Gaming & the DFS: Are Gamers Good Air Traffic Controllers? | Sponsored

You all know what DFS is by now, don't you? After all, we've already taken a detailed look at what German Air Traffic Control does. Of course, we have also explained to you how the application and selection process works and what you can expect during your training as an air traffic controller. If you have read these articles, you already know that the job as an air traffic controller comes with a pretty nice pay (100,000 € per year), a lot of free time and a bunch of other benefits. However, unfortunately, becoming an air traffic controller is not that easy either.

So today we ask the following questions: Are air traffic controllers good gamers? Are gamers good air traffic controllers? Of course, it's not quite that easy to answer. But there are some skills and characteristics that both gamers and air traffic controllers need. What are these skills and why do gamers really have better chances when applying and training to become air traffic controllers? Let's take a closer look...

From Gamer To Air Traffic Controller

To find out if gamers are good air traffic controller material, and if so, why, we need to briefly recall the most important talents that are emphasized during the application and selection process. As you can read in our article on application and selection process, prospective air traffic controllers must have the following talents in particular:

• Concentration & vigilance
• A good memory
• Spatial imagination
• Dealing with numbers
• Reaction speed & accuracy
• Multitasking
• Management of complex & dynamic information
• Stress resistance
• Good English skills

Yeah, those are a lot of skills, and it's not enough for the DFS if you can do them all - you have to be above average. But maybe you've already noticed that some of the skills mentioned above are also needed when you're gaming or are promoted by certain games. Let's take a look at a few examples:

Concentration & Vigilance

Some of you are probably wondering what vigilance is, right? Vigilance describes the state of sustained attention. In principle, it means whether a person can concentrate for a longer period of time. This is especially important as an air traffic controller, since you must always be fully concentrated during your 6-hour shift. You have to keep a constant eye on your assigned airspace and all movements within it, and you must not allow yourself to be distracted.

It's not really hard for us to find parallels to gaming here. Of course, not every gamer has this ability, but especially if you are a fan of strategy games or like to play competitively in tournaments, this shouldn't be a problem for you. Let's just take League of Legends as an example: Here, a single match usually lasts a good half hour, but can sometimes go up to an hour, and in a tournament, either a best-of-3 or best-of-5 is played. So it can drag on quite a bit, but you need to stay highly focused at all times. Of course, the same is true for CS:GO, Starcraft, or similar competitive games - at the end of a match series between evenly matched teams, it's often the players' ability to concentrate that decides who wins and who loses.

Good Memory

The ability to remember is also extremely important in the job as an air traffic controller. After all, you always have to keep in mind which flying objects are currently in your zone, what the current weather conditions are, who is about to leave your airspace or be transferred to you from another airspace. But of course, this is also a talent that is needed or can be trained by gaming.

In strategy games, for example, you always need to have different build orders in mind to be able to react to your opponents. Which building do I have to build when, which unit counters which enemy unit, and what does it all actually cost? Eventually, of course, all this information will go into muscle memory, but players with good memory skills will have a much easier time of it here. If you are more casual and not so competitive, you might know Dr. Kawashima's Brain Jogging from Nintendo or maybe Minecraft... Anyone who can remember all the crafting recipes in Minecraft definitely has my respect.

Spatial Imagination

The fact that spatial imagination is necessary as an air traffic controller should come as no surprise. Of course, an air traffic controller must be able to mentally place all the little dots on his monitor in three-dimensional space. What are only a few dots and numbers on the screen, are in reality airplanes and of course the air traffic controller must be able to spatially imagine which airplane flies how high above the other airplane and the like. In addition to that, one has to recognize right and left, which sounds easy, but how about left and right in relation to different aircrafts? For the pilot of a landing plane, right can be a different direction than for the air traffic controller in the tower.

For this point, strategy games or games from the top view in general are not particularly helpful. Spatial imagination is especially promoted in games from the first-person perspective. If you've ever given the controller to your non-gamer friend in a first-person shooter, you probably quickly realized that spatial imagination in video games isn't that natural. Not everyone can move with one stick while looking around with the other. If you want to train your spatial imagination really hard, it's best to play flight simulations right away.

Dealing With Numbers

Here, it's about being able to quickly solve short mental arithmetic tasks in between your other tasks as an air traffic controller. This is not necessarily a talent that can be developed through gaming in particular, although one or two RPG fans might be a real crack here. Comparing the armor value of the new armor with the old one or quickly calculating how high the damage buff of a certain item is on a certain weapon - if you can do that, you're definitely at an advantage.

Reaction Speed & Accuracy

As an air traffic controller, you have to be able to react very quickly to unforeseen events at any time, while still working extremely precisely. For example, if there is a sudden thunderstorm, the controller must react quickly and pass on the right information to the pilots. Even if there is an emergency on board of an aircraft, the controller must be able to react quickly and help the pilots solve the problem.

Reaction speed is probably most noticeable in shooters like CS:GO or Valorant. Players usually can't take much more than a few hits and have to react in a split second to suddenly appearing enemy players, grenades or abilities. Reaction accuracy also comes into play here, of course. Let's just take CS:GO as an example, where you not only have to spot enemies extremely quickly, but then preferably land a headshot right away.

In this video you can see some extremely fast reactions in CS:GO:

Multitasking

Multitasking as an air traffic controller means always keeping an eye on all the aircraft in your own airspace, while at the same time checking the weather and other circumstances, staying in contact with colleagues in neighboring airspaces, and passing on information to pilots of several aircraft at the same time and reacting to individual problems. To a certain degree, however, gamers should be able to multitask well.

In fact, pretty much any game can be taken as an example here. In strategy games like Starcraft, players need to keep track of their resources, base and army. You have to command your army while building your base, attack the enemy base while defending your own, and decide which upgrades to research and where to build the next base. In LoL or Dota, on the other hand, you need to keep track of your mana and cooldowns, know where your teammates and opponents are, while also taking care of your farm and items. Multitasking definitely plays a big role in gaming.

Management Of Complex & Dynamic Information

Among other things, this is also about teamwork. As an air traffic controller, you have to process and communicate complex information that can change in a matter of seconds constantly, quickly and accurately. If the weather suddenly changes, you have to react quickly and pass on the relevant information to pilots and colleagues. The same applies if there are problems on board of an aircraft or similar. The information must be processed quickly and communicated effectively.

Both are also a fundamental part of video games, especially in a competitive environment. Let's take CS:GO again as an example: You play as a defender on the CS side and spread your team out over the two bomb sites as well as the middle of the map. As soon as the enemies show up and it is clear which bomb site they are targeting, the team has to communicate very quickly where the enemies are coming from, how many have been seen where, if and where own players have died and so on. All this has to be processed and communicated in the shortest possible time, but still in a way that is easy to understand.

Stress resistance

This point is actually a kind of prerequisite for some of the talents already discussed. An air traffic controller must, of course, be stress resistant, because when many events suddenly converge, he must not panic. There will always be situations in the daily life of an air traffic controller that become stressful and in this case, however, it must always be ensured that the controller can continue to process all information calmly and conscientiously and pass it on effectively.

In competitive games, this is exactly what happens. Let's take LoL as an example: You're comfortably farming along, everyone is taking care of their assigned lane, and suddenly a teammate gets ganked. It gets stressful, but you can't lose your head and blindly jump into the fray. You have to assess the situation, decide whether to intervene or retreat. The same goes for shooters like Warzone. If you find an enemy squad and attack, and suddenly a third team appears, you must not panic, but retreat in an orderly manner and plan your next move. Keeping your cool is essential.

Good English Skills

Last thing on our list is English skills. As an air traffic controller, all communication is in English. Logically, after all, not all pilots speak German and you have to agree on an international way of communicating. Even though air traffic controllers use a lot of special terms that you will learn during your training, good English is a prerequisite for the job.

Apart from the fact that all of us learn English at school, video games can also help here. Many of you probably play your games in English anyway, because the voiceover in the original is usually much better, but even if not, you will probably be forced to communicate in English when playing competitively on international servers. Here you'll quickly learn the most important phrases to communicate quickly and effectively, and it shouldn't take too long to significantly improve your English skills through regular gaming.

So, that's it. A very long article, but at least now you know that gamers actually have a lot of skills, or at least improve them regularly while gaming, that air traffic controllers also need. If your interest is piqued and you just want to know if you have what it takes to be an air traffic controller, then just apply!