Air traffic control simulators donated to the College of Technology and Innovation have helped increase the popularity of ASU’s air traffic management program, an administrator said.

Keith Hjelmstad, dean of the College of Technology and Innovation, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the program soon grew to around 200 to 300 students because of the installation of the simulators.

The simulators were installed at the Polytechnic campus in July and are a crucial part of the air traffic management program at ASU, Hjelmstad said.

“It was absolutely essential to the program,” he said. “There’s no other way to learn how to do air traffic control without this kind of experience.”

The program was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration in fall 2007 and started with an enrollment of seven students, according to Hjelmstad’s records, but has grown to around 90 students this semester, he said.

“As we started the program, we managed the (simulation) part of the program through internships at Sky Harbor International Airport, and that we could do for a few students,” he said. “[But] we needed a solution on campus, and that solution needed to be a simulation laboratory of some sort.”

The $1.5 million tower and radar simulators were paid for by a cash donation from the family of a local aviation pioneer, Donald L. Ottosen, and a gift from Adacel Systems, the manufacturer of the simulators, Hjelmstad said.

“The great thing about simulators is you can try a whole bunch of things without killing anybody, so they can be exposed to a virtually unlimited number of scenarios that they might face, and they can make all the mistakes that they need to make in a simulation environment,” he said.

Lecturer Verne Latham, the main instructor for the tower simulator, came to ASU after he retired as 20-year air traffic controller at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in September 2007.

“It gives them a hands-on learning experience by applying what they learn in the classroom,” he said. “So it’s not just memorizing stuff out of the handbook and not being able to apply it.”

There are three different simulation classes that students take using two different simulators, Latham said. The tower simulator is used for a class that deals with ground control and incoming and outgoing flights, while the radar simulator is used for two other classes.

The radar simulator classes include one focused on Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, with aircraft 50 to 60 miles away from the airport, and one class focused on en route operations. The radar simulations are led by lecturer Joe Cerrito, Latham said.

The simulators can be programmed to depict practically anything that could be experienced in the field, including engine failure, bird activity, pedestrians crossing the runway, planes running off the runway, spacing between aircrafts and other emergency situations, he said.

“Those are the types of things that might take you — if you’re up in an actual tower cab going through training in a tower cab — a couple months to a couple years to see everything that we can do it a 30-minute problem in terms of the things that we can throw at the students,” he said.

Air traffic management junior Jacob Greenwade said working with the simulators can put a lot of pressure on students to get everything done in a short amount of time.

“It’s all about just showing a student if they’re capable or not of applying everything that they’re learning,” Greenwade said. “It’s kind of a profession where either you can do it or you can’t.”

Being able to apply what he’s learned over the past five semesters to real life situations in an environment that is pretty realistic to Sky Harbor has given him more confidence for the future, he said.

“We’re just kind of scratching the surface of the full demand of everything, but I would say it does instill quite a bit of confi
dence in the students,” Greenwade said.

One of the reasons Greenwade said he got into the program as a freshman was because the demand for air traffic controllers is so high.

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers who were threatening to go on strike and replaced them, Hjelmstad said. But now, people from that wave of controllers are nearing retirement.

“The prediction is that within the next five or 10 years, they’ll need to replace somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 air traffic controllers in the United States,” he said. “It was just an artifact of suddenly hiring a whole group of air traffic controllers that when they turn age 56 they have to retire, and that’s now.”

The simulators helped put the major on the map here at ASU, Greenwade said.

“I’m very happy with the instruction that we have and the program is awesome as well,” he said.

Reach the reporter at slsnyder@asu.edu.3