Extras · 1 of 4

A typical shift

You take a handover at a desk covering a region or a fleet, maybe 20 to 40 flights over the shift. Pull the weather, look at the winds, decide routes and fuel, and release each flight. Then it gets busy: a runway closes, a crew times out, a passenger gets sick over the middle of the country and you are finding the nearest airport with a hospital and enough runway. You talk to pilots by text and radio link, to air traffic control flow managers, to maintenance and to crew scheduling, and the shift ends whether you are finished or not.