The Planning Tool: Staying Ahead of the Traffic
Last week I talked about scanning, and how it's a tool you'll use from the Academy for the rest of your career.
This week we're adding another foundational tool to the tool belt: the planning tool.
It's all about staying ahead of the traffic.
As an air traffic controller, you use this tool every day. I use it every day. In time, you won't even think about using it. It just becomes part of who you are as a controller. But if you're just starting out, or you're thinking about this career, it may not be something you're good at yet. You may not have even thought about it yet. That's okay. That's what we're here for.
I want to start with a very famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, and you've probably heard it:
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
That's a big part of why this tool matters so much.
You have to plan constantly as a controller, because the traffic always changes.
It never stops.
That's one of the great things about this career, and one of the challenging things about it.
Scanning Gives You the Picture. Planning Gives You the Action.
Last week we talked about scanning: keeping your eyes moving and continually updating your picture, one aircraft at a time.
In the beginning, it really is one airplane versus one airplane versus one airplane.
With experience, you start to group them, two or three here, two or three there.
Planning goes hand in hand with that.
There's a reason you scan.
You're trying to figure out what's happening, what's changing, what's going to happen next, and most importantly, what am I going to do about it?
That last question is today's tool.
Scanning keeps your picture current.
Planning turns that picture into action.
Put the Airplanes Where You Need Them
When you scan, you're looking at where the aircraft is.
When you plan, you're figuring out where it's going and where you need it to go.
When I was training at Fort Worth Center, one of the harder sectors was a high-altitude arrival sector into DFW. It was definitely the hardest one in my specialty. We took airplanes from Memphis Center and sometimes Kansas City Center, two or three lines of them, and sequenced them into one line for the low-altitude controller, who fed them into approach control.
One of my first trainers told me, "Put the airplanes where you need them to be."
It sounds so simple, and it took me a while to figure out what he meant.
At some point in your career, you'll be doing exactly that.
As you gain experience, you'll figure out the easiest way to put them there.
That's a lot of what training, and then time as a CPC, will do for you. You'll do it regularly, and eventually almost without thinking.
So how do you get to the point where you see two airplanes becoming a problem ten minutes ahead, instead of one or two minutes ahead?
The earlier you recognize what's coming, the more choices you have for dealing with it.
That takes your scan, and it takes planning.
In that sequencing scenario, you may not choose the exact heading that puts a guy exactly where you want him. But you put him in a general area, at a safe altitude. When you're merging two or three lines into one, you really have to aim these airplanes at each other. You turn the ones from the south toward the north, and the ones from the north toward the south, and get them to meet in the middle of your sector at different altitudes.
That's the key.
You turn one and give him a safe altitude.
You turn another and give him a safe altitude.
You start with the lowest guy and get him as low as you can, then the next, and so on.
If two airplanes are at the same altitude and you can't descend them, you can't aim them at each other.
You have to do something else, like wait to turn them.
That's the constant planning that goes into running a sector.
Know What You'll Say Before You Key the Mic
This next part goes all the way back to the Academy.
You want to have a plan before you key the microphone.
At the beginning of your career, that may not happen.
You may key up and still be figuring out what you're going to say.
That's where practice comes in.
When you become fluent in the language of ATC, you key the mic and the plan in your head just comes out over the air. When you get to that point, ATC gets a lot easier.
Not easy, but a lot easier than constantly thinking about how to say something and how to tell this guy what you need him to do. That's why this goes back to the phraseology tool.
Know what you want to say, and know what you want to accomplish, before you key the microphone. The clearance or instruction you give a pilot is part of your plan, and knowing it ahead of time does several things for you:
- It reduces unnecessary transmissions.
- It reduces corrections. If you're constantly correcting yourself, pilots have less and less confidence in you.
- It reduces hesitation. That also erodes a pilot's confidence.
Unnecessary transmissions, corrections, and hesitation all tie up your frequency, and you end up with what we call frequency congestion. The whole point of the phraseology developed between controllers and pilots, and between controllers and other controllers, is to avoid it.
There will still be times when you get really busy and two airplanes call you at once, or you're calling one while someone else is calling you. It gets congested, and your workload goes from busy to ultra-busy.
That's why it matters so much to cut out unnecessary transmissions and corrections.
It all goes back to knowing what you're going to say before you say it.
Planning and sticking to that plan can also make you sound more confident, because you've already decided what you're going to accomplish with each transmission.
You don't actually have to know what you're doing. You just have to sound like you do. When you do, pilots follow you. They think, This person knows what they're doing, and if they tell me to do something, I'm going to do it.
They'll answer you quickly, and you can move on to the next thing.
Think More Than One Move Ahead
Eventually you'll get to the point where you're planning more than one move ahead.
You'll have to, in order to certify in most positions at most facilities.
It's a little like chess.
The best chess players have played out the game three or four moves ahead. They know where they want the game to go, and they know where their opponent is probably headed. That's why so many top-level games end in draws unless somebody makes a mistake. They're both planning so far ahead. It's almost like they are paying tic-tac-toe instead of chess. One of them has to make a mistake before someone can win.
In ATC, the pilots are waiting for you to tell them what to do.
It's really a one-sided chess game.
You're the one playing, and they're the pieces.
You move them where you need them, when you need them there.
If you want another game to compare it to, think of 3D Tetris where there's no game over and no "try again."
You have to win.
We don't talk about it much as controllers, but deep down, people's lives depend on the moves we make. That doesn't mean every move is perfect. It means our moves are good enough, consistently enough, that everybody gets home safely.
That's the goal.
So you'll get to where you're planning two moves ahead, then three or four. What do I need to do with this aircraft? If I do this, what's next? And what's next after that?
You Need a Plan B (and C, D, and E)
Here's the catch.
Plan A doesn't always work out.
Sometimes Plan B doesn't either, or C, D, and E.
Something changes.
Weather changes.
One pilot sees a cloud formation he doesn't want to be anywhere near and starts deviating.
In an arrival sector, that means everybody has to deviate, because everybody has to follow the guy in front of them.
A pilot turns left instead of right.
A low-altitude arrival pops onto your scope from the low-altitude controller, and now you have to fit it in with your arrivals.
A pilot takes longer to turn than you expected, so you can't turn the guy behind him as quickly because he's following.
It's very seldom that Plan A works all the way through.
So you have to have a Plan B.
But you can't have a Plan B if you never had a Plan A.
Constantly ask yourself: If this doesn't work, what am I going to do next? (We'll talk more about this in an upcoming tool, adaptability).
This is an ever-changing puzzle, and you have to be able to adapt.
But Don't Over-Plan
Having said all that about Plan A, B, C, and D, there's another side to it: don't over-plan.
Once you have a plan, start working it.
Planning ahead doesn't mean predicting every possible thing that could happen in the next 10, 15, or 20 minutes.
If you plan too much, you create your own quagmire.
You get stuck in planning mode and never do what you need to do.
Plan far enough ahead to give yourself options, but stay connected to the actual picture your scan is giving you. That picture determines whether your plan works. Going back to last week, you're constantly scanning while you plan and while you do.
And remember: planning without action is just a wish.
We're talking about making a plan, doing it, using your scan to make sure it's working, and then building a new plan from the new picture.
Building the Tool Across the Four Levels
Some of you are probably thinking, Tom, I'm just thinking about becoming a controller. How can I work on this before I'm even in the career?
Level 1: pre-Academy.
Planning is something you can practice outside the ATC world. What are you planning for? Studying and learning, certainly. If you have a date at the Academy, you need a plan for when you'll get there, how you'll get there, and how it'll be paid for. You want a plan for managing your time. And, as I've said many times in this blog, you need a plan for dealing with a bad day, because you'll have more than a couple of them at the Academy.
Start developing the habit of thinking and planning ahead before you ever talk to an airplane. If you've built those habits ahead of time, Level 2 will be easier.
Level 2: the Academy.
You're not planning four or five moves ahead here. In non-radar, you're looking one, maybe two moves ahead. Non-radar tells you what to focus on at the next moment, but eventually you'll anticipate calls. You see that this guy is estimated at this time, and it's almost that time, so he should be calling. How am I going to deal with that?When you get into radar, tower, and TRACON, you're looking maybe three moves ahead.
In the tower, it sounds like this: This guy's on final, three miles out, so I can clear this guy for takeoff. Who's the next guy waiting to take off? Is anyone departing on a parallel runway I need to keep separated? Is there an arrival still rolling out? Do I need to wait to clear this guy until the arrival clears the runway? I'll tell him to contact ground. He's off the runway. Now I can clear this guy. I'm looking at the arrival. He's good. You're looking ahead and planning.
The thing is, for a lot of people the Academy is their first experience with this. The habit isn't ingrained. You've developed it over weeks or months, not years, so you have to think about it constantly. That's part of what makes the Academy so hard. If you've set the base before you get there, building those habits at the Academy gets easier. At the Academy, you'll also keep asking: How am I going to study? How will I manage my time? How will I deal with a bad day, and recover when something doesn't go the way I wanted? Your instructors will give you tips along the way.
Level 3: your first facility.
Now planning gets more complex. It's real traffic, so it isn't scripted. You have to work in weather and pilot requests. At the Academy those were all scripted. Now you never know what pilots will ask for. You have changing traffic, coordination, and local procedures to plan around, and you're worrying about other controllers as well as pilots.
Your plan has to become both stronger and more flexible. Anyone who works with materials that need to be strong and flexible will tell you that isn't an easy combination. It isn't in air traffic control either, but you'll develop it. Keep taking what happens each day and run it through the success cycle: learn from it, adapt, and try something else if it didn't work. If something did work, I'd keep a journal and write it down. It may not work in every situation, but it's something to add to your tool belt.
In training, you'll start looking three, four, maybe even five steps ahead. As you get closer to certifying, the process becomes more natural. That's what training is for: to develop this planning tool inside you. That's why starting at Level 1 matters. It makes Level 2 easier, which gets you to Level 3, where they work on it constantly to get you to Level 4.
Level 4: CPC.
This is why, if you listen to live ATC, it's hard to understand what's really going on. Experienced controllers often appear to be doing less than you'd expect, because they've already thought ahead. They're not waiting for traffic to tell them what to do. They've created options for themselves, and they've placed the traffic so the next decision is easier.
One of the hardest things you'll do as a CPC is train someone on live traffic. Your job is to let the trainee work the traffic, but you can't let them put themselves in a situation they can't recover from, or more importantly, one you can't recover from. You have to allow them to do things you would never do, but only so far. You're constantly redoing your plan to adapt to the trainee's plan. It's not easy at all. And yet, being a good trainer is almost the pinnacle of being an air traffic controller: letting your trainee work their plan, even if it may be a horrible plan.
That's why planning is such an important tool. You'll use it until you retire, or, in my case, after.
How to Build the Planning Tool
- Always ask, "What's next?" Don't stop with what's happening now. You can never give a clearance and think, Man, that was a good clearance. You can't spike the strip. It's not a touchdown, a goal, a three-pointer, an ace, or even a hole-in-one. It's a clearance, and you're going to have another one. Make "what's next?" a habit.
- Have a purpose for every instruction. Whether it's to a pilot or another controller, ask before you key the mic: What am I trying to accomplish? That'll slow you down at first. Eventually it's just part of the process, and you won't even think about it.
- Think one more move ahead. You do something, and then you think: then what?
- Develop a Plan B. Later in training, and definitely as a CPC, you'll have multiple plans running at once. It's not conscious. You won't be thinking about what to do if this guy turns left instead of right, but it's running in the back of your mind. Your brain is trained to the point where alternate plans run simultaneously, and that makes it amazing to watch a controller handle something unexpected. You could call them options instead of Plan D, E, and F. That's fine. They're the "what do I do if" options.
- Keep updating your plan. The plan isn't permanent. It's like setting a budget: you plan for income and expenses, then something happens, good or bad, and the plan changes. You're constantly scanning, getting new information, and building a new picture. That new picture needs a new plan.
The Main Takeaway
You cannot wait as an air traffic controller.
That last word is the important one.
You're expected, and needed, to control the traffic.
You can't let the traffic force your moves.
At the Academy, the traffic will almost force you, and that's okay.
You're at the beginning steps.
But as you go through this career, you can't wait for traffic to force your next move.
You have to have the next move ready, and that takes planning.
Next week, we'll tackle the prioritizing tool, and believe me, you'll need it at the Academy.
If you have three, four, or five moves to make, you can't make them all at once.
What's the top priority, and what's next?
Just like planning, you'll use your scan, and the priority list will keep changing because something will come up and rearrange it.
But that's next week.
Let's Close With Mike Tyson
I'll leave you with a quote I'm sure you've heard, from Mike Tyson:
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
If you're at Level 2 at the Academy, you know exactly what I mean, because you've been punched in the mouth, and you've had to adapt a plan.
The key at the Academy is to decide that you'll be the one doing the punching, not the scenario you're working. Turn it around.
Don't wait to get hit.
And if you do get hit, a good plan will help you deal with it.
That's what we do as air traffic controllers.
If you do get punched in the mouth, at any level, it's okay.
Planning isn't about predicting exactly what's going to happen.
It's about staying far enough ahead that when something changes, you still have options.
That's the key.
Let's Do This Side by Side
Thank you for reading. If you need help or want to talk, head to sidebysideatc.com, where you'll find links to set up a free consultation.
And remember, you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone.
Let's do it side by side.
FOR HELP:
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Pre-Academy
If you are heading to the Academy in the next few months, I put together a structured 90-day preparation blueprint that walks you through exactly what to focus on each month before you go. It's designed to help reduce shock and build confidence before day one. You can download it at: sidebysideatc.com/page/blueprint .
I also have a video where I explain the different things that are on the enroute Non-Radar Map. You can get that video at: sidebysideatc.com/page/map-video .
Already at the Academy
If you are already in the enroute radar portion of the Academy and feeling a little behind or lost, I have a 72-Hour Radar Recovery Plan that will help you get past those feelings and start building confidence. You can download that at : sidebysideatc.com/page/72-hourplan .
If you are interested in my Coaching Programs, you can get information at :
or
sidebysideatc.com/page/radar-recovery if you are needing help with the beginning of enroute radar.
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For information about my mentorship program : https://sidebysideatc.com/page/mentorship
Questions
You can email me questions, or comments, at: tomhanes@sidebysideatc.com .
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