This job is paid £100k a year, gets 4-day weekends and you don’t even need a uni degree
A Heathrow worker tells us all about his fascinating line of work - that comes with some pretty decent perks
Sick of the usual badly paid nine to five? Then you might consider a career change.
If you want to earn up to £100,000 and get four-day weekends then you might consider training as an air traffic controller – and you won’t even need a degree from uni.
Sun Online spoke to Pete Glass, National Air Traffic (NATS) manager of air traffic control at Heathrow.
He has been a controller since 2001 and joined Heathrow earlier this year.
Pete told us: “A trainee controller will earn around £17,000 to train and then up to the high £20,000s when they have been placed in a unit.
“From there there’s a banded pay structure up to £100,000."
He continued: “It’s a highly skilled job. For every 3,000 people who apply at the college, only 26 people actually make it through to the course – there are that many dropouts.”
But Pete revealed: “That being said, you don’t need a university degree to get the job. You’ll just need five GCSEs at A* to C, including maths and English, and then A-levels or their equivalent to examination level – you don’t require grades.
“We get many people joining us when they are 19 or 20 and they get all the training that they will need.”
But that doesn’t mean that it’s an easy job – and there is rigorous training in a set of niche skills that controllers need to do their job.
Pete said that a lot of work is done on spatial recognition, which is decision making.
He said: “We pick people depending on how their brains function. Can you make a decision in an appropriate amount of time? This is very important when it comes to controlling when planes will land.
“The job involves looking at a 2D display screen and mentally translating it into a 3D image and not everyone can do that – that’s why we don’t focus on educational qualifications, it’s about your abilities and capabilities and how you think.
“You are looking after the lives of thousands of passengers every day. I wouldn’t say that it is a stressful job, but it is pressurised.”
650 planes take off and land from Heathrow every day, making it one of the world’s busiest airports.
Pete explained: “There are six or seven controllers in the tower at each time and they will be talking to between five and 15 different aircrafts each at a time.
“Each aircraft has its own call sign – which are different code names, for example, all British Airways planes are called Speedbird, with a number.
“Once a plane is on the final approach at about eight miles away, pilots will contact the controllers in the tower who then give them permission to land and direct them to an arrival gate."
He continued: “During one day each controller will help between 40 and 44 aircrafts to land.”
Air traffic control rooms are known for being quiet, though Pete said it isn’t totally silent – controllers are allowed to chat to each other.
He said: “We want our staff to feel relaxed, so yes, they can talk. Just office banter like you'd imagine.”
However, the job involves a great deal on concentration, and for that reason mobile phones are banned from the control tower – for obvious reasons.
Pete said: “We can’t have anyone getting distracted by their phones and we work hard to manage distractions. Our staff have to be able to keep focused.
“We also monitor the amount of time they can be at their screens so that concentration levels don’t drop and fatigue doesn’t set in.”
For this reason air traffic controllers will get a break of half an hour every 90 minutes at Heathrow.
They also get four-day weekends, as part of a ten day shift pattern, working six days straight with two morning shifts, two afternoons and two nights, followed by four days off.
Pete has been working in air traffic control for 17 years and said that things have changed a lot since he started.
He said: “The performance of planes has changed massively. They have got bigger, and they have also become more efficient.
“Planes are now easier to operate and quicker to turn.
“In terms of my job, the biggest thing has been automation and electronics. We use computer systems and write things down electronically instead of on paper strips."
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He continued: “We have more safety nets now, as well. If someone were to make a mistake in the tower, we’d have two or three safety nets to alert us to this.
“The likelihood of an error leading to any kind of safety risk is far lower than 20 years ago and in that sense, air travel is safer than ever.”
Sun Online Travel previously revealed the films that have been filmed at Heathrow - and where you might spot A-listers there.