Some of you readers might know that I’m in the middle of a career change. For the last ten years or so I’ve worked in the medical industry, and for the last four or five I’ve hated it. A few years ago, wracked by burnout and unsure what to do with myself, I considered my options and decided to go back to college and escape the hospital.
At first I wanted to go be a commercial pilot, but my flight instructor made a few points that stuck with me. This one especially:
“You really love to fly. But flying because you want to is very different from flying because you have to.”
The point stuck. I’d hate to lose my enthusiasm for flying. Burnout in medicine has been bad; I’d hate to experience burnout in the cockpit. I will probably never be able to go to a hospital without some of the grumbling mental background noise that’s a highlight of my job at the present, and the thought of feeling that way about flying an airplane is unpleasant. So I ruled out airline flying.
Flight instructing or general-aviation commercial flying still seemed a good idea, but I’d be looking at a very substantial pay cut and a lot of market instability.
One day, I was watching the planes come and go at an airport and the idea came to me. What about air traffic?
The perception among the community at large was that ATC was a poor career choice. I can not tell you how many times people said to me, “Gosh, that’s a stressful job.” Or “Hey, I hear they have a really high suicide rate” or “Wow. So you want to be a burned-out nervous alcoholic wreck?”
These very helpful comments usually came from aviation outsiders, so I decided to get advice from the experts: actual controllers.
I met a radar controller who worked at Tampa Approach, and picked his brain a little bit. “Stay away from the bar, study hard, and this is one of the best jobs you’ll ever have,” he told me. I went and talked to some tower controllers at a smaller local airport, and they said the same thing. “It can be stressful and you have to know exactly what you’re doing, but this is an awesome job.” That’s been the refrain from the majority of the controllers I’ve talked to.
I’ve thought long and hard about it. ATC can be very stressful: you have a lot of responsibility to bear, and you can not make a mistake. You can swing from extreme boredom to sheer terror in a matter of minutes, and then back again. You may be the hero of the day, or you may be the last voice another human being ever hears. You might vector a lost student to an airport, or you might accidentally land one plane on top of another. These thoughts all crossed my mind. But at the end of the day, I think it sounds like a job that I will enjoy. It will take hard work and persistence to get there, but I have high hopes.
KMHT ATCT, Manchester, NH.
My ‘dream job’ is to work at a midsize control tower somewhere scenic. Ideally, it would be an airport where you could work a variety of traffic instead of all airliners. Too big of an airport would pull me away from my General Aviation roots which I treasure; too small of an airport and the FAA will dissolve the control tower. I graduate CTI school this coming May, and I’ll have almost exactly two years to get hired before I’m age-ineligible.
Ultimately, success will depend on many things (AT-SAT exam scores, not getting too old*, my ability to perform the tasks of the job competently) and there’s a chance I might not make it. But I’ll never know unless I try! So in that spirit…hi-yo CTI School, Away!
You’re right, you will never know unless you try! Good luck, I’m sure you’ll make it!
Thanks very much Niina! I have high hopes. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Hi Ben!
Great post, I liked reading what pushes you to change career.
As a tower ATCO with ten year experience I can tell you a few things that hopefully may be helpful for you.
This job will be fun, stress, frustration and satisfaction all at the same time.
It will give you a competitiveness that maybe you didn’t know you had, a thirst for aviation knowledge sometimes even more compelling than that from avgeekness, and a feeling that you are doing a great job that just a few other jobs can give you immediately.
Frustration will mostly come from outside, like management not keeping up with your desire to do better an having the instruments to do it, from rules an from those days where things won’t go the right way no matter what you do.
While picking your next workplace, keep in mind that the older (relatively) you get, the tougher will be learning the job.
, I find myself relying more on what I learned than on fast thinking and extremely creative problem solving (The few times I try the extremely creative approach, I get more confused than before).
I’ll make an example: I started on-the-job-training at 21, with some colleagues of the same age, and it was mostly fun to do it, while our brains were still acting like sponges and learning quite fast not just what to do and say, but the mental processes that were needed to manage 800/900 movements per day on a 2 runways intercontinental airport.
Other colleagues that were training with us were in their late twenties or early thirties and it was harder for them learning the job, especially bringing their brains and mental processes up to speed.
While you age, you rely more everyday on experience and less on pure brain power, as they slowly decay. I can confirm that, because, while I may be decaying faster than others
So doing a career change going to a high traffic load airport or radar facility may bring more stress and frustration than needed and make you enjoy less (or not at all) our awesome job.
It’s true that working at a JFK or ATL like airport may put you between those legendary ATCOs, but doing your job at a smaller airport it’s still a lot of fun with a lot less stress.
Plus you can always volunteer to John the oil shirts at AirVenture! (I wish that I could do it)
Regarding those “high suicide rates” and “alcoholic nervous wrecks” comments, they seem more like baseless assumptions or things that most people say they heard from someone and never have a specific source.
It’s a stressful job, with lot of responsibilities, and a lot of efforts and hard mental work is required, but saying that it will destroy your life… That’s really a stretch.
At least from what I see here in Italy, there may be some alcoholics that need professional help (like in every other career), but in my 10 years I have never heard of a suicide among my colleagues.
In the end, it’s a job really worth preparing for, that will give you many reasons to feel satisfied and proud of having done a good job, especially on those days were everything pushes against your handling of the air traffic (like those snowy or foggy days…) and you’ll feel at your best when the positive stress reaches the top, especially when working with a great team of colleagues.
Don’t be afraid of the burnout, it happens in every career, but it’s just a chance to find out what motivates you to do this job now, instead of missing what motivated you when you started.
Again this is my experience, I had my burnout after my first child was born 3 years ago, and I’m not totally out of it. I’m longing for a facility change to satisfy my beds for something new, but I’m still waiting for an opening and for more info to evaluate it and make a final decision, being my desired tower in another country and a different employer.
This job will be your “whole” life for the first years when you’ll still be learning a lot of new lessons, then you’ll a plateau where it will become just a part of life, sure a good part of it, but still just a part.
You’ll see it for yourself soon, I’m pretty sure about it, because passion for ATC and avgeekness will bring you a long way forward on this career change!
Good luck from your next colleague!
Sorry if I went on too long…
Federico
Milan Malpensa LIMC/MXP control tower
@aerofede
Obviously I was talking about volunteering to join the pink shirts at AirVenture ATCT, not any greasy or oily shirt…