ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with critical incident stress and preventive measures in air traffic control (ATC). There are several special characteristics in ATC that influence the kind of critical incident stress and how to cope with it. ATC service providers are high-reliability organisations (HROs) with the twin goals of maintaining a safe operation with minimal risk of accidents and an efficient work flow. HROs are faced with a working environment where safe operations have to be achieved in an environment of constantly changing circumstances and conflicting priorities. There is a need to maintain control of the safety of the aircraft and its passengers despite constant time pressure, cost cutting and staff shortages. In this working environment, critical incidents occur and the ATC operators (ATCOs) are central to the resolution of these incidents. A critical incident in ATC does not need to be an accident or an event of which members of the public would be aware. A critical incident can be the infringement of the agreed separation space between two or more aircraft, a near miss, or a runway incursion by an unauthorized aircraft or vehicle. These critical incidents are clearly defined with respect to temporal and/or spatial distances between aircraft, which are dependent on the airspace and operational procedures that the aircraft operate within. The normal separation between aircraft in cruising altitude is five nautical miles horizontal and one thousand feet vertical. Occasionally, this separation falls below this distance and in most cases – even the very significant ones – nothing untoward happens to the pilots or passengers, no one gets injured or killed and most passengers are unaware that the critical incident has occurred.
