Top 24 U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers

The F Hey Hey has a few career paths or “Options” as they are called. The “Terminal Option” is for Towers, and Approach Controls. The “Center Option” is for soulless people that think 3 mile spacing is too tight. These Center pukes are the people that pilots talk to, in-between actual controllers. There are 24 of these Air Route Traffic Control Centers (Simply called “Centers”) in the United States. Without further ado, Here are the Top 24 U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers.

RANK	ID	NAME	FY15	FY16	CHANGE
1	ZTL	Atlanta	2,923,189	3,047,184	+123,995
2	ZNY	New York	2,611,131	2,684,769	+73,638
3	ZMA	Miami	2,577,234	2,546,654	-30,580
4	ZDC	Washington	2,426,733	2,464,286	+37,553
5	ZAU	Chicago	2,258,724	2,397,472	+138,748
6	ZJX	Jacksonville	2,272,655	2,393,729	+121,074
7	ZOB	Cleveland	2,304,949	2,387,361	+82,412
8	ZFW	Fort Worth	2,273,465	2,299,251	+25,786
9	ZHU	Houston	2,241,133	2,250,837	+9,704
10	ZLA	Los Angeles	2,118,926	2,229,653	+110,727
11	ZME	Memphis	2,032,575	2,099,894	+67,319
12	ZID	Indianapolis	1,953,334	2,023,298	+69,964

Miami is the only Center to drop in ops count from the previous year. Atlanta is always a powerhouse, but adding 123,995 operations to their traffic count, moves them even further ahead of New York. Chicago, and Jacksonville both jump ahead of Cleveland. What’s up with Cleveland by the way? The airport traffic count just keeps going down. They have a nice airport, that is set up to run some good volume. What’s the deal? Is it the economy there or something? Click here for the remaining 12 centers.