Gail Zlotky

gail.zlotky@mtsu.edu

Wendy Beckman

Aerospace

Discipline specific equipment

BAS S112 - ATC Lab

N/A

N/A

Seven years ago the Aerospace Department opened the only Air Traffic Control (ATC) Simulation lab in the country equipped with a 360 degree wrap-around view control tower, along with a full suite of radar control stations. The lab equipment is utilized in four courses, with the following enrollments in the 2017-2018 academic year: AERO 3631 (42), AERO 3641 (14), AERO 4651 (12), and AERO 4661 (9). The program is approved by FAA, with students who graduate from the program receiving preferential hiring. Over the past 20 years, 98% of the program graduates have been hired as controllers. Three years ago the ATC Division of Computer Science Corporation, which provided the hardware and software components of the lab, went out of business. Thus, there is no longer any means of updating software or receiving technical support. In the last eighteen months the simulator software has exhibited significant issues, including both freezing and crashing completely during class sessions. If new software is not obtained, the ability to continue to provide an appropriate level of training is in jeopardy. An important item to note is the purchase of the existing equipment in the ATC lab was $3.1 million when acquired 7 years ago, and this debt was just retired last year. Much of this sunk cost was incurred for the hardware in the lab, and this equipment will no longer be able to provide any student benefit if new software cannot be purchased which will function acceptably on the existing hardware platform.