Tips on how to progress in ATC initial practical training
Based on some experience observing students learning skills to become air traffic controllers, I gave the following advice in a presentation to students who were about to start their practical phases in an initial Tower course.
Basically this is what I think a student should do in sequencial order to progress well in the practical part of training:
1 Learn the procedures well (because, if you don’t know what you should do, 1 you won’t stand a chance to do it well and 2 you will spend a lot of your mental capacity to think about what should be done).
2 Automate basic skills / practices as early as possible, such as:
- Talking on the frequency using correct phraseology, whilst manipulating strips
- Manipulating strips (writing information and reordering them) whilst taking action
- Follow up actions with necessary coordination.
3 Get into the custom (as I do not want to call it habit) of Scanning the strips, then the runway, then the air, to update your situational awareness and to make plans. Take action, and recommence with the scanning. Do this continuously.
4 Do not learn situation in boxes (meaning isolated from other situations) but more like pieces of a puzzle (meaning with those intruding and protruding bits which link with other pieces of a puzzle)
Meaning like this:
and not like this: 
5 In continuation with 4, continuously make links between situations. Continuously create your image by using pieces of the puzzle. This is what the controllers refer to as ‘ I have the picture’ meaning I know what is going on in my area of responsibility and I know what I need to do (what procedures to apply, which actions to take and in what order of priority).
6 Use logic and common sense. In air traffic control, procedures are applied for a reason. UNDERSTAND the reason before applying something, otherwise you are just parrot applying what you have been told.
7 And finally DO NOT LEARN situations or exercises by heart. Air traffic control is a complex system where the environment (weather, type of aircraft, technology, …) and different people (with different reaction rates, different situational contexts, etc.) interact continuously. Even if many situations resemble each other, no 2 situations are exactly the same, and it is enough for 1 parameter to change, e.g. delaying 1 aircraft, a wind change, different type of aircraft, etc. to have a complete different situation.
Learning situations by heart (and I know that many students fall into the temptation to learn parts of the examinations by heart based on what other students tell them – even if they have no guarantee that it is exactly the same exam that they will do) is most of the times DETREMENAL to your performance, because you stop acting by using your awareness, understanding and appreciation of a situation and start reacting mechanically to a scenario.
With these 7 tips, I hope that if you are a future student, you will have some more help as on how to learn effectively during practical training. If you are an instructor, maybe you can use some of these tips, or contribute by providing others.
And you, instructor, students, or controller alike, what do you think? Leave us a comment…
