Mursal Ga'al

Area Control Services

Somalia Civil Aviation Authority

Mogadishu , Benadir

02.2017 - Current

The area controller (also called en-route controller) is a person that provides air traffic control (ATC) service within an area control centre (ACC). They normally serve flights during the climb, cruise and initial descent phases.
The Area controller's job is dominated by the process of discovering and solving conflicts. By contrast, Approach and Tower controllers are mostly occupied by sequencing the traffic for taking off and landing. While it is common practice for an area controller to transfer several aircraft at the same at the same sector exit point (vertically separated), this is not an option for the tower and approach controllers when their "exit point" is the runway threshold.
Compared to their tower and approach colleagues, the area controllers do not have to communicate as much with each flight. In the simplest case, there are only two calls - the initial contact (aircraft checking in on the frequency) and the final contact (when the communication is transferred to the next sector). If no other aircraft crosses their path and the flight is in the middle of the cruise, there is no need to exchange additional messages. While these flights are monitored while in the sector, they do not contribute to the communication workload. Therefore, the area controllers are able to handle more aircraft simultaneously.

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