Zoe, the other CTC Cadet up in Newcastle lived with an Air Traffic Controller in the tower. Kindly she arranged a visit for both of us. We just missed an exciting go-around just before we got there. Apparently a turbo-prop floated down the runway almost to the end without getting the wheels on to the ground, and reluctantly decided to go around! While we were there nothing too exciting happened.
The tower is due to move to a new, modern and really tall tower much like the new one in Edinburgh (Photo). However, the existing one, is more unmodernised - using a lot of paper and binoculars and even CCTV camera to see around the airport.
We also visited the Radar room, where they control traffic in and out of the Controlled airspace around
Newcastle.
On take-off the tower hand you over to radar, and vice-versa, we speak to Radar first and when established on approach we move onto the tower frequency.
