November 411,

Cawthon Echo, point out approved, Arge.

When air traffic controllers are on the job, they have to be totally focused.

I recently saw that firsthand.

I watched controllers training at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City.

Number four or five, tank of whiskey you get airs.

For hours at a time, air traffic controllers watch these radar screens full of blinking dots.

Each dot represents an aircraft full of people.

Controllers are sometimes told to imagine their own family members are on board.

Number 755-f-fielo turn right heading number one-five-0-5-0-0-150 maintain.

They can't miss anything.

They actually have to train their eyeballs to constantly move around the screens, watching to make sure nothing goes wrong.

There's a special name for this

in the industry. Everyone talks about developing the scan. That's Ryan Higgins, a 34-year-old

dad of four. Back between 2019 and 2021, he was in training to become an air traffic controller.

At the academy, he would watch how veteran controllers kept track of

planes on the radar screen, how they developed their scans. Everyone has their own method.

Like a lot of people, it's like clockwise. Okay, I'm going to start up here and go around and

make a full 360 and then do it all over and over and over and over and over again. And who needs

something? What is this plane doing?

It's just a lot of, it's just a lot of juggling. It's just, you have to be very good at multitasking and just very quick to respond.

But in all the time that Ryan was in training, he never got enough practice to get comfortable with his own method.

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