For Pascal Dombrowsky, 30, Germany is a chessboard, 150 by 150 kilometers, most days of the year.
When he's on duty, for eight hours and 15 minutes, his attention is on that chessboard.
He then doesn't watch any characters, but has an eye on whether it's raining in Paderborn, how the wind is in Dortmund and which planes are crossing the sky in Düsseldorf.
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Pascal Dombrowsky
Photo: German air traffic control
Correctly interpreting all this data for pilots is Dombrowsky's job.
He has been a center controller at Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) in Langen near Frankfurt am Main for seven years.
Cop of the Air
"You can imagine it a bit like Google Maps from above" - this is how Dombrowsky explains his job in the podcast.
What sounds quite relaxed at first is quite demanding: Dombrowsky has to keep an eye on everything that happens in his airspace.
Every passenger plane, every glider, every helicopter, every weather condition.
Dombrowsky is something like the policeman in the air, trained for many scenarios.
"If we have a pregnant woman on board or if there is smoke in the cabin, everything has to be in place," he says, "but that's always fine."
So that everything always goes well, air traffic controllers are intensively trained.
If you want to apply for an apprenticeship or dual study program, you »only« have to be under the age of 25, have your high school diploma in your pocket and have a good command of English.
However, the subsequent two-day DFS selection process in Hamburg "separated the wheat from the chaff," as Dombrowsky puts it.
In addition to mathematics and physics, the ability to remember and react are also tested there.
Things that you can't learn to some extent.
Dombrowsky recalls that he had weak knees at the time.
Part of the truth is that 95 percent of those who take part in the selection process fail.
Weather and aircraft technology await you in the training – but also a lot of practice
For three and a half years, Dombrowsky was trained as an air traffic controller at the DFS campus in Langen.
»Aviation, meteorology, aircraft technology, at the beginning it's a lot of theory.
Later it becomes more practical, and you practice 90 percent of the time in the simulator,” he says.
After three and a half years, maneuvering an airplane with passengers and crew alone for the first time was quite a feat.
Even today he is still responsible for thousands of lives on every shift.
Pascal Dombrowsky explains in the podcast why he cannot imagine any other job despite this high pressure, why he finds his high salary reasonable and why women are on the rise in his profession.
Listen to the current episode here: