A Good Shift

It was the drug of choice for most controllers and could actually make us pretty high. It induced an undiluted euphoria and served as an effective antidote for it's ugly antipode. I'll call this drug "the normal day." It was one of those seldom seen shifts when little to nothing went wrong. Everything seemed to click into place like the tumblers inside a combination lock. Kind of like the "Seinfeld" show, it was a shift about nothing ~ nothing broke, nothing happened we would regret or be chided for and there was nothing to complain about. There was nothing to it. Sweet nothing. Those were the shifts that reminded us why we loved being air traffic controllers. 

It was just past shift change and I was already busy on Local Control. My first choice would have been a TRACON assignment but Pete sent me upstairs. He said I "needed some tower time." Since most of my shifts were spent working radar, I suppose I was a little rusty. As it turned out, I was glad to be in the tower.  It was one of those 'Ray-Ban' kind of afternoons when you could see forever. A steady wind kept the city smog at bay and Big Time International seemed to glitter under the setting sun. The last song I heard on the car radio was still spinning in my head as I scanned the airport, one runway at a time ~ trying to keep up with everything that was happening at once. Airplanes, like cars lined up at an Interstate toll booth, moved incrementally along the parallel taxiways; hoping to get out of town on time. It was the afternoon rush and there were a lot of planes waiting to go. I'm sure the pilots queued up in line gazed envyingly out their cockpit windows whenever a departure rolled by, lifted off and vanished with a receding rumble.

The guys in the radar room were doing a hell of a job, jamming the localizers with airplanes. Jets were whistling down the glide slopes, squeaking onto runways, slowing up and ducking into the high-speed turnoffs. My farewell transmission of "Ground point nine." was always cheerfully responded to. I was doing what every busy tower controller does; making cold calculations, bold predictions and decisive moves ~ squeezing departures out between landings as fast as I could without pissing off the Departure Sectors. It was all part of the grand spectacle of an unencumbered airport running at peak performance. Well ~ almost peak. One of the main arrival runways had been closed for rubber removal on the thresholds. Not a big issue today. Weather was good enough that doing the 'mixed use' runway thing wasn't worth whining about. Tower and TRACON Supervisors, who usually tried to match the strongest controllers with the most challenging positions, were standing back to enjoy the show. They knew the show would only be as good as the actors in it.

Winds had been forecast to change direction sometime before 6:00 PM. That's exactly what happened but it happened a bit more abruptly than anticipated. In just a few minutes, the wind direction moved about 130 degrees clockwise. A few pilots started complaining of tailwinds on final, making the decision to turn the operation around appear unavoidable. Although timing couldn't have been worse, the odds of something happening to screw up a perfect day couldn't have been better. You learn to expect it. Pessimism isn't just part of the controller's genetic make-up; it's also a built in safety feature. Problems should never come as a complete surprise.

Winds don't often change direction so quickly. They usually worked their way around a few degrees at a time; giving us a chance to see a trend and take action before there was an unavoidable crisis. Changing runways right now was going to be ugly. I figured Pete was already on the phone to the center's weather unit - looking for a fresh wind forecast. Pete was always way ahead of the game. The TRACON Supervisor would be making calls to every tower we had a line to - asking what their surface winds were doing. Nobody wanted to cause delay and dismay based on a short lived quirk. From what we heard, it appeared a cool front was moving in sooner than expected. Pete made his decision to turn the ship around.

Changing the landing direction and moving all the active traffic  from here to there can become an epic exercise in patience. Planes waiting to go, eight to ten deep at the runways and more taxiing out of the ramp areas, would have to be moved or redirected to the other end of the airport. The trick was to make sure the original departure sequence didn't change ~ or at least not change too much. Whoever was number one to go now would expect to be number one after the turn-around or there'd be some bitching. Down in the TRACON, approach controllers had dozens of flights on vectors to final approaches that would soon turn into departure corridors. They'd all have to be delayed somehow.

The tower Supervisor got a call from his TRACON counterpart. "How many yah got to go?" was the question. After a quick look around, the reply was; "Looks like about twenty or so." Negotiations began immediately over which aircraft in the pattern would be the last to land and who would be the last to take off. The rest would have to be taken for a tour of the area while the Ground Control guy went nuts trying to move all his traffic to the other end of the airport. It was a little past sunset and dusk was settling in.

Billy K. was a decent Ground Controller, as long as everything clicked along normally. Like me, he spent most of his time in the radar room, so working tower positions during peak traffic was more than a little challenging. But Billy ~ on Ground after dark, during a peak hour? That was like firing a gun on the ski slopes. All it took was a small shock wave, like maybe a pilot turning onto the wrong taxiway, and Billy would soon be buried in an avalanche of confusion. In the time it took him to straighten one problem out, there'd be another mess somewhere else. Worse was the fact the airport was changing from an array of discernible airplanes, taxiways and runways into a huge black hole adorned with dark silhouettes and colored lights ~ some moving and some not. Billy looked tense. Nobody was landing or taking off right now, so I did what I could to help him out.

Tampa, our Supe of the day, knew what was coming and took quick preemptive action. He called the TRACON and, within minutes, we saw Eddie bounding up the tower steps. Good news for the flying public. "Relieve Billy on Ground." was all Tampa said ~ but with an undertone of urgency.  There were lines of planes taxiing down the runways toward the new departure lineup. A few arrivals, the last to land with a tailwind, were stopped at intersections to let the departures roll by. Seemingly forgotten flights sat on their ramps, waiting for taxi instructions. Potential conflicts in traffic flows were brewing all over the place and the Ground Control frequency squealed with the sounds of frustration.  Billy K. gave Eddie the position relief briefing like a burglar listening to police sirens. As soon as he was done, he made a hasty exit from the tower.

Eddie was probably the best tower controller I ever saw. Chattering away non-stop, pointing at planes, waving his hands and bouncing up and down on his tiptoes, he marshaled the traffic with aggressive efficiency. Still; Billy had left him with a mess on Ground and sorting it out would take some doing. Eddie didn't mind. He had the finesse to fix this. Although bold and confident, he maintained a delicate touch. Watching Eddie, I imagined he could have written his name on a soap bubble; even dotting the I's. He also knew how to keep the traffic picture at night ~ a tricky exercise in planning, shuffling departure strips around and getting the eyes on the ground (a.k.a. the pilots) involved.  Soon after Eddie took control, the departures were repositioned to the new runway configuration with a minimum of complaining from the cockpits.

I glanced up at the tower's BRITE radar display. It appeared the Approach controllers had pretty much reorganized their arrival flows. The sky was full of airplanes and a few were close to turning toward the airport. In the back of the tower cab, Tampa spoke quietly to the TRACON Supervisor. Yes, there was a new ATIS. Yes, the approach lights and ILS systems had been switched around, etc. The conversation over, he said simply; "Release the departures." The entire turn-around had taken less than 20 minutes. There were a few reportable delays but nothing out of the ordinary. Soon the airport was again running at a full gait. For the remainder of our shift, all we had to do was keep the 'planes in - planes out' pressure on our runways. There must have been a meal break in there somewhere but during times like this, eating was the last thing on my mind. Tampa pulled his usual sandwich and banana out of the brown bag he carried whenever he came to the tower.

The remainder of our shift was high volume happiness. 'Strings of pearls' ~ long lines of landing lights strung out across the night sky, moved in an endless pageant toward the airport. The ground shaking grumble of jets taking off was barely audible from the tower cab but we could see their lights racing along the runways then vanishing against the city backdrop.

An hour after shift change, me and my carpool buddies joined a few other crew members who were already leaning on the bar at our favorite watering hole. Eddie wasn't there but Billy K. was. Unlike the hours after a bad shift, when we'd each be citing the calamities, casting blame around and wishing we'd taken sick leave ~ tonight there was hardly a word spoken about the past eight hours. There simply wasn't much to say about nothing, so we drank beer, told jokes and surveyed the place for any flight attendants who might have stopped in on their way to one of the nearby hotels. What the hell. After such a shift; anything seemed possible.

Carpool Carl, our driver, said something to Billy K. as we left the bar for home. Billy was assigned to the Final Control sector that afternoon after leaving the tower. There, he dealt with an impatient backlog of arrivals that had been spinning in holding patterns or riding out delay vectors while the runway change took place. The TRACON Supervisor knew Billy was a guy who could always meet or beat our hourly arrival rate, no matter what.

Billy ran the Final Sector like Eddie ran Ground. It was instinctive. He attributed his skills to the year spent in a mobile radar unit (GCA), recovering fighters at one of South Vietnam's busiest air bases. In that time, he provided radar approaches to thousands of jets returning from missions in monsoon weather conditions. Many of them were down to "Minimum" or "Emergency" fuel status, which meant he had just one chance to get these guys onto the runway. Every vector had to be on target. Sloppy or unnecessary turns caused delays that could mean losing an airplane and possibly it's crew to fuel exhaustion. Billy had developed a good vectoring eye and perfect timing long before entering the FAA. Carl slapped him on the back and said; "Nice job with the finals, man!" We all shook his shoulder gently as we passed behind. Billy smiled but I don't think he ever looked up from his beer.

Nobody mentioned the tangle he had created earlier in the shift while working Ground. That's because a functional team of controllers compensates for their member's weaknesses and capitalizes on their strengths. Criticizing controller deficiencies was someone else's job and they usually did it well. We always passed out the praise when warranted though. It was a rare occasion when someone else did that.

The next afternoon, as our crew checked in for the evening shift, we all stopped at a small bulletin board outside the TRACON. Early each morning, the previous day's airport traffic count was posted there and everyone wanted to know how we did. Although not a record setter, the arrival and departure numbers were high, while reportable delays were low. There was nothing else to say. It had been a good shift!

© NLA Factor, 2013

Summertime

It was Summertime but sometimes the livin' wasn't so easy; especially when I was working the swing-shift. Although seasonal traffic increases were among our daily expectations, thunderstorms were not as predictable. Convective weather often moved in and rained on our parade quicker than you could say; "Wind shear alert."

West Arrival fix - 4:15 PM

If you happened to be in the TRACON around 4:00 PM on a Summer afternoon, you might see the trouble building. Always spoiling for a fight, Pete would already be arguing with The Command Center about arrival restrictions. He knew what we'd need when the impact of those little green specks of precipitation appearing on our radar was fully realized. At the moment, they were relatively innocuous little storm cells but they'd soon begin expanding upward and outward, powered by strong convective currents rising from the overheated landscape. In the time it took for a coffee break, those things could burgeon into 40,000 foot high behemoths that stormed across the sky, spawning severe vertical winds, spitting out lightning and striking fear in all who flew near. They didn't do much for a controller's peace of mind either. Thunderstorms. The worst of them usually formed in the West/Northwest quadrant of our airspace ~ right in the middle of a couple departure routes. It's also where two of Big Time's most active arrival fixes were located. From there, everyone would be taking vectors to one of the approaches in use. Or maybe not.

West arrival fix - 4:30 PM

It was only a matter of time before pilots started refusing the controller's heading assignments. They would either ask for deviations or simply turning on their own and tell us as they did it. For Arrival controllers with increasingly limited lateral and vertical airspace, the situation could become unmanageable pretty quickly. When their airplanes started deviating into adjacent sectors; a whole new set of problems ensued. Someone had to warn the affected controller/s, who were probably dealing with their own weather-related issues. Those guys, who now saw additional traffic being forced into their airspace, had to adjust their own traffic flows to accommodate the unplanned intrusions. Everyone began getting pissed off at each other. Obviously the weather was nobody's fault and neither were the deviations ~ but blaming the guy working an adjacent sector was some kind of convoluted stress relief. A rousing chorus of "Get that fuckin' airplane outa my airspace!" was an appropriate segue to stopping Big Time departures and/or shutting off the arrivals until order was restored.

As weather conditions and controller patience deteriorated, the TRACON became a bad place to be. Phones were ringing at every console. Controllers were shouting at each other or into handoff lines while Supervisors dashed from sector to sector in an attempt to keep anything troublesome or tragic from happening. Watching it all, you'd have thought this was the first thunderstorm we ever had to deal with. For some of us ~ it was.

When my team was on duty, I could see the more subtle signs of tension among those I knew so well. Freddy would stare, unblinking, at his radar display. His left elbow on the console; he would massage his forehead while issuing control instructions in a monotone voice. In his right hand was a dead cigarette butt that he kept tapping and swirling on his ashtray. Chip pumped his left leg up and down, blurting out a few carefully conceived control instructions. At some point, he'd abruptly stand up, as if to get a better view of the traffic. He'd mutter to himself, glance around to see if anyone was watching, then sit back down to work more airplanes. Visibly annoyed, Dick would transmit to a flight, un-key his microphone and, throwing both hands out toward the radar scope, exclaim something like; "Goddamnit Captain! How many times do I have to tell you?" Or ~  "I wish these fuckin' clowns would just stay home when it rains!" Whatever he said; it was loud and loaded with expletives. A moment later he'd key his radio again and make a very calm, coherent transmission. We all had our own peculiar ways of handling the tension. The trick was to make bedlam sound to the pilots like a slow Summertime day in utopia. You know . . . when the fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

But really? Out on the airport, departure queues grew long at the runways until a decision was finally made to keep most of them on the ramps. Holding patterns would begin filling with Big Time's arrivals; both at the fringes of our airspace and hundreds of miles away in the ARTCC's sectors. Eventually, the backward tumbling dominoes would fall onto some distant departure points, where pilots were told they couldn't even leave the gate if they were going to Big Time. But for now, unless it became unbearably ugly at the airport, the tower would continue flushing departures out until either the next one in line refused to takeoff or the TRACON hollered "Stop!" Arrivals would continue to be threaded, a few at a time, through gaps in the storm until the gaps closed up.

Tower controllers stood watching bolts of lightning strike the city skyline as airport visibility gradually decreased. Wind directions oscillated and speeds picked up. Pilots were beginning to report turbulence and occasional tailwinds on final. Down in the radar room, controllers could barely hear the incessant rumble of thunder over the sound of our antique air handling system, as it exchanged the stink of cigarette smoke and body odor for the reek of jet exhaust from the ramp. The symphony of swearing and sarcasm kept cadence with everyone's struggle to reorder the entropy in their sector. 

Meanwhile, in an airline cockpit, some forty miles out and several thousand feet up - each transmission emanating from Big Time Approach sounded incredibly normal. It had to. Our "livin' is easy" voices rarely revealed the prevailing control room chaos. You couldn't tell that everyone was running on anxiety, anger and adrenalin. Relying heavily on experience and hoping for the best from our equipment, we were uneasy, unsure and worried. Some controllers would became gruff with Supervisors, who quickly returned the fire ~ even as they stepped in to assist. It was an exhausting environment that persisted until the bad weather either dissipated or moved on.

So, where was I in this messy milieu?  I could have been on Ground Control. There, I'd be fiddling with my felt-tip marker and fielding questions from the crowded taxiways about when departures would resume. In time, a voice from the middle of one queue would announce he had to return to the gate for fuel. He'd have to wait till the line ahead inched along to the next intersection. 

Or I might have been stuck on Flight data/Clearance Delivery. In that case, I was probably working on reroute requests. Damn! Entering new or amended flight plans and coordinating them with the Center usually required more time than it took for the weather to move. Right about the time a reroute was fully coordinated, the pilot's original route might have reopened. If so, the alternate route I had just worked on for 30 minutes (with another bunch of frazzled, pissed off controllers) would now, if taken, lead an airplane directly into the eye of the beast. Plan "C" would be to re-coordinate the pilot's original route. I think my original route into insanity might have started here. All in all, it was more fun than boils on the balls.  

If you had to be in the tower, the best place to work was Local Control. With so many constraints in the system, very few planes were flying in and out. Soon, nothing would be moving but Freddy's cigarette butt and Chip's left leg. As the worst of the storm passed over the airfield, the low clouds and heavy rain made it look like nightfall at 6:00 PM. We'd all sit, staring out into the murk, listening to the shrieking wind and worrying over what sounded like gravel being flung against the windows. 

If I was down in the radar room, I was probably concealing my concerns as best I could - caught up in the moment like everyone else. Maybe the last two airplanes to attempt an approach refused to go any further than the outer marker. Although not uncommon, it was bad news for arrival controllers who probably had a few more airplanes on vectors toward the field. They'd quickly pass the word back to all Center sectors that fed us traffic. There might already be long lines of Big Time arrivals stretching across several states, so the probability of enroute holding was high. The weather would eventually rage across the airfield and bring everything to a halt. We couldn't hear the thunder down in the radar room but could sure feel the floor shaking and see the alphanumerics on our radar displays begin to blink. Emotionally, we'd be shitting ourselves. We all knew that if lightning struck the radar antenna or radio equipment, our entire operation would go down the toilet.

My earliest experiences in the TRACON with this kind of weather were when I was certified only on the Departure sectors. They were usually fun to work ~ unless the weather was like this. To use a sports analogy, I always thought of Departure Control as a kind of "Pitching" position. We were pitching Big Time's departures against another team; that being the enroute Center. If Big Time was dealing with the challenges of convective weather ~ the Center was too. Not knowing much about what was going on in their sectors, there was always the strain of wondering if they'd take our handoffs or, metaphorically speaking, bat them right back at us. Communications between facilities wasn't always so good and, quite often, the first sign of trouble was a refused handoff. 

Once planes left the airport, all a Departure controller could do was provide the spacing they requested, get the handoffs going, then hope for the best. This, as opposed to Big Time's arrival sectors. They were "Catchers" who were expected to accept handoffs from the Center. It was less risky for them because the arrival controllers had a pretty good idea whether they'd be able to get their airplanes through our airspace and onto the airport. But the Center controllers who had all those Big Time arrivals lined up and speeding toward our boundary? Oh, they were probably biting their nails, just like I was, in my little corner of the TRACON. They were pitching at us, and if Big Time "shut the door" on them ~ their traffic picture might go flying apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.

Handoff lines crackled constantly. It could drive you nuts. Under normal circumstances, handoffs were automated and therefore needed little to no actual voice communication between controllers. Convective weather temporarily removed "normal" from our lexicon. Under these conditions, nearly all the handoffs were accompanied by some anxious dialogue on the landlines. 

The suspense that filled the space between initiating and completing a handoff was just one of many factors that contributed to the stress of a stormy shift. There was an ever increasing aura of tension in the TRACON that eventually got thicker than the cigarette smoke. Noise levels ranged from fortissimo to frenzied. Unreliable equipment, uptight controllers, angry Supervisors and apprehensive pilots all contributed to the general aura of angst. It didn't matter where you worked. Whether it was in the Center, Terminal or a cockpit ~ everyone had a long, hard fight getting to the end of their workday. But that wasn't always where it ended. 

Many of the delayed flights, both in and out, didn't start moving till around midnight. The airport could become uncharacteristically busy at 1:00 AM. That being the case, a few of the evening shift controllers were held over for a couple of hours to help the mid-shift crew (two in the tower, two in the TRACON) clean up the mess. After a full shift of what felt like shingles on steroids, a little overtime money wasn't fair compensation for the added agony. The guys would stay though; knowing the mid-shift staff wouldn't be sufficient to handle all that pent up demand. When our carpool finally hit the long road home, we were completely wound down ~ like clocks that had run out of time. Somehow though, we all had enough energy left to relive many of the horrifying highlights of the shift through anecdotes, exaggerations, criticisms and complaints. It made us feel a little better. And up ahead was our favorite bar. That always made us feel a lot better. 

So it was Summertime and the livin' was queasy. It sure wasn't the Ella Fitzgerald, sultry swing of a Summertime that rocked my hammock. Not this one. This one was more of a Janis Joplin, shrieking, soulful kind of Summertime that shook my nerves and scared me shitless.

© NLA Factor, 2012

Airway Facilities & Abilities

Sometimes I dream in VFR ~ only to awake amid rapidly deteriorating conditions. Why am I always surprised? Pilots and controllers know full well that clouds can conceal some pretty nasty twists, so we should also recognize that even the most ideal flight conditions might take an unexpected turn against us. In perfect VFR weather though, we're not always as mentally prepared for problems. Favorable conditions, complacency and high expectations are powerful drugs. They could make me so high that unforeseen troubles and the subsequent emotional plunges would result in harder landings and longer recovery times. When those nasty twists occurred at work, I was always thankful for those who could step up and somehow clear the air. If the twist involved one of the many tools of our trade, I was thankful for the technicians of our Airway Facilities staff.

Late 1970s, early November. It was one of those days when the idea of going to work really energized me. From the first morning cup of coffee to that last post-shift bottle of beer, life was going to be good. When I met up with my carpool buddies, I could see they were equally anxious to strap on their headsets. As we sputtered onto the main highway in Carl's slightly out-of-tune Beetle, everyone bubbled enthusiastically about the great weather. Winds were light, so the airport would most likely be running on our optimum runway and airspace configuration. Visual approaches would rule the day and there'd probably be very few departure restrictions. In other words; it looked like we were in for a high volume, happy to be here, whipped cream kind of shift. We knew it was going to be smooth, sweet and a hell of a lot of fun!

When Carl's VW finally skidded to a stop in the facility parking lot, everyone clambered out and peered over at the airfield. As expected, things were looking good. Aroused by the possibilities, we started our brisk walk into work. Carl was so excited that he didn't even notice the Beetle's right front tire was going flat. Neither did the rest of us. We wouldn't discover that till shift's end, when it would be referred to as the last straw.

Arriving at the facility's secure entrance, someone swiped their badge, punched a code into the keypad and the four of us hurried, in tandem, toward the sign-in log. Unlike most evening shifts, I was actually hoping for a tower assignment. Conditions were perfect for watching airplanes and Big Time's lofty tower cab was the place to do it. I really needed some tower proficiency time anyway, and a "CAFB" day like this was the best way to get it. I just needed to convince Pete to send me up. That wasn't going to happen.

Entering the TRACON we immediately noticed something different about it. But what? There was still the usual cacophony of control instructions, the hollering back and forth between sectors and, of course, the cigarette smoke. Actually, there was a bit more smoke than normal. It was so thick, in fact, that I couldn't tell whether it was coming from the ashtrays, the equipment or both. Still, there was something missing from the continual din of our musty, timeworn radar room. I noticed an abnormally large group of people standing at our Flight Data position. That's when I realized what was different. The incessant chatter, usually emanating from our Flight Strip printers (FSPs), was missing. 

There were three printers mounted at the Data position. One printed the arrival and overflight strips, one printed departure strips and the third machine was a spare.  Under normal circumstances, the arrival and departure printers ran nearly non-stop. Sounding like a chorus of teleprinters, they banged out new and amended information controllers would need on traffic entering or exiting their airspace. 

Sample departure strip from a little aerodrome in Texas.

Strips would be slid into plastic holders and disbursed to the appropriate radar sector. This particular afternoon though, in the smoky chaos of the pre-evening rush radar room, they sat like cinder blocks ~ stone still and silent. There was, however, another ominous noise coming from the Data position. It would be the sound of those deteriorating conditions I mentioned earlier.


What met our ears sounded less like an ATC facility and more like a call center in the basement of some desperate and acutely confused telemarketing company. I heard one controller muttering; "Yeah . . . yeah . . . uh huh. What was the airway after Falmouth?" As he spoke, he was writing on a flight strip. Two other controllers stood at the data console; each one scribbling frantically on blank strips. A couple of Airway Facilities technicians wearing worried faces brushed quickly past me. They were pushing a cart piled high with parts and tools. That was the moment when I realized this was not going to be a "whipped cream kind of shift." It was going to be some kind of nightmare. Imagine your Sunday paper not showing up on the doorstep. Maybe a wheel fell off the kid's bike? Who knows. So the phone rings. You pick up the receiver and a guy says; "This is The Gazette calling with your Sunday edition. Are you ready to copy?" You scramble for a pen and several large pads of paper. That kind of nightmare.

For some reason, the whole scene made me think of my old Air Force roommate William.

The old AFCS patch

I lived in the barracks during much of my Air Force time. It was a building that controllers, radio and radar technicians, plus many of the other enlisted troops who had jobs in the Communications Squadron called their home. The place was more like a college dormitory where everyone wore uniforms for half the day. The rest of the time was usually spent in civilian clothes, planning and executing forays to any of the many bars and clubs that thrived outside the base perimeter.

 William, my first roommate, was a freckled redhead from central Pennsylvania. A radar technician ~ he was one of the guys who, armed with a selection of scewdrivers and diagnostic tools, kept our aging GCA unit operational. The two of us shared a bathroom, ate at the same table in the chow hall and trekked across the base together when it was time for work. I'd often find voluminous technical manuals strewn around our room; each opened to a schematic of one of the many systems he maintained. William studied a lot and I admired him for it. After all; two or three chapters in just one of his books were thicker than the entire Air Traffic Control manual I kept, mostly unread, under my bunk. He and the other guys in his shop were all that stood between us controllers and the huge pain in the ass of a radar failure.

Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) Unit

There were several technicians in my squadron. Their areas of expertise covered radios, radar, telephone equipment and nearly everything else a controller needed to get through the day. Some of the techs even maintained our VOR and TACAN sites. We had no idea what they did between equipment outages and didn't really care. As long as someone showed up when something broke, we were happy . . . very happy.

Although the pilots in our Base's fighter wing flew the most advanced aircraft in the Air Force's inventory, our ATC equipment was fragile, antiquated and capricious. Somehow though, our techs kept everything running fairly well. They saved our asses nearly every day and, for that, we regarded them as peers and partners in the mission.  Still, during those after-hours forays into inebriation, we'd rib them mercilessly and they'd do the same to us. The truth was that every Air Force controller I knew had the highest regard for those guys. We'd lie for them, trade countless rounds of drinks in the local gin mills and, when they transferred out, we'd lament their departure. Years later, I would discover a kind of caste system in the FAA that placed Airway Facilities (AF) personnel a few notches beneath the "Air Traffic elite." It seemed AF existed solely to support us and, in the opinions of many, that could only be done from below.

Standing in that late afternoon TRACON, with three inoperative strip printers, I could hear frenetic muttering coming from the Flight Data position as controllers hand-copied flight plans, subsequent amendments, GENOTs and other data from the Center. Information on departing flights would then be relayed to the tower, by phone, where another controller had to make a copy for Clearance Delivery, Ground and Local Control.

I could also hear an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and mild contempt coming from controllers seated at the approach sectors, like "What the hell is the point in having a spare printer if those idiots can't keep it working?!!" They were writing their own arrival strips by using information from the alpha-numeric data on their radar displays. This was a time-consuming and annoying distraction that only intensified as the evening rush of inbounds began creeping toward the outer fixes and the airplanes needed more and more attention. Although we had Handoff positions, where someone could sit next to the radar controller and write strips, they were rarely staffed. Today was no exception. There was a lot of angst and anger in the air, and it was all being directed at the Airway Facilities technicians who just couldn't seem to get those printers running.

Those damned printers, among the most plain and plebeian pieces of equipment in our inventory, were major labor-saving devices. As with most things, we took them for granted until something went wrong. Then we wondered why such a basic device couldn't either be fixed quickly or replaced. In this case though, replacing any of them wouldn't have helped. None of the three devices were working and we were far beyond the quick fix time frame.

More problems emerged. The extra manpower needed to make calls and write strips was wreaking havoc with the break schedule. Guys were working well beyond the desired two hour limit on their sectors and people were getting testy. Arrival restrictions had been imposed on all surrounding facilities and departure delays were beginning to mount. Phones kept ringing at the Watch desk but no one was there to answer. The TRACON Supervisor kept glaring at those technicians ~ expressing his frustration in any way he could without interrupting their work. Outside, the sun was setting on what should have been a perfect day for working airplanes.

By now, a Data Systems Specialist had joined the group huddled around the inert printers. He was talking to his counterpart at the Center. Apparently the issue was not a mechanical malfunction after all. It took an hour or two of disassembling and diagnosing but someone finally determined that Big Time's printers were actually in fine working order. They were simply not receiving data from the Center's host computer (from which all our flight data originated). It would later be discovered that someone using a backhoe, many miles from the airport, had inadvertently ripped up the cable that connected Big Time's FSPs with the Center. Repairs would take more hours than we had left on our shift.

The two AF techs vanished but the mayhem continued. We kept making calls, writing strips and working airplanes. A few controllers were asked to stick around for a couple hours of overtime. I felt bad for those AF guys. They had been the focus of much derision for several hours but took no exception to it. Understanding they could do nothing more to help, they packed up quietly and went back to their office. Nobody apologized to them and no one thanked them for their trouble ~ myself included. By the time they left, I was too busy arguing with a Center controller about the spacing between two arrivals.

The shift finally ended. Walking out of the facility, I felt sluggish, like I was wading through quicksand. A mild breeze wafted the smell of jet exhaust across our path as we four carpoolers trudged toward the parking lot. Feeling pretty deflated by events of the last eight hours, nobody had much to say. All we wanted to do by now was have a few beers and head home to bed. As we neared the lot, it looked like the right front wheel of Carl's Volkswagen had rolled into a pothole. When we realized the tire was flat, we were relieved to learn that Carl had a spare. He popped the trunk lid, only to discover the spare was also deflated. Feeling fairly flattened ourselves, we were almost too tired to figure this thing out.

Although sympathetic to our plight, none of the other guys in the lot were headed in our direction. They were   also as anxious as we were to get home. In less than five minutes, we were all alone in that lot, glaring at the useless tire in the same way we had glared at those AF techs earlier in the day. Then we started glaring at Carl. There was a difference though. Unlike our AF guys, this was a situation that Carl could have prevented from happening.  He muttered something about "the last straw," then started walking back to the tower. There, he was able to borrow one of the mid-shift guy's car keys. We grabbed the VW's spare tire, threw it into the trunk of a blue Ford sedan and sped away from the airport.

It was oppressively quiet in that Ford until we got to Carl's place. Climbing out of the car, I reminded the others it was my turn to drive tomorrow ~ making a mental note to check my spare tire.

Here's the epilogue. As a Supervisor dealing with an equipment problem, I'd sometimes have to go looking for the AF guys if they didn't answer their desk phone. The search eventually took me to one of the facility's equipment rooms. Along with radio and telephone switching equipment, they kept tools, spare parts and a lot of broken things in there. It looked like a shop that repaired pocket watches, refrigerators and old television sets by interchanging the parts. 

A wiring diagram for the Great Pyramid?

Of course there were also the ubiquitous stacks of technical manuals; one or two of which were usually opened to a page of schematics. To my brain, they might as well have been hieroglyphics. Either was equally undecipherable. I could neither walk like an Egyptian or talk like a technician but was glad to know someone actually understood the stuff. While us controllers got through the day largely on our quick wits and aggressive decision making ~ these guys had to study constantly, work unerringly and go off for weeks of additional training whenever new equipment came on line. And they did it to support us. You just had to love 'em.


I should add a few lines about how we in Air Traffic could place the AF staff squarely in the middle of our own internal issues. Anyone in air traffic supervision knew that all equipment required periodic checks and preventive maintenance (PM). If such checks were not performed within prescribed time intervals, the particular piece of equipment would lose its certification. That meant we couldn't use it again until it was re-certified. For example, a tech might arrive at the Watch Desk one morning and ask us to release an ILS system for three hours of PMs. It would be up to shift management to approve it or not.  Sometimes existing conditions (weather, traffic volume, etc.) made approval unwise or impossible. Sometimes though, a technician's request was denied solely because that Supervisor and/or that team felt they needed every security blanket they could keep in their clutches ~ thus foisting approval and associated impacts onto another team. I believe the popular euphemism might be "Kicking the can down the road?"

Eventually though, AF would have to take that system down or be in violation of maintenance timetables. They weren't about to let that happen. If a situation ever got to that point, Air Traffic would lose their right to refuse. Think of it this way. You miss that 36,000 mile service mentioned in your car's owner's manual, simply because you didn't feel like turning the car over to some mechanic for a day. The "Check Engine" light eventually comes on and your car immediately shuts down ~ no matter where you are or where you're going. Even worse; it won't start again until you get that servicing done. The rules made PMs a kind of technical time bomb that would eventually go off if not disarmed in time.

© NLA Factor, 2012

Its About The People

Most of my air traffic career was spent working at airports. From one tower or another; I could watch military flight crews striding across the ramp toward their warplanes, briefcase toting road warriors lined up to board commuter flights or even the occasional flight instructor and student boarding a Piper Warrior. There was a bond of trust between us all that would exist until they left my jurisdiction and would renew when they returned. The importance of this bond was somehow underscored by having actually seen my aviation partners. It was akin to the handshake that seals a deal.

Having the opportunity to see airplanes each day; along with pilots, mechanics, tug drivers, maintenance workers and all others who are moving parts in the great airport machine, gave deeper meaning to my role in it all. By far, the most influential parts of an airport are the passengers, those who come to greet them and those who come to say goodbye. Our profession is big but it all narrows down to one fine point. That point is the people. They were always the lens that brought everything I did into focus.

At Big Time, the tower and TRACON were close enough that we controllers could walk through the terminal building during our meal breaks. It was a veritable collage of society, sounds and emotions. Many of our societal elements were there; from the large group of screaming kids off on a school trip to the small covey of nuns staring quietly at a changing list of arrivals and gate assignments. Laughter drowned out by the public address system or farewell hugs interrupted by final boarding calls ~ it was all there. And outside the terminal building's tall windows was a web of taxiways leading to runways that pointed to the rest of the world. To me, it all represented the core value in what I did for a living.

To this day, Big Time Airport remains a megalopolis of ramps, runways, terminals and taxiways. Yet somewhere out there; beyond all the Federal Aviation Regulations, Air Traffic Control Procedures, Letters of Agreement, computer systems, communications networks and emerging technologies you can still find the basics ~ like a windsock swaying in the breeze or a rotating beacon scanning the night skies. On Saturday afternoons you may find a group of plane spotters parked along the airport's perimeter road. Inside the terminal buildings, people still wait for friends and relatives to arrive. Others scramble to find a window where they can watch a loved one's flight take off.

As evolving and sophisticated as the aviation system is these days, it remains unchanged in many ways and surprisingly simple. As it was from the very beginning, flight is a personal experience. You can verify this by visiting any airport and watching the people.

© NLA Factor, 2010

Choose To Be Happy

It was early 1974 and I was finally on my way. The Three Degrees were blasting "TSOP" from my car radio as I sped toward town. It was dawn for the Disco era and I was dancing! At long last, some four years after my honorable discharge, I was going to work for the FAA. Along with six other recently hired trainees, I would begin my air traffic control career at Big Time Tower. The challenge was both energizing and intimidating. Big Time was a busy place... a very busy place.

Back then, the Big Time controllers were a colorful assortment of personas. Some were WWII vets, many were former military controllers and most were PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) members. Together they'd ridden out a three-day job action (sickout) in 1969 and a three-week sickout that began in March of 1970. Subsequent disciplinary action, an imperious management team and ongoing operational deficiencies combined to anneal their on-the-job attitude. Still, they were a congenial bunch, albeit skeptical; trusting no one who hadn't proven themselves worthy in the crucible of the control rooms.

United in their disdain and distrust for management, they were somewhat divided in their views of PATCO as an effective counterpoise. One controller (a non-member) once told me PATCO couldn't do anything for him that he couldn't do for himself. Several others shared that view. These were generally the stronger controllers, held in high regard by management. Self reliant, they rarely ever complained or got into trouble. Their sole reason for coming to work was a fierce pride in what the did for a living. The ongoing union rhetoric was simply background noise and they ignored it. For many others, union programs and pursuits were their passion. Working airplanes was a distraction, management was the enemy and PATCO would take care of them; no matter what.

I was initially assigned to the facility Training Department for several weeks of classroom instruction. On my very first day at Big Time, the local PATCO President stopped in to chat with me and the other trainees. He enumerated the many benefits of union membership, pointing out the things we would like about working at Big Time. He put special emphasis on the many issues we were expected to be unhappy about. Eager for acceptance, we listened with rapt attention; nodding and muttering at the appropriate moments.

PATCO was nothing new to me. Having seen the pamphlets bearing F. Lee Bailey's image back in 1969, me and a few other Air Force controllers had signed up under an "Associate" membership program. Now, as a "real" controller, I was ready to sign on as a professional.

On leaving the academic environment, we seven trainees found a tower and TRACON infused with the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Half-filled ashtrays sat at every control position and nearly everyone needed them. Poorly ventilated, both tower and TRACON often smelled of jet exhaust from a nearby ramp. Most of the equipment was old and unreliable. Alphanumeric data-blocks would occasionally freeze on radar displays while primary and secondary targets ran off without them. Radio equipment randomly dropped off line and backup frequencies were scarce. Flight data printers seized up at the most inopportune times, leaving controllers to scramble for pens and phone lines to the ARTCC. Holding patterns filled quickly and emptied slowly. All the while, big jets, painted in long gone liveries like Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, National and Braniff, rolled in and out of the big airfield. I was both overwhelmed and exhilarated by it all.

As I began my OJT (on-the-job-training) the PATCO Facility Rep's earlier admonishments would be verified by my new teammates. The Rep's earlier portrayal of management was also corroborated by the mostly autocratic and insensitive management staff themselves. Discontent hung in the air like the cigarette smoke. Complaints were often dismissed out of hand and formal grievances invariably became the battleground upon which PATCO and the Tower Chief would regularly draw swords.

This was the backdrop to those early days of my career. In an atmosphere of disaffection, dissatisfaction and confrontation I learned I could still choose to be happy. I focused on my training, absorbed in the challenges and determined to succeed. Although I was now a card-carrying PATCO member; Labor/management issues took a backseat in my drive to become a fully certified controller at Big Time.

© NLA Factor, 2010