Center Operations
Air traffic controllers working within a Center communicate via radio with pilots of instrument flight rules aircraft passing through the Center's airspace. A Center's communication frequencies (typically in the very high frequency amplitude modulation aviation bands, 118 MHz to 137 MHz, for overland control) are published in aeronautical charts and manuals, and will also be announced to a pilot by the previous controller during a hand-off.
In addition to radios to communicate with aircraft, Center controllers have access to communication links with other Centers and TRACONs. In the United States, Centers are electronically linked through the National Airspace System, which allows nationwide coordination of traffic flow to manage congestion. Centers in the United States also have electronic access to nationwide radar data.
Controllers use radar to monitor the progress of flights and instruct aircraft to perform course adjustments as needed to maintain separation from other aircraft. Aircraft with Center contact can be readily distinguished by their transponders. Pilots may request altitude adjustments or course changes for reasons including avoidance of turbulence or adverse weather conditions.
Controllers can assign routing relative to location fixes derived from latitude and longitude, or from radionavigation beacons such as VORs. See also Airway; VORs, Airways and the Enroute Structure.
Typically, Centers have advance notice of a plane's arrival and intentions from its pre-filed flight plan.
Read more about this topic: Area Control Center
Famous quotes containing the words center and/or operations:
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)