Air Traffic Control Practice Test 2026 – Your Complete Exam Resource

Non-radar separation standards are applied when radar is not available. When radar coverage is missing or a radar outage occurs, air traffic controllers rely on procedural separation rather than radar surveillance. This means using defined time intervals between aircraft on the same route, along with route/fix-based lateral separation and assigned vertical separation to keep aircraft safely apart. These procedures are common in oceanic or remote airspace and in any area when radar is unavailable. If radar is available, radar-based separation is used instead, and non-radar methods aren’t employed. Non-radar procedures aren’t limited to VFR or to domestic airspace; they apply whenever radar isn’t available.