Aviation program takes flight

At 11:45 a.m. on Friday, June 25, there were 5,181 planes in the airspace over the United States.

It can be an intimidating number if you're learning for the first time about how air traffic controllers fit into this picture, colored in confusing splotches of pink, yellow and blue on a computer screen in a dim room at Salt Lake City International Airport.

It was the first time a group of high school students had seen the inside of the airport's Air Route Traffic Control Center.

About 28 students from all over Utah were taking part in the Utah Aviation Career Education (ACE) Academy, sponsored by Salt Lake Community College and Westminster College.

For many students, the big payoff at the end of the five-day camp was a chance to fly a plane alongside a licensed pilot.

Kyle Little, 14, and his friend Chris Ellsworth, 15, came from Cedar City for the camp. Ellsworth said he likes speed when it comes to airplanes and is thinking of joining the Air Force. Little likes "everything" about airplanes and wants to fly for a commercial airliner. Both can't wait to get in the air.

First, they'd have to learn about who, besides the pilot, gets a plane from point A to B.

Since the events of 9/11, the June visit to the airport's control center — not to be confused with the more visible tower — was considered a rare glimpse into the now more secretive world of air traffic controllers.

Students needed approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, and they were each searched by an officer with a gun and a metal detector before being allowed entry into an unassuming brick and metal building within earshot of the roar of traffic on I-215.

Once inside the control center, students learned that out of all those planes, 164 aircraft would be landing just at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago within a few hours.

Getting those planes to their destinations safely depends in large part upon controllers coordinating air traffic within the flight paths of those planes.

Controllers these days use a combination of high-tech equipment and computers and the old reliable paper "strip" system, which consists of small rectangular pieces of paper that contain information about a plane's speed, carrier name, flight number, altitude and other vital facts. The strip system that is commonly used throughout the industry will be converted to electronic data on screens at the Salt Lake City control center starting around September.