A couple of years ago there was bad weather just before the oshkosh air show. Which is the largest in the USA.

When the weather cleared, EVERYONE flew in. It was chaos.

I am unable to find the recording, but ATC was like "high wing, low wing, if you have a wing, turn left"

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/910sge/the_adsb_at_...

Absolutely lost it about a minute in when he goes "you guys can't.. Just do that.."

Well, ground controllers are notorious for being constantly annoyed... and I can't blame them. When they're on tower duty it's less common.

Can you expand a little bit? I thought all ATC that talked to planes were in the towers.

A tower controller at an airport talks to planes in the air as they arrive and depart. They are in the tower so they can see the planes visually, and may also have radar available.

Ground control also works in the tower, after all they have to be able to see the airport taxiways. They may also have a separate ground radar. They are only talking to planes on the ground.

At a busy airport, these will be separate individuals working each of these duties.

At a less busy airport, or during quieter hours, the same controller may work both tower and ground simultaneously.

There are also "center" controllers who work in the enroute traffic centers. They are not in towers and often not at any airport, as they talk with planes at altitude and work by radar and voice communication, not visual.

For example, in a typical departure, you first talk to ground control for taxi clearance and instructions. When you are ready for departure (near but not yet on the runway!) ground will say "contact tower on 123.45" (or whatever frequency), and tower will clear you for takeoff. After you've taken off, tower may say "contact center on 124.56" (again, whatever the frequency is).

While you're flying, each center controller will hand you off to a different center (and different frequency) which you cross between the different areas that the different centers cover.

For landing, it's the same thing in reverse order: center hands you off to tower as you approach the airport, and after you're on the runway, tower hands you off to ground (who again is up in the tower, but only talking to planes on the ground) for taxi instructions.

Great explanation, thank you.

And the reason why ground controllers often have much higher workloads is that at a busy airport things happen far quicker on the ground. Every plane you move you pretty much move another plane into its place.

A visualization for those exchanges: https://youtu.be/GcFfVEstt4o

Thanks for that! It's interesting (to me) that they descend (well, ascend!) into politeness with both pilots and controller addressing each other 'sir'.

Kennedy Steve is pretty famous (now retired). There's an interview with him on YouTube that's neat.

I'm pretty sure that particular video is not Kennedy Steve. Here is a Kennedy Steve collection https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_ei74pHoe4qfmuVrmQYP...

I don't understand all the jargon but it sounds great with a New York accent.

Most of it is just using the ICAO/NATO phonetic alphabet to identify taxiways by their one- or two-letter codes. It makes a bit more sense if you have a JFK taxiway map in front of you.