Inside Melbourne’s air traffic control hub

Australian Aviation’s Jake Nelson takes a tour of the facility that manages half of Australia’s airspace

From taxi to take-off to en-route to approach to landing to taxi again, air traffic control has a hand in just about every stage of a flight, whether it’s watching from the windows of the tower or keeping an eye on a plane as it wings its way over the landscape at cruising altitude.

Airservices Australia, the federal government-owned corporation responsible for air traffic management across the country, has major control centres in Brisbane and Melbourne, each monitoring roughly half of Australia; between them, they control 11 per cent of airspace for the entire world.