By Xinyi Li, EDITOR

In the control tower of Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, the staff is like “air-traffic police”. Their labor intensity is indeed strong for nearly 1,000 flights take off and land here in rush hours every day. And 45 airplanes leave and enter the airport per hour. How to dispatch so many of them?

360-degree aerial view of the airport

The control tower is the highest building in the airport. From the geographical location, T3 tower is at the center of the whole site. It is 96.5 meters high, with 1,100 tons of reinforcing steel bars structuring the base. Both the height and usable area are in the front rank of its kind in China. The control office is in a round-shaped room, with the four-side walls equipped with windows. You can catch a 360-degree aerial view of the whole airport and observe the airplanes on parking aprons from here. According to the regulation, people getting in shall never take any electronic product like mobile phone and tablet computer. To avoid interference to the radio, they cannot take these devices in even on silent mode.

500 instructions in one hour

During the Spring Festival peak travel season, the tower gave 500 instructions at most per hour. The high-intensity labor might make people fatigued. However, different from others, the controlling staff needs to pay high attention at every second. They had to take a rest for two hours after two hours’ of routine work. Then, another group would take over the job.

Any mistake is possible to kill hundreds of people within several seconds. And it is not an overstatement to say the work needs much attention, like treading on thin ice.

The busiest hours at night

Common citizens may take a rest at night, while it is the busiest time for the control office. More flights are entering and leaving the airport at this moment.

The airport in the evening is very beautiful with the decoration of red, yellow, blue, and green lights on the airstrips. However, for air-traffic controllers, the color and locating the place of each light has their special meanings. They will guide the aviators to land the airplanes on required airstrips safely and accurately in the evening.

They are ramp indicator lights. In foggy days, the white light will be on to help the aviators judge the flying heights. If the airplane is too high, the light will turn whiter. Otherwise, it will turn reddish. In the control office, the staff adjusts a special machine to control these lights.

People use other instruments to monitor the wind directions and wind speeds and forecast the weather. Among them, the radar in front of the staff is the most important one. The green and blue spots scattering on the screen symbolize different flights. By clicking it, you will see much information including the airplane code, height, speed, direction, and targeted height. The red lines indicate the control areas, and the white ones represent the flight direction. From taking off to landing, all the airplanes are under the detection of the radar during the whole process.

Source: Chongqing Daily News