Air traffic control system is monitored by WhatsUp Gold
An example that uses ATC is DuPage airport.
(IATA:DPA, ICAO:KDPA, FAA LID:DPA This airport is located 47 kilometers (27 miles) in the west of Chicago in United State of America DuPage County. It is a general airport. DuPage Airport Authority an independent body of the government as established Illinois State does its operation. It relieves other Airport like O’Hare off their traffic.The airport handles many flights especially in Illinois County. For example in 2008, the airport handled 99,802 aircraft operations.
DuPage accounts currently for more than a sixth of the whole nation flights cancellation after federal government imposed flights limit (Lombardo, 2006). This is one of the busiest airports in Illinois.The airport was initially used for grazing sheep in 1927. It was later bought by two Chicago businesspersons and started to use the site as grass strip. It was not until 1941 that U.S.
Navy took the airport and built hangars and two runways. The runways were built in an X pattern. The army-trained pilot from here in preparation of war. The airport opened officially in1943. However, since then hangars and the runway still exist.
However, one runway was closed and it is used as taxiway C. The Navy started operating the airport. A factory was opened by Howard Airport Corporation on the eastern side of the airport. It helped to build more than five hundred trainer transport and military aircraft ambulance. These aircraft were being pushed from the factory by the employees to the small airport to be tested (McDougall ; Alasdair, 2007).
The navy sold the airport in 1946 after Second World War to DuPage County. After war, the region grew tremendously and the Airport showed that by expanding east and west runway. They also built five-story control tower planning for more expansion.DuPage Airport was assigned function of relieving traffic for general aviation aircraft in 1970. After ten years in early 1980, it started expanding due to increased traffic.
However, the expansion was harbored by the surrounding residential houses, restaurants and the businesses. It experienced resistance by the neighbors. The airport authority expanded from the then 360 ha to 1,100 ha in 1992. Its objective was to maintain control of the property and the runway complex. The airport used most of its land to create a buffer zone. This was to be around the airport.
The airport sits on a land currently of 490 ha and has four businesses separately. These businesses were as flows; DuPage Airport, Robert Trent Jones, Jr. designed golf course and the corporate research and development park which is the largest in the DuPage County. DuPage Airport has four active runways, a forty aviation and non-aviation business. In addition, it operates a 24hrs FAA air control tower and a two ILS approaches (McDougall ; Alasdair, 2007).
DuPage airport is a unique place considering its distance from Chicago and O ‘Hare airport that is associated to their class B air space. The runway configurations are just superb and operate a vast of aircraft. In 1996, it was the third Illinois’ busiest airport.The DuPage tower is located in the 2800 acres piece of land at site number 04508.6*A. it uses Unicom frequency of 122.
950Hz for transmission during the operation of the runways and aircrafts. Its level of operation of the traffic is at an attitude of 800 meters. DuPage airport is also elevated at 759 ft. In the period of July 2007 to July 2008, the airport was operating 252single Engine aircraft, 58 Jet Engine, 50 Multi Engine and 5 helicopters. This saw 25 commercial operations, 536 military operations 4,306 Air Taxi operations, 36,190 local operations and 58,745 Itinerant operations (Lombardo, 2006).
The most interesting thing learnt is the complexity of the airport operations. In addition, the strictness and the sensitivity of the organization is something that I was not aware of before.
