$1\mathrm{.}5$ CASE STUDY OF AN EFFECTIVE PROCESS$-$BASED MANAGEMENT APPROACH

Recently I had an opportunity to witness a process$-$based management approach work to perfection. The process was the management of air traffic control operations at LaGuardia Airport, the busiest crossed$-$runway airport in the world. Maybe even more impressive is the fact that the New York City metropolitan area's JFK International, Newark Liberty International, and LaGuardia airports combine to create the largest airport system in the United States and first in the world in terms of total flight operations. In $2011,$ LaGuardia handled just under $25$ million passengers, JFK handled $47\mathrm{.}4$ million, and Newark handled $33\mathrm{.}9$ million, making for a total of approximately $105$ million travelers.

I was very fortunate to be invited to witness the operations by LaGuardia's Federal Aviation Administration tower manager as part of a capital construction program we were doing at nine major airports across the United States. I had a bird's$-$eye view from LaGuardia's new $198-$foot control tower of the operation that manages $1,200$ flights a day.

The task of ensuring safe operations of all commercial and private aircraft falls on the air traffic controllers at LaGuardia. This team of five individuals must coordinate the movements of hundreds of aircraft a day, keep them a safe distance apart, direct them around bad weather, coordinate their activities with nearby JFK and Newark airports, and at all times ensure that traffic flows smoothly, both in the air and on the ground, with minimal delays. Wow! They make life$-$and$-$death decisions minute by minute for five to six hours a day, five to six days a week. So how do they successfully pull that off? Surprisingly through a process$-$based management approach that relies much more on human instinct and teamwork than the advanced computer and radar systems the profession has used for decades. Believe it or not, at LaGuardia the primary method of doing this is visual observation from the control tower although they do have extensive radar