Eyes to the skies

The control tower at Zurich airport handles around 735 take-offs and landings per day, or a total of around 270,000 aircraft movements a year. Pictured is an Airbus A380 jet from Singapore Airlines. Reuters

At peak periods, Skyguide handles up to 3,500 flights a day. Reuters

Air traffic control tower at Basel-Mulhouse airport in 1991. Now known as EuroAirport, and covering the German city of Freiburg as well, it is situated on French territory. It is Switzerland's third largest airport after Zurich and Geneva. Keystone

Skyguide employs around 1,400 people. More than a third are in air traffic control. Keystone

In 2012, the average delay of flights managed by Skyguide was half a minute. Keystone

Skyguide is located in 14 sites around Switzerland, including at Bern-Belp airport. RDB

Air traffic controller at Geneva airport, 1947. RDB

Lugano airport, in Italian-speaking Ticino, records around 10,000 take-offs and landings per year. The proximity of the mountains requires particular care on approach. Ex-press

Basel-Mulhouse airport in 1990. Now serving the German city of Freiburg as well, in 20 years the number of scheduled and charter flights at the airport has risen by 20 per cent. Keystone

The La Dole Skyguide air traffic control radar station at an altitude of 1,677 metres, is used to monitor and control air traffic in western Switzerland. Keystone

Skyguide is in charge of air safety in Switzerland and in the border regions of Germany, France, Italy and Austria. Air traffic controllers have to watch over one of the most complex and extensively used airspaces in Europe.

This content was published on July 30, 2013 - 11:00

swissinfo.ch

Air traffic controllers now have the benefit of high-performance radars. But, just as they did 30years ago, they still put their trust in their most important instruments – their eyes. (Pictures: Reuters, Keystone, RDB and Ex-press)

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

Joint airspace means more safety and less fuel

This content was published on Jul 30, 2013 Every day 26,000 aircraft pass each other in the skies over Europe, with most of them taking off or landing at one of the continent’s 440 airports. This has led to the commission warning in June this year that travel routes and airports “risk saturation”. Air traffic will increase by 50 per cent over the…

“Flying is becoming safer and safer”

This content was published on Jul 30, 2013 Investigations are on ongoing into whether the accident on July 6 involving the Asiana airlines Boeing 777, which resulted in three deaths, was caused by pilot error on landing or by an instrument failure. But the incident has, once again, reignited the debate into aviation safety. swissinfo.ch spoke to Marc Baumgartner, from the International Federation…