the function of the eyes.

· An ATCO should take a routine Ear-Nose-Throat examination. Of course, he must have a perfect hearing, which is tested at all examinations; he must understand correctly conversational speech when tested with each ear at a distance of two meters from. In the event of any significant defect being found, an ATCO is sent to a specialist for further evaluation, if his hearing has improved and achieved a normal standard a controller is assessed as fit.

· Like any human being, ATCOs can have different kinds of diseases, among them asthma, pancreatitis, diseases connected with the stomach and liver and so on. ATCOs may be temporally assessed as unfit. Then, licence privileges may be resumed upon satisfactory confirmation of full recovery.

DISTRESS AND URGENCY MESSAGES

Any distress or urgency message must be as short, full and clear as possible. Every station received this kind of message should retransmit it to the ATC unit immediately and the controller must acknowledge it at once.

An emergency message is usually transmitted on frequency-in-use, but special emergency frequencies can also be used.

A distress message begins with the word “Mayday” pronounced 3 times and consists of:

1. ATC unit call sign;

2. identification of the aircraft;

3. nature of the distress condition;

4. intentions;

5. position, level and heading of the aircraft;

6. any other useful information.

All station received the message should monitor the frequency and the controller will impose radio silence with the phase: “STOP transmitting”, addressed to all or one particular station.

When the aircraft is no longer in distress, it cancels Mayday.

The controller cancels silence with phase “Distress traffic ended”. It means resuming of normal communication operations.

Urgency message starts with signal “PAN PAN’ 3 times and includes:

1. ATC unit call sign;

2. identification of the aircraft;

3. the nature of urgency;

4. intentions;

5. other useful information.

Urgency messages have priority over other except distress messages. Nobody may interrupt them.

THE MYSTERIOUS BLACK BOX

There is a story that is retold whenever a plane crash hits the headlines; if only the aircraft were made of the same material as the black box, then everybody would survive. The legendary invincibility of the famous box is familiar to most of us. Yet for such a well-known object, it is remarkably mysterious. How many of us know that the “black” box is in fact painted fluorescent orange?

“It was originally called a black box in the days when anything to do with electronics was new and strange” explains Pete Cook from a flight recorder manufacturer. “They are painted orange nowadays to make them more easily visible in the event of a crash”.

There are two kinds of black box; the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Both are normally stored at the rear of an aircraft, where the fuselage meets the upper tail fin – the part of planes that has the best survival record. The same principle applies to human passenger – you are safer at the back.

Despite their reputation, neither box is in fact indestuctible. However, they can withstand a temperature of 1,100°C for 30 minutes and 250° for 10 hours. They must also be able to survive an impact force of 3,500g – that is 3,500 times the force of gravity.

To take this kind of strain, flight recorders are encased in two thicknesses of titanium. Memory chips hold the flight data.

While FDRs make an electronic record of a plane’s mechanical performance, CVRs record the communication between the crew. “After a crash in water, they send out a sonar “ping” so that they can be found”, says Cook. But they are still only recovered in 80 per cent of accidents”.