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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I am really curious about how the structure works. Do they get to take frequent breaks, and how do you hand over during breaks and shift changes. I imagine they must have constant overlap and not abrupt handovers? I don't know... I find it interesting and unsettling at the same time.
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I controlled at Edmonton Centre, they do from the Montana border to the north pole, west to Alaska and east to basically Hudson Bay.
Normally it was one hour on, one hour off. When you came back to the ops floor to takeover a position, you sat and observed for a couple minutes, then you plugged in and got a briefing from the guy leaving; when you're satisfied he unplugs and goes for break.
Sometimes you would sit for 90 minutes. I couldn't imagine doing something like DCA or LGA tower for more than an hour, I sure hope those guys don't have to do 90 min.
The high pace thing is very true, but there's certain things you're always listening for and the transmissions are generally in the same sequence so it's far easier than it seems. On a busy frequency, there simply isn't time for everyone to be talking at a normal conversational pace. This doesn't apply at a control tower, but for us at Edmonton the airspace is so large that you'd be working combined sectors and 6 different frequencies at once, so 2 guys would be talking to me at the same time but they can't hear each other because they're so far apart.
If I was saying "Air Canada 851 heavy, when ready descend flight level 290" the first portion of that I'm saying at the warp speed you describe, then I would slow way down to say "two niner zero" to the point that those three numbers take the same amount of time as the entire first part... but everybody has their own cadence.