Gateway Tracon

On Monday and Tuesday, Blas and I went to Gateway Tracon. A Tracon is a place where people direct plane traffic. Gateway Tracon’s airspace is 3,000 feet to 15,000 feet with an 80-mile radius, and the middle is Lambert. The people at Gateway Tracon control any planes that are in this area. You go in to direct the planes in a very dark room with a screen that shows you where the planes are, how fast they go, their height, and what plane they are. Gateway Tracon’s airspace is separated into multiple parts, so one person is not controlling everything. There is low arrival and departure, which both control 3,000 to 6,000 feet, and high arrival and departure, which control 6,000 to 15,000 feet. Each plane needs 1,000 feet of vertical or 3 miles of horizontal separation. On Tuesday, Blas and I both got to do a simulation where we had to tell a trainer what to do with the planes which was really fun.