This is the Newark Tower

About a month ago I had the opportunity to take an absolutely fantastic tour of the Newark Tower. The controllers could not have been more welcoming, or seem more eager to talk to us! The facility is beautiful, and the view was even better than I expected. Unfortunately, the Sup on duty asked that I not take pictures, so all I got was the shot of the outside of the tower.
After a quick elevator ride to the 23rd story, we walked the last two flights of stairs up to the cab of the 328ft tall tower. Just like walking up the steps into a baseball stadium on game day, the last few steps into the cab were astonishing. The stairs face straight out over the 22s, and thus out toward downtown Manhattan...no better way to be welcomed to work every morning, I'd say.

The tower supervisor and Traffic Management Coordinator sit in the middle of the cab, in the middle of a U shaped desk facing the runways. These are the guys that oversee the safe operation of every position up there, and make sure that traffic is flowing smoothly and safely. These are also the guys that can order a ground stop or gate holds if things get too crazy.

Turning right at the top of the stairs it's a good 20 feet or more to the windows facing the departure end of 22, in front of which stands Clearance Delivery controller. He stands over the ubiquitous metal frame that I've seen in every control tower I've toured, used to hold the ever growing pile of paper strips that come off the printer ever 30 seconds, or so. This is where most of the similarities to other towers I've seen end. He also oversees the computer running the AWOS/ATIS, D-ATIS, and PDC services, as well as a second computer called the IDS-5 that allows them to look up...well...anything. Want to know the weather at Lyndon? It's on there. Want to know how much runway you have remaining on 22R at M? It's on there. I'm pretty sure the only bit of information not on there is the baseball scores...and maybe they just didn't have time to show us that. Actually, I've been told that at the PHL TRACON they can order fried chicken from a local restaurant on this system.

Five feet to the left of the clearance guy is the Flow Control position. This is the guy that figures out who needs to be at the runway when and in what order so that everyone can make their assigned departure time with the necessary spacing over each of the departure fixes. The position was closed this morning, as they were actually pretty slow, but the woman showing us around said this is every one's least favorite place to work, "it's absolute chaos." I can imagine why, he's the guy that has to coordinate with the ground controller and figure out that plane X has a wheels-up time of XX:XX, so he needs to be at the runway ahead of so many other airplanes, but he also needs 3 other planes between plane X and plane Y ahead of him, because they're both going out over WHITE. Now how do we get them both there on time? Part of that also involves working out gatehold procedures...but that's a whole different mess.

Making a 90 degree turn next to flow is Ground Control. He, too, has his own metal frame for the strips, with one that really stands out labeled in bright red "TAXI." Not surprisingly, they call this the taxi line. All the strips below the taxi line are actually on a taxi way in his control; above it, he's just waiting to hear from them. The paper strips are only half his effort, though. He also has a digital strip system next to him. When someone calls for taxi, he scans their strip on what looks like a grocery store scanner, and all their data pops up on the touch screen system. From here he can digitally amend their flight data, and hand them off (both physically with the paper, and digitally) to Local Control. Thanks to a friend of mine from Pilots of America, Jason, who is far more knowledgeable about the inner working of ATC, I learned this about the digital strip system:

DSP (departure spacing program), which is the system you saw the ground controller use with bar coded flight progress strips is really pretty neat. The ZNY "pit" (responsible for releases, flow control, etc within the lateral boundaries of ZNY) connects in with the DSP systems used in their airspace so everyone is usually in the loop. This is how coordination is accomplished without the laborious use of land lines in many facilities.

Above the ground controller's head are two flat screen monitors on a roller track and fully adjustable arm. One has the local airborne radar feed (complete with extended final approach courses for all the EWR runways, and depictions of all the airports and waterways in the area) and the other presents an electronic depiction of the airport diagram in green monotone. There are a dozen or so little green blobs moving around the airport, thanks to the airport's surface surveillance radar (not the official name). Strangely, the system only displays data tags for arriving aircraft - departures are nothing but a blob moving around the green sticks of taxiways It astounds me how they get anything done when the ceilings are down! The computer picks up targets on about 1 mile final, and from then on predicts where they're going to be in 20 seconds, and alerts the controller if there is a potential conflict. They're currently testing the next gen system, ASDE-X, that will give data tags for everybody and is supposed to give them a much better "look" at what's happening on the airport.

Standing five feet to the left of ground is Local Control (tower). Much like the previous positions, he has his strips in front of him and radar display above him. The one thing at this position that really caught my eye was a 6inch by 4inch metal box with two large red buttons on it, one labeled TEST and the other CRASH. They didn't demo that system for us. This guy owns everything from a five mile final to the edge of the runway where ground takes over. While the radar display is important, especially on crap weather days, the tower controller spends most of his time looking outside. A little known fact to most pilots (or at least to me until this day): if the tower controller can maintain visual contact on two aircraft, even if the pilots can't, he can be responsible for visual separation and is allowed a lower separation minimum.

Making another 90 degree turn there's room for another local controller, but again this position was closed today. 180 degrees and about 20-30 feet behind the tower controller (facing away from the airport) was yet another controller, sitting over a solitary radar screen. Unfortunately I forget what his position is called, but this is the guy that handles all VFR traffic in EWR's airspace (which, coincidentally is only 8 miles in diameter, and if you're outside that, they really don't want to talk to you).

Next to this last guy are the stairs from whence we came. And thus ended our tour, almost two hours after we first arrived.

Other notes:
1. There is no love lost between the folks in the tower and the folks in NY TRACON! (Sorry Matt, but they say TRACON doesn't seem to care about spacing/speed control when they hand planes off to the tower, which is why we'll be told "best forward speed" with N90, then "reduce to final, all the way back!" as soon as we check on with tower).
2. There is no love lost between the folks in the tower and the folks in FAA management (but that's no surprise).
3. They don't want to bust pilots, but the FAA is cracking down...if you make a mistake ADMIT IT and they'll fix it, that way no one gets in trouble.
4. If you're unfamiliar or uncertain about anything ASK. They will never get mad if you ask for clarification (though one guy did admit they sometimes get grumpy if they have to repeat themselves, he emphasized that they'd still rather repeat themselves as a result of a question than a mistake).
5. If you're not sure if you've been cleared to land ask somewhere BEFORE short final, as they tend to have a mild heart attack when someone asks in the flare (they start wondering if they missed something/the runway is fowled).
6. Telling them you've got traffic on TCAS does NOTHING for them.
7. Calling the airport in sight does NOTHING for them (approach wants to know so they can clear you for the visual. Tower doesn't care).
8. Calling preceding traffic in sight does EVERYTHING for them.
9. Maintain your speed to the marker/5 mile final, after that they don't care as long as they can maintain 2.5miles of separation on final.
10. If they give you a DP or heading departure, for God sake, fly the right departure!
11. At their peak, Newark was handling 60+ operations per hour.
Now, due to airspace constraints, runway utilization problems, and the FAA's crackdown on separation minima, their max is around 35 per hour. Unfortunately they're still scheduled for 50-60 at many times during the day, which is why a delay program is almost guaranteed pretty much every day around noon and lasting well into the night.

Also, the controllers dislike RJs almost as much as we do!

Those were the salient details, as best I can remember. It really was a wonderful morning in the tower (followed by a great flight and darn good landing back home, if I do say so myself ), and I really appreciate the hospitality of all the fine folks in Newark Tower - and all of ATC, for that matter. The things these people do in the busiest airspace in the world...it's nothing short of incredible!