Apron control: duties and training of apron controllers

An Airbus touches down, leaves the runway via a high-speed exit – and a little later taxis purposefully toward one specific position at the terminal. The one who shows it the way there is, at many big airports, not the tower but apron control. Apron controllers are the traffic managers between taxiway and parking position: they clear pushbacks, sequence taxiing jets, dispatch follow-me vehicles and keep an eye on tugs, buses and fuel trucks. This article explains what apron control does exactly, who runs it, how the training works and how you can follow its work as a spotter.

Apron control: the short answer

Apron control – internationally Apron Control – directs all aircraft movements on an airport’s apron. Its goal is safe, orderly and, as far as possible, delay-free taxi traffic. It guides landed aircraft from a defined handover point to their parking position, clears departing aircraft for pushback and guides them until handover to ground control or the tower. At the same time, it coordinates the other traffic on the apron: marshallers, follow-me vehicles and aircraft tugs.

In Germany the profession does not exist as a state-recognized apprenticeship. Anyone who wants to become an apron controller applies directly to an airport operator or air navigation service provider that runs its own apron control, and is trained in-house there over roughly two years.

Where the apron begins – and where it ends

To understand apron control, a look at the terms helps. Under ICAO’s system, the apron is part of an airport’s movement area but not of the maneuvering area. The maneuvering area covers runways and taxiways, while the apron is the areas where aircraft park, are loaded and unloaded, refueled and serviced. That includes the parking positions themselves and the taxi lanes leading to them. Which kinds of positions exist, from the passenger boarding bridge to the remote stand, is explained in the article Gates, boarding bridges and remote stands.

The boundary between apron control and air traffic control is not a line in the grass but a series of defined handover points. They are listed in the aerodrome charts of the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP). At these points the aircraft changes radio frequency: a landing aircraft passes from ground control or the tower to apron control, and a departing one takes the opposite route. How the radio chain from Delivery to Center is structured overall is shown in the guide Delivery, Ground, Tower, Approach, Center.

Area	Typical surfaces	Responsible
Apron	parking positions, apron taxi lanes	apron control, if established
Taxiways of the maneuvering area	taxiways between apron and runway	ground control of air traffic control
Runways and vicinity	takeoff and landing runways, traffic pattern	tower control of air traffic control

If an airport has no apron control of its own, the air navigation service provider also handles traffic direction on the apron. At large hubs with hundreds of movements a day, the separation pays off, however: air traffic control concentrates on runways and taxiways, apron control on the crowding at the terminals.

Who runs apron control

Legally, in Germany the airport operator is responsible for operating its airport safely and properly – this follows from the Air Traffic Licensing Regulation (§ 45 LuftVZO). Its responsibility for directing traffic on the apron is derived from that as well. The operator can take on this task itself or commission a service provider.

In practice, the landscape looks like this:

• The operator’s own apron control: among others at Frankfurt Airport, Munich Airport, Hamburg Airport, Dresden Airport and Erfurt-Weimar Airport.
• DFS as a service provider: At BER Airport, the apron controllers are employed by the DFS Group (the German air navigation service provider).
• Factory airfield: Airbus has run its own apron control at its Hamburg-Finkenwerder site since 2006. What is interesting there for spotters is covered in the guide Spotting at Airbus Finkenwerder.
• DFS Aviation Services: DFS’s subsidiary offers airports apron control as a service, abroad for example at Lima Airport in Peru.

How DFS is organized overall is explained in the article DFS German air traffic control explained. And outside Germany, too, there are operators with their own apron control: at Zurich Airport, Flughafen Zürich AG trains its staff itself. There the profession is called Rollverkehrsmanager (taxi traffic manager), and the license is issued by the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (BAZL). An overview of air traffic control in the neighboring countries is given by Austro Control and Skyguide.

The duties in detail

The core of the job is traffic direction. But apron control involves considerably more than assigning taxiways.

Taxi traffic and pushback

For an arriving aircraft, apron control takes over at the handover point and guides it via the apron taxi lanes to the assigned position. For a departing aircraft, it clears the pushback – the pushing back from the position by a tug – and then issues the taxi instruction up to the handover point. How a pushback works technically and why it requires so much coordination is described in the article Pushback explained; for the vehicles themselves, see Aircraft tugs and towbarless technology.

A peculiarity in Germany: because smaller separations apply on the apron than on the taxiways and uncontrolled vehicle traffic is also around, apron control formally issues instructions rather than air traffic control clearances. For the cockpits these instructions are binding nonetheless. In everyday speech, people still often talk of a “pushback clearance”.

Coordination on the ground

Not only aircraft move on the apron. Apron control coordinates:

• Follow-me vehicles, which guide aircraft to unfamiliar or hard-to-reach positions – more in Follow-me vehicles,
• marshallers and docking systems, which bring the aircraft to the parking position to the centimeter,
• tugs, which move aircraft between positions or to the hangar,
• the remaining vehicle traffic, as far as it can get in the way of taxiing aircraft.

With the vehicles, apron control generally speaks German, with the cockpits English. How this language arrangement looks on aviation radio overall is explained in English or German on aviation radio.

Safety, winter and emergencies

The field of duties also includes checks for foreign objects (Foreign Object Debris, FOD), which can damage engines, coordinating winter operations on the apron and supporting emergencies, for instance when airport fire department vehicles have to get through taxi traffic quickly. How airports fight snow and ice is covered in Winter operations at the airport; the view from the fire department’s perspective is given by Working at the airport fire department.

The workplace: sight before technology

Apron controllers work from an elevated location – in the tower or in a dedicated building with a panoramic view of the apron. Their most important tool is direct line of sight. Where buildings, boarding bridges or hangars block the view, cameras help. In poor visibility, such as fog, they rely on ground radar and on position reports from pilots.

That sets the job clearly apart from the center controller, who sees aircraft only as symbols on a radar screen. On the apron, it is about a few meters: does the wingspan of a widebody jet clear a position where a catering truck is parked? Does an aircraft have to wait until the pushback next door is finished? Apron controllers decide such questions by the second – and often at peak times, when a hub is working through a wave of departures. How these waves come about is explained in Hub waves at hub airports.

Apron controller training

Because the profession is not state-recognized, there is no uniform training regulation. Each employer trains its own staff. The content is modeled on air traffic controller training, with the part on controlling instrument flight traffic left out. According to the usual description, it takes about two years until independent work.

Keeping your endorsement

With completed training you receive an endorsement for your workstation. It does not automatically apply forever: apron controllers must show a minimum number of working hours every year and stay medically fit. Anyone who takes a longer break generally has to earn the endorsement again. You know the same principle from air traffic controllers and pilots.

What employers expect

The specific requirements – school diploma, language level, health, age – are set by each employer in its job postings. Check them there carefully before you apply. Regardless of employer, skills that play a role in every selection process count:

• Good English, because English is spoken with the cockpits,
• spatial imagination to sort taxiways, wingspans and distances in your head,
• concentration and resilience, especially at peak times and during disruptions,
• teamwork, because apron control works closely with the tower, ground control and ground handling,
• willingness to work shifts, since large airports operate from early morning to late evening.

Employers, pay scale and representation

Depending on the airport, apron controllers work for very different employers: an airport operator, DFS or an aircraft manufacturer. At apron control in Frankfurt and at Flughafen München GmbH, the Gewerkschaft der Flugsicherung (GdF) (the air traffic controllers’ union) represents the employees. Employers do not publish concrete salary figures uniformly; they depend on the respective collective agreement. You are most likely to get reliable numbers from the job postings or in the interview.

If you are interested in jobs around the apron in general, you will find more paths there: ground handling and ramp agent work is described in Working on the apron, and security screening in Becoming an aviation security assistant.

Experiencing apron control as a spotter

For spotters, apron control is the link between landing and gate. If you understand its work, you see more at the fence.

• Listening in on the radio: Apron control transmits on its own frequencies, which are published in the aerodrome charts. If you listen, you often learn sooner than any app which position an aircraft is taxiing to. Before you start, read Listening to aviation radio: the legal situation and, for the technology, Buying an aviation radio scanner. To understand the radio calls, radio phraseology and the ICAO spelling alphabet will help.
• Knowing the handover points: If you know where Ground and Apron take turns, you understand why an aircraft briefly stops at a certain spot and changes frequency. The designations of taxiways and holding points are explained in Taxiways, holding points and signs.
• Watching from the deck: Observation decks often offer exactly the view that apron control has too – for instance the Hamburg observation deck or the Dresden observation deck. In Munich, the visitors’ hill gives you a good overview of taxi traffic between the apron and the runways.
• Looking behind the scenes: Many airports offer tours across the apron. What to expect is covered in Airport tours and apron bus tours.

And once an aircraft is at the gate: what happens between arrival and pushback is shown in the article Turnaround: handling an aircraft.

Conclusion

Apron control is the part of traffic direction that spotters see most directly: pushbacks, jets taxiing between the terminals, follow-me vehicles in front of a special aircraft. In Germany, large airports like Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg run it themselves; elsewhere DFS or one of its subsidiaries takes on the task. Anyone who wants to become an apron controller applies directly to the respective employer and goes through an in-house training of about two years with theory, radiotelephony certificate, simulator and training at the real workstation.