When I fly on commercial airlines, I always try to listen to the air traffic controllers (ATC) on my headset. On United Airlines, that would be channel 9. After 9/11, channel 9 went quiet for many, many months. Then it occasionally, irregularly returned. When I would ask the flight attendants if they could turn it on, they would always respond, “I’ll ask the captain.” Either they never asked or the captain declined, but I never got my wish.

So imagine my delight when in our small plane, we could listen to the ATC on demand. We’ve logged many thousands of miles in the last 6 weeks, through more than 65 total hours aloft. I haven’t gotten to the point of recognizing specific local ATC voices yet, but I suppose that day might come.

There are three options for being in touch with ATC in a small plane. When flying on an instrument plan (officially "Instrument Flight Rules," or IFR), which we do whenever there are clouds or otherwise not perfect weather, the radio is always on and we’re always communicating with the ATC because we’re following their instructions on where to go. On the other extreme is flying under visual flight rules, or VFR. If the weather is good and we stay away from certain big-city areas, we are flying on our own and don’t have to communicate with ATC at all. And then there is the sweet spot in between: if we’re in good weather, but in busy airspace (like most of the East Coast), we usually get “flight following”, which means the ATC keeps an eye on us and lets us know if there are other planes in our vicinity, but doesn’t direct our routing.



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Last August, after meandering through the upper Midwest for a few weeks and then way out to the edge of Wyoming, we decided to fly all the way home in a single day, from Cheyenne to Washington DC. It would be a long day, but we had an early start, the weather was perfect, the winds were favorable, and we weren’t tired. So we planned to give it a try, knowing we could always change our minds en route. We opted for flight following, figuring that we would be free to choose our own course and not have to fly any ATC-dictated doglegs out of our way.