Today’s Regulators

In some countries air traffic control is run by the military. In others, civilian air traffic controllers may work for the gov­ernment or for a privatized company. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the national agency responsible for civil­ian aircraft and air safety in the United States. It sets the rules for all commercial aircraft operators and private pilots fly­ing in U. S. airspace. The FAA also certi­fies pilots. Air traffic controllers must undergo a training course before they, too, are certified by the FAA.

The FAA runs a network of twenty Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) across the continental United States. Most centers are named for major cities—although located outside them—

and they are identified by a code. Center code names are prefixed by the letter K, followed by a three-letter identifying tab, such as KZBW (Boston) and KZAU (Chicago). There are also centers outside the continental United States in Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The Air Traffic Control System Command Center over­sees the national picture.

National airspace is the air above a nation’s territory, which may include stretches of ocean. Each ARTCC has responsibility for its own area, and some have responsibility for airspace over international areas of ocean, allocated to them by the ICAO. (Much of the airspace above oceans, however, is not controlled by any one nation.)

Each center takes charge of an air­plane from the time the pilot enters its area until the airplane is handed off to the next control center. Near the end of its flight, usually at a distance of 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the airfield, the plane is handed over to an air traffic controller at the airport terminal for landing.