Nearly two-thirds of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 15,000 current air traffic controllers will have retired by 2017. The mandatory retirement age is 56, and controllers were hired by the thousands in the early ’80s after President Ronald Reagan fired the previous controllers for going on strike.
Thus, a whole bunch of trainees need to get up to speed, in an industry that hasn’t needed to train many new employees for decades. To meet this challenge, the FAA is turning to games with a serious purpose — what one instructor has dubbed “a big Xbox”:
Officials say they are hoping that the use of the simulators will cut training time 20 percent to 60 percent. Training costs average $74,000 a controller but vary widely, being higher for the busiest, most complex airports.The agency has used simulators for radar training for years, but it recently began installing simulators for control towers. O’Hare International Airport in Chicago has one, and others will be scattered around the country.
At the academy, six simulators run about 18 hours a day, but the F.A.A. also continues to use its old training method, built around a plywood airport model on a table in the middle of a classroom.
Trainees simulate flights by carrying model planes around the room and following instructions from a controller. Masking tape on the floor, marked with handwritten numbers, represent miles from the end of the runway.
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The screening process for candidates has gone high-tech, too. In the 1990s the F.A.A. developed a six-hour computerized aptitude test that it refines from time to time. Recruits must answer geometry questions and solve math problems in their heads — for example, if a plane travels a certain number of miles in 90 minutes, what is its groundspeed, in miles per hour?Then come game-like tests, designed by psychologists. In one, a bit like Tetris or Frogger, three parallel belts, running at different speeds, drop colored letters toward the bottom of the screen. The test-taker must try to grab each letter before it drops, and put it in a bin of the appropriate color. The player also has to drag the bins into place, and when the supply runs low, order more bins.
The hard part comes when the screen disappears and the computer asks questions like: How many bins were in use? How full were they? What letters were still on the belts?
Scoring well on the test is supposed to reveal the qualities that make a good air traffic controller, including the ability to work under pressure and maintain “situational awareness.”
Another game simulates actual air traffic. A screen shows a box that holds two airports, each with a single runway, useable in a single direction. The box also has four exits. Planes appear randomly, each bound for an airport or an exit.
The controller must assign the planes a speed, an altitude and a heading. The planes are allowed to exit only at high altitude, and to land only from low altitude and low speed.
When the game ends, the computer calculates how long the planes flew compared to a theoretical minimum, how many made it through the correct gates, how many crashed into the walls at the edges of the box and how many were directed too close to one another.
The test is intended to measure short-term and long-term memory, thinking ahead, multitasking, flexibility, tolerance for interruptions, and composure.
Academy students are also given a hyperactive version of Pac-Man to play in their spare time. The idea is to keep students’ skills sharp, instructors say, and hone their ability to watch several targets at a time.