The world's first control tower was a wooden hut at Croydon
On 25 February 1920, Croydon Airport near London opened the first air traffic control post anywhere: a wooden hut about 5 metres tall with windows on all four sides. From it, staff passed pilots basic information about weather, other traffic and their location, the seed of a system that now spans the globe.
Other countries followed their own routes. In the United States the Post Office began setting up air mail radio stations in 1922, borrowing army methods for tracking reconnaissance planes; these later became flight service stations, which inform pilots but do not give orders. Cleveland opened the first American airport control tower in 1930, and Newark got the first centre for guiding planes between cities in 1935. The Soviet Union organised its first service on the Moscow to Irkutsk route in 1929.
Disaster reshaped the system. After two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon in 1956, killing all 128 aboard, the Federal Aviation Administration took charge of American airspace in 1958. In Europe, several countries formed Eurocontrol in 1960 hoping to merge airspace, and its Maastricht centre, opened in 1972, remains the only place where controllers from different nations work pooled together, covering Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and part of Germany.
Modern control splits the work. Ground controllers handle taxiways, tower controllers manage active runways and nearby sky, and clearance delivery issues route plans before planes even move. Radar tracks aircraft, and a newer approach called ADS-B flips the idea: rather than being found by radar, each plane broadcasts its own satellite-derived position. Controllers keep minimum gaps between aircraft, and an error is logged whenever that separation shrinks too far, often during lulls after intense activity.
Pilots must follow instructions, yet the captain keeps final authority and may deviate in an emergency. English must be available on request under international rules. Weather causes over 70 percent of delays worldwide, and Europe saw weather-related en route delays jump 40 percent in 2024. Some small airports with airline service have no tower at all; pilots simply announce themselves on a shared radio frequency.
Source: Air traffic control
