Civilian Controllers Head For Iraq

If you ever wondered just how strange a place Iraq was before the American-led coalition took over, consider this: The windows on one entire side of the control tower at Baghdad's international airport were painted black, preventing controllers from seeing Saddam Hussein's palace (and, oh-by-the-way, any aircraft approaching from that direction).

"He had the windows on that side of the tower painted over to prevent controllers from looking down upon him," said Frank Hatfield, the senior aviation adviser to Iraq, in an interview with Newsday.

But now, the paint has been peeled off the windows, as a group of FAA controllers started working in the tower, alongside a handful of Iraqi civilian controllers. It's a major step in attempts by the US and the provisional government in Iraq to restart commercial air travel in and out of the country.

"It's the first step in giving the new Iraqi government control over their own aviation system," Hatfield said in a telephone interview with Newsday.

Scraping the paint off the windows of the tower was just the beginning for Hatfield. "Most of the buildings, including the control tower and the passenger terminal, sustained battle damage and were ransacked or looted. The base building for the tower, the equipment rooms and the control tower itself were in very bad condition," he said.

As of Tuesday, the Iraqi civilians were in charge of Baghdad's airport, with FAA controllers like Hatfield looking over their shoulders. Hatfield, who was the FAA official responsible for shutting down the airspace over New York on 9/11, has a big job ahead.

For now, Hatfield, his FAA team and their Iraqi counterparts only have partial control of the airport. Controllers from the Royal Australian Air Force, working in a room directly above the civilians, coordinate military traffic on the west runway, while the civilians control the runway on the airport's east side. You can guess which runway is busier.

Only a few civilian flights -- mostly relief and reconstruction charters -- arrive and depart Baghdad each day. Security is still a huge concern, especially after a SAM attack almost downed a DHL flight taking off from Baghdad earlier this year. Hatfield told Newsday the threat of missile attacks is still very much in the minds of both civilian and military controllers.

"Once that threat is at an acceptable level, they'll have scheduled service," Hatfield said. "It's not a date; it's a goal."

For now, Hatfield is senior aviation adviser to the Iraqi provisional government. He'll hand over that title when the US officially returns sovereignty to Iraq on June 30th. He will, however, stay on as a consultant, as will several members of his team.

"There are two things every country in the world wants: a national flag carrier and regularly scheduled air service to connect them to the rest of the world," said George Novack of George Washington University's Aviation Institute, also interviewed by Newsday. Bringing civilians back into the control tower "is a clear demonstration to the aviation community that things are headed toward normalcy."

FMI: www.unjlc.org/content/index.phtml/itemId/13417#h2_58