Stress affects everyone. It is an integral part of our daily lives and can lead to physical and mental exhaustion. World Mental Health Day, which takes place this Thursday, is dedicated this year to stress. Some professions require greater stress management than others. This is the case for air traffic controllers. Aline Jones, stress and fatigue specialist at Skyguide, explained Thursday in “La Matinale” that this job requires a very high level of concentration, especially when there is a lot of work. “But the people who are selected to become controllers have a long training where they learn to use all the tools (editor’s note: screens, radios, etc.) and are trained in stress. Using the air traffic controller mouse is like brushing your teeth every morning. » Air traffic controllers face another element that can cause stress, that of having the lives of thousands of passengers in their hands. “It can be, but you can’t really think about it when you’re working. We put this stress, the fear of the accident that is present, behind a wall called the wall of denial.”
Aline Jones makes the comparison with a motorist who takes his car every morning. He also doesn’t think every day that he might have an accident. “Afterwards, there can be a crumbling of this wall of denial by a situation that scares us. And there is stress that can really come out. (…) This is what we call post-traumatic stress.” To deal with this, Skyguide has a management program which comes from the United States and which was used after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York. Skyguide is always looking for air traffic controllers. /sma
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