A couple of weeks ago, as part of my ATC training, we had a field trip to Avalon Airport. There's not a lot of air traffic going into Avalon, but it's a great place to visit, especially when you get to check out the fire station and the Qantas maintenance hangar as part of your tour.
The whole idea of the visit was because of one of our theory subject, "aerodromes and other landing surfaces", but the other stuff was what made the day.
Many thanks to the ARFF guys that showed us round the fire station, and the people at Qantas that showed us around the maintenance hangars.
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| Avalon Tower, probably the cruisiest tower in Australia to be posted to, 11 movements a day |
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| The view from Avalon tower |
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| The fire station at the airport, that's truck 13 on the left |
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| I got to sit in a fire truck, boyhood dream |
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| Next time you're heading off on holidays and feel rumblings under your feet after the plane takes off, this is why. |
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| Naked airliner seats in a 767. |
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| What's under the hood. |
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| That's the black boxes, those orange thingies. |
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| My mate Matt, checking out the crew rest area in a 747. |
2 comments:
My uncle used to work at Avalon and a Boeing 707 landed and the pilots invited me up to the flight deck. That will give away my age!
A mate at school became an ATC at Avalon and I always thought that would have been one of the slackest jobs around.
One of the controllers there now is actually semi-retired. He works as a casual, three days a week.
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