Day 21:

Alright, back from the long weekend and another day closer to being finished in OKC. Today, the 4 students who hadn't taken the CTO test at their CTI school or in the military took the test. Those of us who had our CTO were allowed to hang out, but we couldn't leave the academy grounds.

Before we started our human factors class, some people from human resources came over and showed us a few videos about benefits. We received a ton of paperwork to sort through. I guess we've got 60 days from our conversion day (guess that's the day of the first pay cycle after we graduate from the academy) to decide on a health benefit package and 30 days from then to settle on a life insurance plan other than the one the government provides initially.

Next thing was a class on human factors in which we watched a pretty good video of how a team of controllers handled an emergency. The emergency involved a cherokee whose pilot had a massive heart attack and died and the woman in the right seat had to land the airplane. The controllers sent up a flight instructor who knew the family on board and was able to talk the woman down.

After that we went back into tabletops for one last run of scenerios. Basically, we didn't have any instructors plugged in with us and we were to work as a team. During the middle of the problem, we were to relieve one of our fellow controllers and take over the position. Of couse, the scenerio had some emergencies and radio failures to keep us on our toes. All in all it was a lot of fun since we didn't have a bunch of instructors breathing down our neck.