![]() In 1998, Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead called the program - then known as Familiarization Training - "deeply flawed." Controllers used the program as a pretense to get free travel to resorts and vacation destinations. "My goal right now is to keep it as a valuable learning tool. It was never designed or meant to be a vacation program or a perk," Boughn said. "I think they put the program right back where it should be. And you ought to know what those repercussions are.' so you realize that every time you push that microphone button and you give instructions to an airplane, it has repercussions in that cockpit. "I've been telling my trainees for a while, I've said, 'It would be great if you guys could get back up in the cockpit. That's where Boughn sequences high-altitude air traffic for arrival into three major airports - Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International - and a host of smaller ones.Ī seasoned, 27-year controller, Boughn said he participated in the FAA's old cockpit training program, and he welcomes the new one. "There's very few similarities between the two jobs, but they're so dependent on the other's ability to do the job," Boughn said.įor Boughn, the two jobs intersect when a pilot flies into Boughn's airspace - a block of sky some 100 miles wide, and stretching from Raleigh, North Carolina, almost to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pilots' offices are small, cramped, winged and mobile. Boughn works in a modern and very stationary building at a remote site in Virginia horse country. And I think it's critical for us to understand that."Ĭontroller Boughn said that, aside from a shared love of aviation, his job actually has little in common with the pilots he serves. "I really can't emphasize enough what it's like to get up there and have a feel for (a pilot's workload.) We're really two sides of a coin - the air controllers and the pilots. "It is very valuable training," said Garth Koleszar, the national training representative for National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), who has worked on the new program. ![]() The new program addresses both the security concerns and the abuses by strictly controlling access to flights and by clearly defining the intent of the program. At that time, the program was already under attack because of abuses by controllers who viewed the flights as perks and as a free way to travel. The Federal Aviation Administration is resurrecting the voluntary fly-along program after abruptly halting it on September 11, 2001, when security concerns stopped the program dead in its tracks. The fly-along, Boughn said afterwards, "was like the most valuable training I've ever received from the FAA." Any closer and he would have needed wings.īoughn (pronounced "Bonn") is among the first air traffic controllers to participate in Flight Deck Training - an FAA program that puts controllers in the cockpit to teach them about life "on the other side of the frequency." It is, he says, like being a chef who has cooked for decades, but never sees his customers or tastes his own food.Īll of that changed recently when Boughn boarded a United Airlines B-757 and sat in a jumpseat directly behind the captain and first officer. Washington (CNN) - All day, almost every day, air traffic controller Chris Boughn talks to pilots.īut despite one pleasantry he frequently hears - "We'll see ya soon" - the high-altitude controller rarely sees a pilot or an aircraft. The fly-along revives a program ended after 9/11.Pilots and controllers get to see how the other half works. ![]()
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