RAPCON ensures military, civilian flights reach destinations safely

  • Published
  • By Nick DeCicco
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Being northeast of San Francisco, one of the world's busiest air travel markets, makes the airspace above Travis a hotbed of aeronautic activity.

As if that isn't enough, there's Sacramento, plus seven civilian airports nearby.

The busy airspace makes for plenty of takeoffs and landings. It's in this low-altitude area - from the ground up to 10,000 feet - where the 60th Radar Approach Control flight thrives.

The job of RAPCON's scope controllers is to help pilots and passengers - not just military, but commercial and private, too - reach their destinations.

From inside their windowless, dimly lit room, Airmen and civilians survey multiple screens displaying information about flights and planes in the air.

Chief among these is a black screen nearly one yard tall and two feet wide showing a constantly updating snapshot of Northern California's airspace. This panel is carved with green boundaries delineating airspaces and altitudes. Little blips of light in the shape of airplanes traverse the field, representing planes in mid-flight, departure or arrival.

"They can't land without us," Staff Sgt. Ashley Colvin said. "We have to transit them into Northern California's airspace. It's like handing off a baton from one center to the next."

A flight leaving Travis gets its first instruction from the base's Air Traffic Control Tower, which controls the base and some of the surrounding area. An entity is said to "own" the airspace it controls and maintains.

When a flight leaves the area the tower owns, RAPCON takes over. Despite sharing the title of being in air traffic control, these individuals work not in the tower, but in a single-floor building nearby. The flight owns an airspace that covers an irregular-shaped area encompassing nearly 1,800 square miles above Northern California.

The heavy traffic volume makes Travis' RAPCON the busiest air traffic control base in the Air Force, monitoring and aiding more than 104,000 flights per year.

The people on those flights trust their lives to those on the ground helping get them to their destination. That knowledge can be too much for some to handle, Sergeant Colvin said.

"Fear, that's the big issue," she said. "Having to get past that, knowing people are on board and you're responsible for keeping them safe, that can be a lot (to think about)."
Others, such as Master Sgt. Karlton Bagby, RAPCON's chief controller, use humor to deal with the stress of the job.

"Air traffic is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer excitement," he joked.
One runway at Concord Municipal Airport has a descent path that parallels, although in the opposite direction, one at Travis. RAPCON handles flights landing at Concord so frequently that Airmen and civilians know the runways names.

Despite this, Travis is still the priority, sergeant Colvin said. RAPCON works with the C-5 Galaxy, KC-10 Extender and C-17 Globemaster daily, helping with missions and refueling efforts.

Teaching new Airmen about the job is something the RAPCON office has done a lot of recently. In the last six months, 10 Airmen have arrived from tech school, said Sergeant Colvin. The fresh faces have a long road ahead - RAPCON requires a six-year enrollment.

Training can take up to 15 months, though Sergeant Colvin said her flight has trimmed that to nine to 10 months. During training, Airmen are weaned from having a constant partner at the scope control to working alone.

Sergeant Colvin said her first time working alone was difficult, but exhilarating.

"There was no one here to correct me if I made a mistake," she said. "A lot of three-levels are overwhelmed. It's a tough job. There's a lot to memorize."

But the challenge is part of what can make the job so satisfying. The stresses and difficulties are part of what Sergeant Bagby said he loves the most about being in RAPCON.

"It changes every day. No two [days] are the same," he said. "Weather, aircraft and operations can change the whole dynamic of the day."