Socal Tracon

Southern California ATC facilities consolidate

When the FAA makes plans for consolidation, pilots tend to brace for the worst. In part, that's due to the agency's controversial consolidation and closure of many flight service stations. Particularly in Alaska, where the weather can be both fierce and capricious, the shuttering of outlying FSSs is considered by the local pilots as the work of an unresponsive government run amok. These cost-cutting measures have met with steadfast opposition.

Thankfully, another of the FAA's consolidation efforts may well strike pilots more favorably. Early in 1994, the FAA began gathering several terminal radar approach control facilities (tracons in the FAA vernacular) from their far-flung locales in Southern California and consolidating them into one spanking-new facility. Located on 13 acres of U.S. Navy land on the outskirts of Miramar Naval Air Station in northern San Diego County, the Southern California Tracon represents, according to its keepers, a blueprint for the ATC system of the future.

Certainly Socal Tracon, to use its on-air moniker, looks the part. The handsome facility encompasses five formerly separate tracons — Burbank, Los Angeles, Coast, Ontario, and San Diego. At the time of our visit, three of the facilities had moved in. Ontario made its move in early April, and San Diego is slated to hit the moving vans in September.

Under one roof lies some 115,000 square feet of radar room and office space, workplace for 421 air-traffic personnel (three-quarters of whom are at full-performance level) and 70 airways facilities employees. Ultimately, Socal could support a work force of 500.

At first blush, Socal Tracon impresses — it's open, airy, and welcoming. Or, seen another way, Socal's new digs are a very long way from the usual FAA-facility image — something along the lines of a rejuvenated Quonset hut with barricade-green furniture and a folding card table in the break room. Indeed, Socal Tracon is the crown jewel to the air traffic and airways facilities folks. But what does the consolidation mean beyond new desks and refurbished scopes in a fresh-faced building?

Quite a lot, actually. We spoke with several controllers and administrative personnel at Socal Tracon, and the majority opinion is that the move has been a good one. Sure, we heard the occasional grumble from the unfortunate few who had purchased houses in the greater Los Angeles area, only to be bitten by the slumping real-estate values. But far more staffers claim to be happier in the still-growing northern San Diego area, and pleased to find lower housing and general cost-of-living expenses. For most, the physical move to San Diego has been a positive, welcome one. Staffers are proud of such Socal Tracon amenities as the 7,000-square-foot day care center and the on-site credit union office.

And yet the consolidation of facilities at Socal hasn't changed the face of Southern California's airspace. While division of sectors in the area goes unchanged, the overall coverage remains daunting. Socal's authority will stretch from north of the San Fernando valley to the Mexican border, from the ground (or the upper reaches of the Class D or tower airport areas) to 12,000 feet MSL. (There are working-group proposals to increase Socal's chunk of sky to 17,000 feet.) Right now, call it 18,000 square miles of airspace, give or take some newsworthy seismic event. So much airspace contains a real melting pot of air traffic — with airliners, military operations, and an impressive array of general-aviation flights. The FAA estimates that Socal's airspace contains more than 15,000 airplanes based at 46 airports, flying through six areas of Class C airspace, and two decidedly nonstandard Class B complexes. Some three million instrument operations take place every year.

For the time being, sectors and controllers will continue as before; in fact, the vast majority of controllers are working the same sectors, alongside the same colleagues, as they did when the facilities were separated by miles of freeway rather than a few yards of radar displays. Inside Socal, controllers who used to work for Coast Approach, for example, still refer to themselves by that facility's name — as a sort of shorthand to describe the airspace for which they are responsible. Such social fragmentation troubles Socal's administrators, but the controllers are the first to admit that the inclination to separate themselves by former facility titles is, by and large, waning.

Operationally, the individual facilities might as well be in different buildings. Handoffs between controllers, for example, occur just as they did when the facilities were separate. For a handoff to someone within your facility, it's often as simple as leaning over to the next scope. But for someone across the room — say a flight gets handed off from what was Los Angeles Approach to Burbank's airspace — it's still done by intercom and, occasionally, with crafty negotiation.

If the sectors remain as they were before the consolidation, why the bother? Turns out, at this early stage Socal has created more of a social gain than anything purely systemic. Today, controllers from adjoining sectors — but still in different "facilities" — can sit down over lunch and complain about or issue praise for another's work. For the controllers we interviewed, the face-to-face connection represents the single greatest gain of the consolidation. It has, they say, promoted a kind of cooperation and willingness to tackle problems informally, without FAA or NATCA (National Air Traffic Controllers Association) union representatives having to step into the affair.

Socal breaks from FAA convention in other ways. NATCA representatives maintain offices only steps away from the air traffic facility managers in the administrative wing. Indeed, Assistant Air Traffic Manager Gary Fay is a frequent visitor to the office of Mark Peacox, NATCA's Socal Local president. It's clear from their interaction that labor/management stereotypes are just that. Controllers in residence speak highly of both the union's representation and the open relationship forged with management. Grievances, they say, are for the most part quickly and equitably handled, with far less of the go-through-channels filibustering of the past.

While Socal Tracon's management philosophy breaks ground, little of the equipment used by controllers does. Walk downstairs to the equipment room and you'll see the mainframe computers wearing Sperry Univac nameplates that crunch raw radar returns into the scope images. Some of the equipment, all refurbished before installation at Socal, dates back 20 years or more. Still, the FAA is not as mired in the past as is commonly thought; there is an ongoing program to update the mainframes to something more recent. We saw one rack of newer equipment that performed the same functions as the old, while consuming only 10 percent of the space.

Look carefully around the facility and you'll see many personal computer-based subsystems in use. For instance, controllers have airport and weather information available at the push of a mouse, thanks to a slick PC-based program. In the administration wing's simulation lab, desktop computers play center stage as training devices. Running a commercial program called Tracon Pro, controllers transferring from other facilities or changing sectors can experience what they say is a surprisingly realistic simulation.

You will find the real action upstairs on the second floor, in the 27,000-square-foot operations wing. This tracon looks like every movie version of an air-traffic control facility, only it's darker than you expect, and quieter. Controllers bask in the eerie glow of radar screens and dim reading lights. Unless you stand next to them, you can't hear what's being spoken into the headsets. Even during slightly lax periods (we say "slightly" because in Los Angeles it's busy pretty much all the time), the floor feels charged with electricity.

Between the long rows of screens — there are 48 positions — are the supervisors' stations. On our visit, part of which coincided with the afternoon departure rush out of Los Angeles International, most of the supervisors were up and out of their seats, helping working controllers manage the tremendous flow of traffic.

Along one wall of the facility, perpendicular to the rows of radar screens, are stations for the traffic management unit, which coordinates Socal's flow of traffic with the towers in its jurisdiction, as well as with the adjoining ATC centers. Further along the row is the area manager's desk, and just beyond is the maintenance control station manned by the airway facilities crew.

Given that some of the radar equipment is old enough to vote, it's surprising that the controllers gripe mostly about the communications equipment. Dedicated telephone trunk lines carry digitized voice transmissions to remote transceivers. High-speed modems carry the signal at better than 57,000 bytes per second, four times faster than the common PC modem. Still, the controllers complained about breakdowns and interruptions in service. Naturally, the staff charged with maintaining the hardware and software has been burning the midnight oil, massaging the system's kinks.

Pilots dealing with Socal Tracon naturally focus on the controllers and their handiwork, but much more goes on behind the scenes. Socal's equipment wing, for example, stocks a combination of storage batteries and diesel generators that make it independent of the power grid. This means that in the event of natural or manmade calamities, Socal will remain on the air, keeping the metal apart. Computerized load- shedding equipment will turn off the lights and air conditioning in the administrative wing long before a single bulb dims on the operations floor. Impressive stuff.

As much as the facility itself shows that the FAA is willing to spend the money on future expansion, the real story here centers on the social. Controllers in the unified facility already say that cooperation among them has never been better and that as the consolidation is completed, it ought only to improve. What's more, the FAA is fast at work on proposals to recast the airspace and redefine the boundaries. That's when the pilots in Southern California will begin to notice the differences. In this case, the FAA has the pieces in place well ahead of time, with a sparkling, impressive new facility to show for it, too.