University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, April 29, 1988
9
High anxiety a part of air traffic controller's job
By JEFF KIOUS
Staff Reporter
As the Boeing 727 jettison lifted off from the airport, a jet slammed into the airport's control tower. TWA 485 you've got an unidentified aircraft coming out of the west between 10,000 and 10,000 feet.
Immediately, the flight engineer jumped from his seat and began searching the sky for the aircraft. The captain peered out of his wind窗. The copilot stood up from his
"St. Louis, I don't see anything, but we'll keen looking," the captain said.
A few moments later the control tower replied: "TWA 485, that identified aircraft has passed you. You're clear to climb to 220 (20,000 feet) and contact Kansas."
Strapping himself back into his seat, the flight engineer for the Kansas City-bound 485 explained that departure control handled all air traffic in the St. Louis area with a 10,000 foot crawl. Approximately 10,000 feet of the radar center control in Oakland.
Departure control kept us until 12,000 because of the traffic in the area," he said.
THE FLIGHT engineer said the aircraft had landed in flight rules. If the plane had been飞行的 IPR (instrument flight rules), the center could have picked it up and given flight 485 its own code.
In an effort to keep aircraft off collision courses, air traffic controllers must monitor not only altitude and direction of a flight, but also separate aircraft on the screen.
The Olathe traffic controllers monitor a nine-state area, including Kansas and Missouri. Kansas City Center is one of 20 cities in the nation that handle 1,000 aircraft each day. It handles about 5,000 flights each day.
The center's radar had been tracking the device. It was equipped with a navigational device, called a transponder, which allowed it to transmit a unique computer code to the device.
In addition to the transponder information, the Kansas City Center controllers also receive printed information about each aircraft in their sector. These documents are labeled, are printed 20 minutes in advance of failure by one of the center's two computers.
"You know the pressure's coming when the strips are piling up," said Sharon Childers, an ATC at the center. "You don't want to be hit by the hard traffic will be when it comes. One day it will be perfect, everything will fit neatly, and the next day it will be completely."
This computer assembles all flight information that has been filed by airlines and examines the data for potential conflict with other proposed traffic.
Another ATC, John Adams, said that sometimes the job was slow, simple and
boring, but that eventually the workload was certain to pick up.
"When I see the strips pile up my blood pressure goes up," he said. "Then it's hard to wind down after such a peak work load."
IN ADDITION to the strips, controllers follow radar blips on a vertical screen. This radar data comes from the aircraft's radar and sends it back to the computer on the screen by the captain's second computer.
Controllers at the center use this information to monitor all IFR aircraft in an area between Denver and Chicago and between Minneapolis and Dallas.
In addition to their sectors, controllers are responsible for keeping an aircraft within range of the control station. The controllers are responsible for all traffic up to 23,000 feet. High altitude controllers are responsible for flying at altitudes greater than 45,000 feet.
"We are busier than high altitude controllers because of the density of traffic in and around airports," Adams, a low altitude controller, said.
CONTROLLERS Look up for altitude conflicts between aircraft. Up to 29,000 feet there must be a 1,000 foot vertical separation between aircraft and five miles separation laterally. Above 29,000 feet there must be a 500-foot separation more than five miles separation laterally.
When an airplane's route takes it from one sector to another and hence, from one controller's sector to another's, a data block will flash on the screen of the new sector
until the controller accepts responsibility. The data block contains all the flight information.
A similar procedure was followed when eight 485 descended into Kansas City. A high-powered 485 data block to a low altitude controller in which turnumbled it to appraise control values.
If there had been any congestion problems in the area, the center would have delayed handing a plane over, directing it into a holding pattern.
CONFLICT AND traffic congestion problems arise, according to controllers, when IFR aircraft descend or ascend through airspace which has VFR aircraft. FVR aircraft are on visual flying patterns that are not required to talk to the center or tower.
"If a conflict occurred, we could give the IFR pilot a course around the VFR aircraft if he requested it," Adams said.
Controllers said that this type of uncertainty about the location of aircraft within their sectors caused job tension.
Because of this stress and tension, a second career program for ATC's was set up in 1972, according to Gary Eads, regional traffic controller for Traffic Controllers Organization (T-OPC).
Eads said the program was set up for controllers who, for medical reasons or because of other circumstances, position But Eads said the program funding was cut off in 1978 because of
BUT THE FAA said that the funding for the program ITADEC will receive from Office only in a budgetary reasons, according to Joe Noman, chief of union management relations for the FAA in New York.
mismanagement by the Federal Aviation Administration.
"The program provided a two-year training program for controllers who were not well trained. The managers of them were unsuited for various reasons including unsuitable training, so Congress didn't appreciate more money. The program was not meeting its objectives."
Another disagreement between PATCO and the FAA concerns an immunity program established by the FAA for controllers about five years ago. Before July 1979, a controller could make one mistake and be fired if he reported it, would go unpunished. Now a controller will be punished for every mistake.
A modified version of the program is pending in a rules committee before the House of Representatives. Eads said.
But the FAA terminated the original agreement because of an increase in mistakes, Noonan said, and because a "great many mistakes go unreported."
FADS SAID that last year's ruling by the FAA was illegal. There was a provision in the agreement that stated the immunity would not be chanched or eliminated.
Women's education said to aid social change
Rv BRIAN VON BEVERN
Staff Reporter
Women can use higher education as a valuable tool for social change, according to the executive director of the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault.
Margaret Jordan, also a former mayor of Oaxacan, was the featured speaker at the event. The program was organized by annual Women's Recognition Program. The program was co-sponsored by the University of Texas.
Jordan said part of the problem with creating social change was that people didn't know how they wanted society changed.
"There is not even agreement on what direction social change should take," she said.
THE SOCIAL change her group proposes is to let every person realize their potential.
That is why I have a great quarrel with
the present state of higher education," she said.
She said the system used in law schools four students who went straight through the "real world" without experiencing the "real world", without ever learning to put there information into practice, in police in the real world could use a year in law school to help them understand how the system works.
I think what we're beginning to realize is that if we have change, the best informed people in the world should make the decisions.
"When you consider at least one-fourth of our freshman class of legislators are contemplating not running again, obviously we must change our view of decision making.
""Education is the vehicle through which we allow the best of all this to happen to our people."
JORDAN SAID she was pleased with the
amount of career information available to students at KU, but warned that even the best education left gaps in the knowledge a student needs.
Comparing a college graduate to a popper, she said. "We all know a popper is inside you. You're going to need something else stuffed in your head."
But she emphasized the need for women to attend college.
Jordan, elected 10 years ago as the first woman mayor in Kansas since the turn of the century, has served women serving in elected governmental positions at the city level in Kansas at a
"It is an important idea that the women of KU get the same start off the launch pad as the men, so that in 20 years they can take a leading role in KU's programs and are run." Or said Jad.
That is the highest average of women offends of any state in the nation, she said.
She said it all stems back to the value of a college education.
"Celebrate what you can out of college now and in the future," she said. "It will do more than anything else to change your life."
ALEXANDRA MASON, director of the rare books collection of the Spencer University School of Medicine, the KU perceptual motor clinic for children with motor dysfunction; Evelyn DeGraw, professor of design and Gertie Gilda McCoy, associate professor of program MCCy, director of the Adult life Resource Center, joined 40 other women honored as outstanding women representatives of the Medical Education Society.
In another part of the program, five new members were inducted into the KU Women's Hall of Fame last night.
Also recognized at the program were:
JANET LINDSTRUM, Des Moines, Iowa
junior, outstanding woman student athletics;
Nancy Mims, Wichita senior, outstanding
Climate predictions hazy at best
student in women's rights/women's awareness; Malene Senicela, Lawrence sophomore, outstanding woman in student service; Tenny Feinstein, special student, for community services; Molly Lily, Singapore senior, outstanding woman in student service; Katherine Clellan, Nevada, Mo., junior, outstanding woman学生 in politics; Precia Briggs, Milford graduate student, outstanding woman in student service; administrative assistant to the dean of the School of Architecture, outstanding woman staff member; and Irene Wherritt, assistant teacher; and Portuguese, outstanding woman teacher.
The climes, they are a-changing.
Some scientists believe man's pollutants are causing a heating effect and some areize that the earth is cooling off.
Whatever the climate is doing, it is important enough to have caused Congress to take action. In addition, we need to keep watch over the world, according to Diane Johnson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, where a study was involved in the study of the chaunding climate.
The couples, they are embracing.
Ten years ago, much of the scientific community believed that the earth was heading into the threes of another ice age.
one proposet of the theory that the earth is gotten from NICEA meteorologist Jack L. Patterson, a former annual increase in the burning of fossil fuels this century would finally take its toll by the earth.
THE REAL AISO is a fear that pollution may be changing the climate, and the Senate has blocked legislation that would hearings this month to find out if increased burning of coal as an alternative to injections could help.
'My prediction, and that of many others, is that by the end of this century, it will be
Police said the car-related charges stemmed from Patterson's allegedly stealing a car from the 700 block of Vermont earlier in the evening. The car was owned by Williams, 28, and was valued at $200. Police recovered the vehicle, a 1925 Volkswagen.
By DON MUNDAY Staff Reporter
Not today's scientists are divided. Some say the earth is getting warmer, and some say it's getting cooler. Still others say there isn't enough evidence to tell for sure.
GEORGE WOODDELL, director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, who testified
Police arrested the man captured by Pinet, Richard Patterson, and charged him with obstruction of the legal process, aggravated the auto theft and assault that frightened him.
This could mean increased worldwide food production, but at the earth's poles the changes could be detrimental.
"Every one degree of extra warmth averages out to 10 extra days in the growing season," Kellogg said.
Although a rise of three degrees in world temperatures does not seem like much, many scientists feel it could have drastic effects upon the earth.
Kellog also said that with such a warm trend vegetation zones might shift northward, and changed precipitation and turn former breechbanks into deserts.
Kellogg said such a temperature increase would melt the polar ice caps enough to raise the sea level 20 feet by the year 2030.
warning to the point where the earth will be the warmest it's been in the last thousand years or so- and still heating up." Kellogg said.
BY THE MIDLE of the 21st century, he had, the average warm temperature that began through a process known as the greenhouse effect. According to that theory, increased sunlight would cause the atmosphere would let the same amount of sunlight through to the ground but would not allow heat to escape.
before the Senate committee earlier this month, said a warning trend could mean bad news for midwestern agriculture.
Bryson said that in the last 35 years, there has been an increase in volcanic activity and eruptions of lava. During World War II, Overall, he said, there have been more than 1,000 volcanic eruptions.
"Even a migration of the agricultural zones by 200 miles northward could be disruptive." Woodwell said.
Bryson said his theory had helped explain a significant drop in the temperatures in the upper midwest that lost the last several decades of rain in Minnesota indicate a relatively high dust
Patterson, who gave police a number of aliases in the process of booking, was in Douglas County jail yesterday with bond set at $19,000.
Rut Reid Bryson, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, questioned the assumptions used in the greenhouse effect theory.
The professor, Frank Pinet, 59, told police that he and his wife heard a noise in their house at 704 W. 12th St. at 1 a.m. When he met the police, he said, he found a man inside the home.
Sunlight does not penetrate this dust layer as well as through clear air, meaning cooler temperatures beneath the dust.
BRYSON THEORIZED that fluctuations in climate may be caused by varying amounts of volcanic dust in the atmosphere.
"Volcanic eruptions mean a thin layer of volcanic smoke or debris is put in the atmosphere over the earth," he said.
"None of these theories have been tested against reality," Bryson said. "They're just theories. My research has indicated that they are much smaller than is assumed by some."
KANSAN
Police Beat
A RKU professor of business detained a 19-year-old man who had allegedly broken into his house until police could arrest him Saturday.
If the world's climate is indeed dependent upon volcanic activity, he said, then the future of life in the world would warmer or cooler in the future would be impossible because there is no way to know.
content in the air about the time of the volcanic eruption that created the Crater Lake in Oregon some 5,600 years ago. A period of cooling followed the eruption, he said.
MAROTZ ALSO said that predicting a change in climate was unsure at best.
Some say climate may one day be determined by natural cycles of glacial periods.
Despite the enactment of the more stringent policy last year, Noonan said, "I can't recall someone being fired over an incident."
EAIDS SAID that controllers should work with the longer hours would also said the shorter hours would make UR controllers' working conditions similar to controllers in countries such as Canada and Japan.
Neonan said that the FAA had no control over salaries because they were set by Congress. He also said that the 40-hour work standard among all government agencies.
"We can't even make the weather forecasts more than three days in advance," he said. "And then they'll be cloudy. And then how can we predict climate accurately?"
Eads said that PATCO was interested in salary increases and a shorter work week requirement. He also classified between Government Status 10 to GS 14 Money and the controllers is GS 14 and the controllers is GS 14.
"We have just as great a responsibility as a pilot," Eaid says, "so our salaries should be competitive with theirs. Some of these 740 pilots make over $100,000 a year."
"At this time, the earth is in an interglacial period," Johnson said. "We know it’s been cold before and history shows periods of ice age when the world was not known but it will return to an ice age. We’re not sure we’re heading into the ice age or away from it."
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The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, Chi Omega Sorority and the March of Dimes would like to thank the following merchants for their prizes and efforts making this year's dance marathon one of the most successful.
Nelson's Team Electronics
Clothes Encounter
McCall's Shoes
Britches Corner
Horizon's Honda
Angler's Unlimited
Nabil's Restaurant
Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream
Horizon's Honda Mr. Guy Cassem's Clothing Eldridge House Gilbert/Robinson, Inc Tantalize Hardee's Restaurant KLZR Radio JB'S Big Boy
The Jay Shoppe
Thanks for all your help!