Hi guys
If and when you pass at the college there are two routes that an area controller can go.
One is the one described by Rodan, En-route control which is at LACC (Swanwick!).
The second (and my personal favourite) is the departures task done by area controllers at TC (West Drayton).
As an area controller at TC we do the same job as the Approach guys except we take the planes the moment they are released from Tower and vector, speed and climb them till they get to a point where we can hand them off to the en-route guys who will eventually take them out of the UK airspace. As well as doing this we also control (at the same time) aircraft arriving into TC airspace and vector them to the nominated holds for the london airports. (descend them in the hold and then hand them off to the approach guys.
If it gets too busy we split the sector and deal with either departures or arrivals.
Hope that adds to your understanding of Area.
TFB
