The two people who manage air traffic control at the annual Paris Air Show are in Oshkosh this week observing and learning from the air traffic controllers at Wittman Regional, which right now is "the world’s busiest airport." Sylvie Devoge is the control tower supervisor at Paris’ Le Bourget Aeroport and Jean-Marc Gosset the tower supervisor at Paris’ Charles DeGaulle Aeroport. They co-manage a team of 50 air traffic controllers who direct the split-second choreography of the Paris Air Show, along with the normal commercial traffic in and out of the two airports.

On Monday morning, they took time off to tour the EAA AirVenture Museum.

During the air show, Devoge said, all flights are under instrument flight rules, tight radar control, and precise minute-to-minute timing.

DeGaulle and Le Bourget airports are but a few short air miles apart and are also busy commercial airports. "We can’t close the airports to their normal traffic during the air show," Gosset explained. "We have to manage that traffic along with the show."

Each day during the Paris Air Show, the controllers handle up to 200 helicopter flights, and flight demonstrations by up to 25 exhibit aircraft, some of which perform at near-supersonic speeds.

"Paris" is very different from AirVenture. There is no visual flight rules traffic there, and nearly all of the exhibit aircraft are state-of-the-art military or commercial aircraft. Given those differences, are Devoge and Gosset learning anything useful from the air traffic controllers at AirVenture?

"I’ve learned a lot," said Devoge. "The way ATC is organized [at Oshkosh], the kind of training they receive in the days before [AirVenture], and the [process of] team management in the tower."

"And all the VFR traffic," Gosset was quick to add. That, he said, was a real learning experience. "During AirVenture, Oshkosh really lives up to its name—the busiest airport in the world."