Hi there, I’m just curious what type of schooling for the Real World ATC? Any help is greatly appreciated. TIA.
Air Traffic Controller schools are extremely intense and have a very high attrition rate. ATCs have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession because the stress level of the job is so high. Most air traffic controllers currently working in the civilian world were once military controllers. Although I am sure there are civilian schools I do not know where. What I’ve said here is what I learned from a roommate back when I was still in the Navy. Probably not much help and I apologize.
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Hi, Thanks so much for explaining about the stress of the job…
I would imagine one of the stressful jobs out there, is it breaks every 60 to 90 minutes
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Give it a try in the sim world with VATSIM, they have a very good academy for virtual ATC.
For real training there are several specialized academies that runs the training and courses to get the certification, linked with the national ATC organization (varies between countries). You need to do the exams and the practicals with them. Like becoming a pilot is a matter of training, perseverance and enjoyment.
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I’ve been a civilian Air Traffic Controller since 1995. I did my training with NATS in the UK and in 1997 was posted to Terminal Control at the London ATC Center. I left the UK in 2004 and moved to Toronto where I have worked for NavCanada in the YYZ ACC since.
The problem with ATC is that really its a series of skills that have to be taught so at least as far as the UK and Canada go all the training is provided by the service provider. The best recommendation would be to look up the qualifications required in your country and go from there. Generally a number of grades are required which can usually be in any subjects.
The recruitment process will be searching for certain types of people and will be honed towards targeting certain skills.
Obvious ones are deciciveness, quick thinking, ability to work under pressure, teamwork and usually some basic aviation knowledge.
The training in the UK and Canada are both designed to take someone off the street who has no knowledge of aviation and end up with them licensed. The vast majority of my colleagues on my ATC course in Bournemouth had absolutely no aviation background and more than a few of them had zero aviation background knowledge when they started.
I would not stress too much about schooling. The key is to shine in the recruitment process. I would absolutely try and arrange a visit to a nearby unit (if possible) and speak to the controllers there. You will get lots of good advice and information.
Let me know which country you are in and I’ll see if I can help a bit more.
Going to address some of the other points raised in this thread so far:
1: It is true that ATC training has a massive drop out rate. There is a lot to learn and success at the end of the day comes down to aptitude. You either acquire the skills and unique demands of the job or you don’t. Go into it with your eyes open, success rates are around 30-50% depending on country and unit.
2: It is not true that ATC has a high suicide rate. There are many other lines of work that are far higher, I would say the rate is pretty much in line with national averages. A lot of the talk about stress is urban legend. It has moments of extreme pressure sure, usually when thunderstorms move in, but stress is when you let pressure become too much. Controllers are very normal people for the most part. We become experts at switching off. We enjoy our plentiful time off and never have to worry about deadlines on emails from the boss late on a Friday evening.
I’ve found as I hit my mid-40s that shift work (especially midnights) is harder than the job. Once you get some experience and get good at the job it really slows down. Much like elite athletes talk about how the game slows down or they get in a zone, that’s kind of how we operate when it gets really busy.
3: In most countries almost no civil controllers are ex-military. In Terminal Control London when I was there, maybe 5% at most were ex-Military. Here in YYZ the number is less than a handful out of around 160 controllers. Some countries might be very different (Brazil for example ATC is provided completely by the Military) but most countries I know of where the ATC provider is a civil organisation almost all controllers come through their own training program.
In reality evidence has shown that a lot of ex-Military guys really struggle with the conversion. It’s quite different from what the guys in the Military do.
4: Breaks depend on the unit and the country you work in. In the UK the legal limit it 2 hours in position followed by a minimum 30 minute break. In Terminal Control we often did 1 hour working with 30 mins off, but on days where we were tight on staff it could be up to 90 minutes working with a 30 minute break. We would often get paged back off breaks too because of a traffic spike. The supervisors had to ensure that the full break was taken without breaking the time rules so they often had to do some serious juggling of people!
On midnight shifts the rules are much more relaxed, we would work much longer and grab a toilet break when there were no planes.
In Canada again we are limited to work no more than 2 hours during non-midnight operations with at least a 20 minute break. On midnights we can work up to 3 hours.
It is without doubt the best job in the World and I would highly encourage anyone to go for it. You don’t have to be a forceful Type A personality (in fact its generally discouraged - being able to work in a team is absolutely critical in this job) and we have all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Some are ex-pilots, some came straight from university, one was an ex-CFL pro football player. There is no magic formula for success, you just have to be able to work really darn hard, put 100% effort in, listen to what you are told and pick up the skills as you go along.
I can’t think of a single controller I have ever worked with who didn’t enjoy the job and would have walked away to do anything else.
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Hi, Thanks so much for taking the time to explain everything…
FAA has an application process for new civilians. It includes training.
https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/faa_academy/technical_training/air_traffic/
While we’re at it, maybe we can send MSFS ATC to training as well 
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I did a podcast on my YouTube channel with a retired Air Traffic Controller a few months ago. It’s about an hour long but he talks about the process of becoming a controller, education, what the job is like, etc. The video is bookmarked so you can skip around to the parts that interest you. The first 20-25% is most likely what you would be interested in the most. Air Traffic Controller Interview - Podcast - YouTube
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