On Politics, Passing Acquaintances And Change

George Wallace was running for the Democratic nomination. So was Jimmy Carter. Translation? Whenever I ventured into the break room, chances were that Billy would be sitting in there, expounding loudly and at length on his political views. Billy (no relation to Jimmy) was a professed redneck from somewhere in south Georgia. He railed against Jerry Ford and never missed an opportunity to extol the merits of voting a southern boy into the White House. It seemed we were in need of a change and Jimmy was just the guy to do it.

Billy raised a few valid points and had my interest for a while. In time though, his pontificating turned redundant, then it turned boring. His incessant partisan pounding finally became too annoying for me to take. I'd heard it all before. If I was lucky, Billy's time in the breakroom would end well ahead of mine so I could get a few minutes of peace. If not, I'd usually end up going back to work before my break was over. It's not that I had a problem with Jimmy Carter. He seemed like an honest enough fellow. Billy was my problem. He got so damned excited over this stuff. To me though, politics was about as exciting as . . . this?

Throw in a free side-order of Saltine crackers and I'm in!

Political parties and their politics just didn't garner much attention from me when I was controlling airplanes for a living. Pundits who believed they could make sense of it all or somehow tilt my opinions left or right only added more confusion to the daily bedlam of Big Time. To me, it was just an off-key and endlessly grating soundtrack for the ongoing dramas I faced at work. Most of us learned it was best to simply tune it out. The President himself couldn't generate much buzz unless he was handing out an extra day of holiday pay on the Friday after Thanksgiving ~ or maybe firing thousands of controllers. We were usually preoccupied with more immediate issues like, metaphorically speaking, how to separate the snowflakes in a blizzard.

Nixon was in the White House when I was hired but whatever happened in the Oval Office didn't faze most of us. Can I say it wasn't on our radar? Anyway, we were far more concerned over what was happening in our own front office. I don't recall whether it was oval, rectangular or square shaped but it was clearly in bad shape. That, plus there was always enough facility politics to keep the break room gossip going ad infinitum. So, who needed more of it? When it came to matters concerning our elected representatives, my personal feelings usually ranged somewhere between indifference and ambivalence. Politics was a distraction and, in my line of work, with my fugitive attention span, I couldn't handle any increase in distractions.

My attitude hasn't changed much over the years. I may slip up now and then but still try to avoid political stuff. It ain't easy. News periodicals, television and the Internet are already saturated with more cant, slant and commentary than there are degrees on a compass. It gives me vertigo, so why would I even think about generating more of it? I believe there's a reasonably convincing case that opinions actually are like assholes. Since everyone has their own, why would anyone want to hear mine?

I also realize that penning my own political views would require that I have some kind of partisan predilection. I don't. Maybe I can't. Here's the thing. There are too many problems with me. I was never responsible enough to call myself a conservative and besides; I couldn't possibly meet their moral threshold. Another sad set of truths are that I'm not smart enough to know what's best for everyone. That, plus my momma taught me never to call people names when I disagreed with them. All this and more combined to exclude me from ever practicing punditry. It's probably best for me to stick with writing about things I'm fairly familiar with.

NLA Factor
Class of '02

I don't think anyone's parochial pronouncements effect much change in other people's beliefs, no matter how well they're stated. I learned a long time ago (1981 to be exact) that I couldn't change anyone's mindset; no matter what I said or what I wrote. The fact is that no one could ever change my mind either; no matter what they said or wrote. Experiences are the true instruments of change. I write about my own experiences here; knowing they won't really change anyone else. They changed me though. What I don't know is just how much they changed me. Could I still be that goofy kid in my high school yearbook photo? That is a question I'm not qualified to answer. Ask the last girl I dated before graduation.

So now, like a recurring nightmare, I'm dealing with another Primary Election season and all the attending rhetoric. I guess I have an irreconcilable indifference to it all but my hat is off to anyone who can talk or write about it in a non-divisive way. Generally though, I think that kind of writing serves mainly as a pressure relief valve for the author. Getting a little pent up vitriol off the chest can make a writer feel much better. As for the reader ~maybe not so much. Personally, I'd rather write about Bonnie and Claire.

Bonnie transferred into Big Time a few years after me. I can't remember where she came from but it must have been a busy facility. Already well versed in the tower and TRACON arts, she soon proved to be a very capable controller. Smart, single and saucy, Bonnie could cause more excitement than a radar failure in a rainstorm. Take, for instance, the day she sauntered into work wearing a blue t-shirt, lettered in white with the word "Doable" across the front. Pete, our irascible, disheveled dictator of an Area Manager, took one look and threatened to send her home. Not for some puritanical predilection. Oh no. Pete was a ribald kind of guy who used expletives and four-letter words like a carpenter uses a hammer. They drove his point home loudly and quickly. Pete's objection over Bonnie's attire was more about the medium than the message. You see, current facility dress code prohibited t-shirts.

Bonnie ended up in one of the main terminal's gift shops where she found a twenty-dollar shirt sporting the airport's marketing logo. The "medium" aspect of his objections now mitigated, Pete let her go to work. As to the message on that notorious t-shirt? In time, a couple guys in the facility were rumored to have learned there can be truth in advertising.

I felt bad for Bonnie and the other singles at Big Time. Social life outside our circle of coworkers was difficult. With the rotating shifts, frequently changing days off, weekend and late night work, there wasn't much opportunity to meet people outside the profession. It was challenging enough for the married folks but especially hard for people like Bonnie. The outcome of it all was that we had little choice but to fraternized with our coworkers. It was a kind of social inbreeding; as unhealthy as it was unavoidable. In many ways, we were closer to our team members than we were with our immediate families. We saw each other at our best and our worst. We had to depend on each other to make the right moves at the right times. Where some people might, one day, have to trust a close relative to handle delicate or potentially dire situations, we had to trust the relative strangers in our control rooms. We also had to trust all the anonymous pilots who flew, unseen, through our sectors every day. It was a strange paradox that we trusted them all, but the moment we hung up our headsets for the day, we trusted no one.

I liked working with Bonnie. Before she transferred into Big Time, the only woman on our team was Claire. She was already a well seasoned journeyman when I hired on. Stylistically, Bonnie and Claire were at opposite poles in their approach to working traffic and the contrasts became more obvious as time passed. Claire was invariably conservative, conventional, practical and dispassionate. For example, something might abruptly reduce the airport acceptance rate, causing Final Sectors to need more miles-in-trail from the approach controllers. Suddenly, ten miles between arrivals wasn't sufficient. Now the planes needed to be 20 miles apart, slowed to 180 knots and tucked neatly onto a downwind leg. Doing so might require Claire to go into an immediate hold at her outer fixes while simultaneously issuing a series of extreme vectors to spread out the flights already on their way to the finals. This kind of play often lead to bedlam. While other controllers might have started bitching, Claire simply bent to the task, with no questions asked, for as long as needed. Quietly doing whatever had to be done, she was the embodiment of efficiency.

During my bewildering days as a developmental at Big Time, Claire's signature ended up on a lot of my training reports. Knowledgeable, unflappable and focused, she was the ideal training instructor. As I progressed further and further into the operation, I realized there were plenty of things to bitch about. Claire showed me how pointless that was, compared to just dealing with things and moving forward. Complaining burned energy, was an unnecessary distraction and nobody wanted to work with a whiner.

Then there was Bonnie, who managed her sector like a mad scientist. She invented a crazy, new idea every few minutes; often stabbing at an interphone button to coordinate her latest scheme with other affected sectors. A bit raucous but never reckless, creative energy seemed to seep from her headset and spread through the room like gas fumes. She was nearly as explosive.

While Claire ran a quiet, standard operation where things rarely went wrong, Bonnie's operation was characterized by her derring-do. She pushed relentlessly; pressing adjacent sectors for whatever was needed to make things work. In the throes of inspiration, she'd often fly out of her chair and dash across the TRACON to another sector. Once there, she'd grab the controller by his shoulder and point at some radar targets ~ describing her plan in rapid-fire detail. Then she'd rush back to her own scope to reel off a string of control instructions. Sometimes her plan didn't work but she nearly always had another one that was equally entertaining.

Some controllers were bothered by her boundless ingenuity and unrelenting aggressiveness. These were the guys who thought the word "minimums" was one of their performance standards. Bonnie was a "maximum" kind of gal. I kept up as best I could ~ often wishing I could wash those bursts of ambient energy down with a cold beer. If I could have tightened my headset like a vise, I still wouldn't have been able to squeeze as many ideas out of my skull each day as Bonnie could in an hour. Inspiration just seemed to fly off the top of her head. She was a natural.

As far as I was concerned, Bonnie and Claire combined many of the most highly valued characteristics of an air traffic controller. I was glad to be on their team; especially during those shifts when the trials and tribulations seemed more numerous than our standard methods of dealing with them. When Claire's safe, orderly and expeditious teamed up with Bonnie's creative, assertive and efficient ~ a lot of airplanes were going to be moved ~ no matter what. As you might expect ~ when a tough shift ended, Claire would head straight home, while Bonnie would follow most everyone else to the nearest bar.

Eventually 1981 rolled in and Bonnie came up with one more crazy idea. Unlike the ideas I admired her for, this one was completely reckless. I did my best to talk her out of it and I'm sure Claire did as well. Keep in mind what I said earlier about not being able to change anyone's mindset. Bonnie wasn't listening to conflicting views or unwelcome advice.  Experiences taught her that pushing hard and staying the course would eventually bring success. She was confident that this would be no exception.


Unfortunately, it was a major exception. In the blink of an eye, Bonnie was gone. I saw her a few times just after the strike but she eventually disappeared along with with everyone else on the picket lines. Sometimes mad scientists create monsters and sometimes those monsters destroy their creators.

Redneck Billy landed a job in the Regional Office sometime after the strike and I never heard from him again. When I finally left Big Time myself, I tried to keep up with Claire. You know how it is though. Life has room for just so many relationships and, like it or not, some are eventually supplanted by newer ones. When it comes to keeping friends, life reminds me of a holding pattern that can only keep so many airplanes. The most recent arrivals come in at the top while the oldest ones get pushed out of the bottom and move on.

The entire cast of characters from my Big Time days have moved on; myself included. I still remember every one of them though. Memories are the last remaining vestiges of our long-gone, moved on friendships and acquaintances. The characters may be missing but they've left behind a life long legacy of smiles on demand. I'll never forget Bonnie, Claire and so many others who enriched my life through the years. Redneck Billy even crosses my mind whenever a political message comes on the TV.

The experiences I had with them all, whether good or bad, definitely changed me. But really; how much have I changed? There is no way for me to know for sure. I'd have to rely on the cast from my past to help measure the differences between then and now. After all that has happened, could I still be the frazzled, unraveled controller everyone knew back at Big Time? Again ~ I'm not qualified to answer. It's funny and ironic that when someone tells me "You've changed" I don't really believe them. And when I tell someone "I've changed" they don't really believe me. I guess it's the difference between perceptions and doubts. One thing is certain; I still don't like politics.

© NLA Factor, 2012

The Other NextGen

NextGen ~ Air traffic panacea or pricey placebo? Quantum jump ahead or just a head ache? Having pushed my share of tin in a decidedly lower tech air traffic environment, I'm really not qualified to say. The tools of the trade have evolved considerably since I left the boards but there is one thing I learned a long time ago hasn't changed a bit. Riding along comfortably in a high-mileage status quo isn't the best means of travel if you plan on effectively navigating that tricky road into the future. But I'm not going to waste time on that "ongoing transformation of the National Airspace System" touted on FAA's website. If interested, you can go here: video . I recommend checking it out only if you're not working mids and are having trouble sleeping.

I'm talking about another kind of next generation ~ namely the next generation of air traffic controllers. What I saw in the second half of my career was a system for training new controllers that was already in retrograde. But let me take you back to the first half.

When I started my FAA career at Big Time, it wasn't really so big. Busy? Yes . . . but still operating far below a capacity we couldn't have imagined at the time. Many of the guys I met during those first months on the job had been there for several years before PATCO came into existence. A pragmatic and persevering bunch, they were accustomed to fighting and losing their own battles, then dealing with the defeat. Facility policies or procedures were routinely imposed on the workforce by management. Eventual compromise, if any, was hailed by the controllers as somewhat of a victory.

There was, however, that one particular area where concessions were neither anticipated or accepted. In fact, the staunch unwillingness by either side of the bargaining table to compromise was as strong as management's recalcitrance in most other matters. It was actually one of very few subjects everyone agreed on. So ~ what was it that could bring anarchists and autocrats together under the same tent? I remember it like yesterday.

No epiphany moment here. This is a subject that, like a splinter under the fingernail, has been lodged in the air traffic control profession for years. I'm only writing about it now because it's still important to me and because I sense, from friends who are still working airplanes, that the situation is becoming more acute. I'm not just talking about controller training. I'm also talking about the more nebulous concept of facility performance standards. The gradual decline of each is gnawing away at overall skill levels, morale and, inevitably, aviation safety itself.

Believe me, I don't like having to invoke that old bromide ~ aviation safety. In my years on the boards, I heard it overused by PATCO and eventually NATCA to characterize almost anything they disagreed with. But this really was and still is a safety issue.

Take the case of Bobby Joe for example. "BJ" and I began our careers on the same day in the early '70s. Back then, we were among the next generation of controllers coming into Big Time. Former military, BJ was an affable fellow, good humored and as glad to be there as the rest of us. During those first few weeks of classroom training, one thing became clear though. BJ's study habits fell a little short of satisfactory. Always the last to complete his written tests, he also finished with the lowest passing grades. It was okay though. Add a little self-deprecating humor to a buoyant disposition and it'll easily float a guy way out of his depth. Most everyone was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt ~ at least for a while.

On the job training (OJT) was a constant struggle. Although the controllers liked BJ personally, training him was rarely a gratifying experience. All the trainees started their run through the OJT gauntlet on Flight Data/Clearance Delivery. This meant a solid understanding of routes, altitude assignments, computer input formats and clearance delivery phraseology was imperative. Where other trainees eventually demonstrated fluency in these skills, BJ blundered along, skipping or stumbling over many of the essentials. His training sessions often finished up under a withering barrage of assertions by instructors that he was unprepared to work the position. Was it laziness, low aptitude or was he simply too slow? It didn't really matter because nobody was going to be washed out on Clearance Delivery; even if it portended bigger problems ahead. Opinions were forming among his coworkers though. People's expectations declined and, when instructors talked about BJ, doubt crept into their conversation.

Ground Control training was even more troublesome for BJ. There was good reason. This old airport was conceived and constructed during the piston and propeller days when hours could pass between an arrival and the next departure. As the years passed, renovations and updates were thrown into the mix. Terminal buildings grew larger, runways grew longer and new ones were added. All the while, a bewildering network of taxiways spread across the field like some kind of alien ground cover. As the airport's geometry grew increasingly complex, so did the Ground Control position.

BJ struggled with it all, especially at night. To keep up with a dimly lit labyrinth of vague silhouettes, moving lights and airline logos; good strip management was fundamental. Everyone had their own system for sorting out where each airplane was; both coming and going. Without it, confusion could set in quickly. Airplanes instructed to hold at some darkened intersection could easily be forgotten until an irate pilot piped up. Even worse was the possibility of a runway incursion or that a business jet, barreling toward the general aviation ramp, might come face-to-face with an outbound air carrier on the same taxiway. Things could get ugly quick and you literally couldn't see it coming.

BJ's training hours added up, approaching their upper limit when he finally checked out. He tried hard but never managed to develop that "swagger" of confidence on Ground Control that his peers demonstrated. Working the position, BJ always wore an anxious expression on his face. The job got done but it seemed to be taking a toll on BJ and everyone else on the crew. He reminded me of the teenagers in one of those Hollywood "slasher" movies, creeping gingerly through an abandoned factory after dark ~ expecting something horrible to happen at any moment. Since it sometimes did, other controllers in the tower had to be extra vigilant about what BJ was doing on Ground. Working one control position is challenging enough but having to keep an eye on another one can cause undue overload.

Local Control training quickly proved too much for him. Although he knew the applicable rules, his reflexes and, of course, that impossible to teach sixth sense that alerts controllers when something needs to be done never fully developed. Some controllers wanted to see his training terminated long before he ran out of allotted hours. We came to expect go-arounds and missed departure slots when BJ got busy. They spawned delays and delays could quickly segue into airport gridlock. Downstairs; approach controllers grew angry over having to work go-arounds back into an already tight arrival sequence. BJ's OJT reports told the story over and over again. By the time he was called in to have that "talk" with his Supervisor, he was about ready to call it quits anyway. The easy-going nature and good humor he'd been known for was gone and soon ~ so was Bobby Joe.

There was no loud keening from the union. Had he been certified, they would have had to work with, or more aptly, around him. This was a disturbing prospect. Everyone, including the PATCO faithful, understood one thing; when it came to Big Time's tower and TRACON, you had to either keep up or keep out. BJ offered neither excuses or accusations. The front office was mostly silent on the matter, although calls were being exchanged with those who could assist in placing BJ in a less active facility. The consensus was that he had given it his best shot. There was an adequate knowledge of what to do on Local Control but he simply couldn't do it with sufficient speed and competence to meet facility standards and expectations. It was a scenario that I saw repeated several times in the up and down world of Big Time Tower.

Trainees who made it to the radar room would find an atmosphere far less forgiving than tower operations; especially during IFR weather. The airport and our facility were, in fact, simply the vital components of a huge, self-perpetuating machine. Planes were delivered into one end, processed, then spit out the other end in a continuous cycle that should only have stopped when the machine ran out of planes. Any trainee who couldn't learn to make or fill gaps in the arrival sequence, adjust the spacing when demand required or maintain a steady departure flow would soon be, as my Air Force sergeant used to say, doing the "duffel bag drag." There were several examples. Gender or ethnicity issues got the ill-fated fledgling very little consideration. Looking good in a headset or tight fitting jeans got them none at all. It was simple. Everyone was expected to keep the machine running at full speed. It was a matter of pride.

When it became necessary, washing someone out of the training program back then was not seen as an act of aggression. It was cathartic. It was reassuring. It removed someone from an environment where they could not succeed and placed them in one where they stood a better chance.

Then came the strike and a subsequent scramble to hire, train and certify another generation of controllers. As time went by, training strategies and standards began to slip under the weight of increasing demand and user expectations. A culture of compromise began to grow among the weary workforce that had been holding things together since August of '81. "Good enough" became good enough. We began certifying people if they could simply demonstrate the necessary position knowledge and stay out of trouble. Nothing more. Within a year or two, these folks were starting to train even newer recruits and the decline in performance gathered momentum. We were like bartenders watering down our own drinks. The price was high. We'd created a morass of marginally capable controllers who sat like speed bumps in our road to system recovery.

By 1983, there was a fairly large population of 'Strike Babies' (those hired after August of 1981) in the facility and many were fully certified. By default, some of them would hold their trainees to the same "good enough" standards that they had been held to when they were trained. Let's face it; there were work schedules to fill. There were sectors, running combined since the strike, that needed to be staffed separately. Older journeymen longed for retirement while other, younger ones, looked forward to career progression. I was one of them. I'd had enough of Big Time and needed a new challenge. There were also the few acutely fatigued fellas who held themselves together with nothing more than long strings of profanity whenever control room pressure peaked. So any attempt to get rid of a trainee who clearly wasn't up for the task (like old BJ) would often be met with opposition.

Years passed. A new union formed and a new philosophy toward training was taking shape. Try to terminate training on a developmental and you learned several surprising facts. First; it was rarely ever the trainee's fault. It was more likely attributed to a series of unfair and inaccurate training reports. Or maybe the trainee was scheduled for OJT when traffic was either too heavy or too light for his or her capabilities. It could also have been a Supervisor or Manager who "had it in" for them and was trying to railroad them out of the facility. When all else failed, it might simply come down to incomplete or improperly completed training reports. The idea of moving incapable controllers to a place where they stood a better chance of succeeding was being replaced by the idea of training them for as long as it took to become "good enough."

The new reality was to eventually certify trainees - no matter what, let them season on the position when traffic wasn't too heavy, keep an eye on them and hope for the best. Of course this meant the heaviest pushes still had to be handled by our older, more experienced and more fatigued controllers. Many of them were well beyond their nineteenth nervous breakdown and some were about to spontaneously combust.

The world was changing. Most newly hired controllers were coming in with solid academic credentials while the pre-1981 recruits brought prior military ATC experience with them. Decisions, formerly guided by what was best for the system, were increasingly influenced by the course of least resistance. It wasn't simply an issue confined to the control rooms either. It seemed that everyone, from the regional office on down to the controller workforce, was passively complicit in this plunge toward mediocrity. We all shared in the responsibility for aviation safety and had, for whatever reason, tacitly condoned the new 'good enough' standards.

So I'll ask you; how is the next generation of controllers coming along? With a lot of pride in our ATC system still remaining, I am very curious. Has the FAA set its recruitment standards high enough to bring in only the most promising applicants? Will those involved in on-the-job training of our next generation apply the highest standards to that process? Will Management and the union support well founded and clearly documented recommendations by instructors and Supervisors to terminate training on those who don't meet those standards? Will our next generation continue to display the intangible earmarks that once identified our best controllers? Will they be able to cope with the many changes, known and unknown, coming at them? Will they be able to withstand the increasing pressure of inevitable air traffic increases? Does safety still come first? The answers may rest with our current generation but, again, I'm not qualified to say.

© NLA Factor, 2011

In a word:

Life as an Air Force controller was pretty simple once I learned the rules. I got to work on time, kept my hair senselessly short, my uniform pressed and my shoes polished. I did what I was told to do, when I was told to do it (a new and rather impractical concept for me) and I never questioned my superiors. The rules didn't bother me and the rules didn't change ~ ever. Once I got used to it all, life was easy. I was now an air traffic controller! I worked in a control tower where I did my eight hour shift watching incredible airplanes doing awesome things on and above the airfield. I even had an entirely new vocabulary that included such terms as "afterburners, hung ordnance" and "formation takeoff." In my opinion, it was the coolest job ever and I felt lucky to be there. After all, it was only a few months prior that I could have been a poster boy for dead end jobs.

Initially, the Air Force wanted to make me into an aircraft mechanic. A mistake like that would have put my life on an entirely different trajectory and, given my mechanical aptitude, would also have left the Air Force with a lot of broken airplanes rusting away on the ramp. Besides that; anyone who ever looked out a control tower window to see those aircraft mechanics working down on the flight line during snow storms, sleet or sweltering heat knew where the better place to work was.

Controllers lead a relatively privileged life around the base. Since we worked shifts we were exempted from most of the crap that other enlisted airmen had to put up with. Work details, guard duty, parades and inspections were for the other chumps in the squadron. We controllers just did our shifts and were left on our own the rest of the time. That time was usually spent off base; going to one of the many nearby bars with my teammates, getting drunk and amusing the local women. Throw in some occasional sleep and you'd have a pretty good snapshot of my life. I was so young in those days, easily influenced, eager for acceptance and wholly high on everything.

A couple floors below the tower cab was our head office. This was where the Flight Facilities Officer sat, along with a couple of senior NCOs who were directly responsible for tower and Radar operations. Those two guys were the real forces to be reckoned with if ever there were problems. The officer, a baby-faced First Lieutenant named John, seemed either perpetually bored or stricken with hemorrhoids. He'd graduated college with an engineering degree, joined the Air Force and was immediately put in charge of an air traffic control facility. It made no sense ~ to him or us. Most times we'd find him at his desk, talking on the telephone, reading magazines or just staring out the window. It wasn’t much of a job ~ unless Bob the FAA Air Traffic Representative happened to be around. We never knew for sure but it seemed that Bob outranked everyone. Even Lieutenant John tried to look busy when he was around.

Bob, or the "Atrep" as he was referred to, was an FAA employee; the only FAA employee on the entire base. At one time there were lots of Atreps; each was assigned to a military air traffic facility, where they oversaw operations and acted as a liaison between their military hosts and the FAA. It was a much coveted and difficult job to get. Difficult because no one in his right mind ever gave up an Atrep job until they retired. It was that good.

Bob was rarely in his office and practically never came to the tower cab unless there was a Wing exercise, major overseas deployment, in-flight emergency or if he found out his boss in the Regional Office was stopping in. He'd also have to be on hand to administer CTO (Control Tower Operator) tests and sign off on newly certified controllers. Most times though, Bob was out playing golf with the Base Commander or hanging out at the Officer's Club. During those rare appearances in the tower, he'd tell tales about his ATC career, the people he knew and the airplanes he'd worked. Most of the guys on my crew, Vietnam vets and career Air Force controllers, were skeptical or indifferent to Bob’s rambling recollections. Not me. I was twenty years old and completely riveted by his commentaries on big airliners, bustling terminal buildings and busy tarmacs. For the first time, a vision of my future began to take shape. I finally had a goal in life but needed to finish my military hitch first. Getting into the FAA probably wouldn't be easy but it would surely be worth it. I loved being an Air Force controller but was sure the job would be even better in the FAA.

We'd all heard the stories of Air Force controllers who got discharged one day and went to work in an FAA facility the next. We heard they could make upward to $12,000 a year as FAA controllers! But you know...as an Airman Second Class standing watch in a small control tower ~ looking out at the nearly three years remaining on my enlistment? Getting a controller job with the FAA was nothing more than a pipe dream.

After being discharged, I rushed off immediately to take the Civil Service test for Air Traffic Control ~ only to find the FAA wasn't hiring. That started me off on a long odyssey through several jobs about which I knew very little and cared even less. Time passed. I become depressed and disengaged. Persistent memories of those years spent as a controller only made things worse. Although not exactly in Dire Straits, I did have to "move those refrigerators" and color TVs to get by. Never say fate doesn't have a great sense of humor though. No sooner did I finally land an interesting job that paid me something other than a pittance and a promise when the FAA called. Grabbing the ring, I soon found myself checking into Big Time Tower as a trainee; where I would come to realize that life as an FAA controller wasn’t as easy to understand as my Air Force life had been.

Unlike the Air Force, life as an FAA controller was not so simple. Rules changed, it seemed, every time I opened the "Read and Initial" binder. Gone was the constancy of military life. My world was now a large gray area; where issues and edicts could be debated ad infinitum. I could wear whatever I wanted to work, as long as I maintained "a neat, businesslike appearance." Nobody cared how long my hair was and, for the first time in my controller career, individual goals and ideologies were permissible. The coalescence and lockstep compliance required of a military unit was not applicable here. Open conflict with superiors, although officially discouraged, was tolerated and widely practiced by many of the journeymen. Even the Supervisors got into it but usually fought their battles behind closed doors.

There was a union, who’s job it seemed, was to highlight management’s incompetence, provide cover for clumsy controllers, ensure everyone understood just how oppressed and underpaid we were and have monthly meetings at a nearby bar ~ where we'd usually end up getting drunk and amusing the local women. Okay ~ so there was at least one similarity between the Air Force and the FAA. There were union Contracts, new and old, containing sundry Articles, the meanings or intent of which were often debated ad infinitum. This often resulted in grievances; usually denied, which could lead to arbitration and possibly another interpretation of the Article in question. It was stuff that ole' Bob the Atrep never talked about and couldn't even have imagined.

At first, I didn’t have the time to really appreciate the sharp contrasts between the Air Force and FAA's working environment. On my first day at Big Time, I was handed a copy of the point sixty-five, along with several Change Notices that needed to be posted. Then came the letters of agreement, Facility Standard Operating Procedures Manual, Emergency Operations Manual, copies of all applicable SIDs and approach plates, the Airport Operations Manual and, of course, a list of nearby restaurants that delivered to the tower. The Training Officer pointed to a couple of large loose-leaf binders filled with Facility Orders, Notices and Memos. Required reading.

I took it all home and dropped it on the coffee table. Familiarization, memorization and successful completion of the periodic written exams would be my ticket out of the Training Department and into OJT ~ a place where I'd actually talk to airplanes again. I opened a beer and started to read. Wading through the reams of reference material was a pure pleasure to me. My "pipe dream" of becoming an FAA controller was coming true. I was making good money, or so I thought at the time. If I made it through the training program, there would be even more money in my pocket. Coming in from a lengthy run of minimum wage jobs with no benefits; I felt like a lottery winner. Once again, I thought I had the coolest job ever and I felt lucky to be there.

The Training Department, however, was apparently some kind of "cocoon" that kept me insulated from the constant sawing and hammering of labor/management relations. Every now and then the local PATCO President would stop in to brief me and the other trainees on what was happening. I was astonished to learn just how bad things were out there "on the boards." Outside my little cocoon, a tempest of grievances, Unfair Labor Practices and Unsatisfactory Condition Reports raged on endlessly. We were encouraged to stay alert, support PATCO and push its initiatives. I was confused. I couldn't reconcile what I was hearing with my fond memories of Air Force ATC. Could the career I'd been craving all these years really be so bad? It would take PATCO to eventually help me understand the dynamics of what was going on here. Meanwhile, I just nodded my head stupidly. Well; I was so young back then, easily influenced and eager for acceptance.

It took a while but I finally got out of the Training Department and into OJT. These were happy and humbling times. I quickly learned that hotshot Air Force controller of the late '60s was now an idiot who knew nothing about air traffic control. I was a Gong Show reject among the true artistes. As promised, I put my shoulder to the wheel whenever I could and, along with the other PATCO members, pushed the union's campaigns against management. What I eventually learned was; no matter how hard one pushes against an obstacle, it may never move. That's not so bad though. The real problems begin when the obstacle starts pushing back at you. So it was with our PATCO Local and facility management.

It didn't take long for the union to convince me of just how bad things were. Looking back, I see it mostly as a self-fulfilling prophesy. For every problem I was told about, I would see at least two examples per day. Every time PATCO hassled and nit-picked at management, the reaction became more severe. The more defensive and unreasonable they appeared, the more we hassled and nit-picked at them. Within a few months I felt myself becoming disgruntled, frustrated and irate but I wasn't really sure why. I was progressing normally through the training program and should have been satisfied, if not exuberant. But the constant droning of dissent was inescapable and seemed to suck all the joy out of my success at the job.

My descent into full discontent took place at a glacial pace. It was a slow leak in my morale that eventually left me deflated and disconsolate. Having once believed I had the coolest job ever; only to learn it was mere drudgery took a while for me to accept. Did I feel lucky to be here? Well yes ~ but only when I was controlling airplanes. Once unplugged from my console I couldn't avoid hearing that sawing and hammering again. Oh there were still those loud monthly union meeting/beer parties. Lots of fun but the next day always brought back a hangover of cynicism and resentment toward management. It was a situation that would take me years of listening, questioning and self-scrutiny to climb out of.

Then one day I thought of those mentally disabled guys I used to work with back in my department store janitor days. It wasn't so long ago and yet I'd completely forgotten how humble and happy they were with their work. Back then I was just marching in place till a real opportunity like the FAA came along. But to those guys, cleaning floors and bathrooms was their career and they were proud of it. It was probably still their career and, if so, they'd still be coming to work with that "lottery winner" attitude. What would they say of my current situation, salary and attitude? Once again, just like back then, I began feeling ashamed of myself. Was I the underlying cause of my own discontent? Was I simply making my personal situation worse? Was it possible to tune out the caterwauling negativity and just enjoy the job I loved? In a word: yes!


© NLA Factor, 2011

OJT ~ A New Instructor

The transformation was swift. From uncertain trainee, I evolved through the unsteady journeyman phase and on to become a most unlikely OJT instructor. It took far less time than I expected and a lot less time than I required. After all; gaining confidence isn't like gaining weight. It takes time. Its more like growing. I'm sure I could gain five pounds in five days but growing five inches taller could take several years.

My guileless post check-out expectations were that I would spend a few years honing my skills, methodically acquiring some certainty in my abilities and establishing that all important credibility among my peers. But there I was; less than a year out from my facility rating and already being asked to work with the developmentals on our team. It seems I failed to consider that my expectations might differ somewhat from those of Big Time's supervisors and management staff. But why? Why the difference between their expectations and mine? The answer was shrouded in my callow naiveté.

The things we don't know at a particular time in our life will eventually catch up with us. Unfortunately, by the time they do, it usually doesn't matter so much. What was going on today would later be firsthand knowledge to me. For now though, I couldn't fathom that my being prematurely pitched into in the deep end of Big Time's OJT instructor pool was due in part to a document known as the Tracking Report. To this very day; the specter of this document still sends me off sweating and screaming. A little background may be in order.

The scourge of every new kid to the Training Department, Tracking Reports took days to complete. No wonder. Combining the most boring aspects of a spreadsheet with the irritating qualities of a skin infection and the incriminating evidence of a signed confession required a lot of time. But what was it really?

A distillation of the entire month's worth of OJT reports (there were hundreds); your typical Tracking Report detailed the status of every developmental (there were dozens) in the facility. It revealed what position each developmental was currently training on, hours allocated and hours used ~ plus a projection as to when certification was anticipated. Once compiled, the fresh data was whisked off to the Regional Office where it was perused and compared with previous monthly reports. This made it fairly easy for them to identify the trainees who were receiving the most OJT hours and the least. Comparing the most recent report from Big Time with previous monthly editions allowed the Regional Office to detect apparent trends and build mountains of data from which they could jump to amazing conclusions. Those jumps usually landed them in the middle of some very rough terrain, armed only with a pointing finger. But once they pointed that thing at us; they were prepared to use it.

To the facility staff ~ a discernable dip in the aggregate OJT hours could easily be attributed to annual and/or sick leave used, inappropriate traffic conditions, equipment problems and other routine factors. There were also the less tangible reasons; not the least of which was fatigue. If one of the better OJT instructors had just taken a beating on one position, it was hard for an empathetic supervisor to send them into an OJT session. To the regional office however, it often meant we were just goofing off over there at Big Time. That's when a phone would ring in the front office.

The Air Traffic Manager and Training Officer would be grilled by The Region's Training Branch Manager and one or two of his sycophants over why our OJT hours had fallen off. Such discussions usually afforded The Region an opportunity to showcase their superior knowledge of the way things are supposed to work in a field facility. A long, forensic debate would ensue, during which both hair and rank would be pulled. As the Regional Office always outranks any of their air traffic facilities, the home team would make their best case in the strongest possible terms; inevitably capitulating and promising to do better next month. Next, a caustic, morale-eating memo would be fired off to the Area Managers and supervisors, with a requisite copy to the Region's Training Branch. (Hey, they needed proof we were actually doing something besides working a hell of a lot of airplanes!) The memo was crafted to inspire everyone to get more OJT done.

One way to accomplish that was to ordain more instructors. This is where I stumbled into the picture.

Damn! I was still having to make excuses to the wife about why I got home so late from my checkout party, still trying to separate the good from the garbage I learned while training, still striving for consistently adequate personal performance, still masking my fear of floundering with a little flourish. Arguing with my Supervisor, who insisted I'd be a great OJTI, was not where I expected to be at this point. I countered his rationale with every reason I could think of why this wasn't a good idea. The discussion ended shortly after I said I wasn't ready and couldn't do it.

Later that day, as my new radar developmental and I shuffled off toward the TRACON, I wondered how my logic had failed, whether I could actually do this and why my mouth was so dry. Surprisingly, that day was the beginning of what would develop into a career-long interest in training. But there were obstacles.

At first; I felt like a paint-by-numbers artist trying to teach that "deaf-dumb-blind kid" how to draw like Leonardo da Vinci. I had my own lessons to learn ~ largely at the expense of those I was assigned to train. One of the most important lessons and probably the most difficult for me to master was to never preempt a good learning experience. Trainees needed to be given enough latitude to get themselves into a degree of difficulty that was commensurate with their time on the position. Low time trainees could become overwhelmed much sooner than ones who had several hours on the position but, regardless of where they were in their allotted hours, I had to let them make mistakes. As long as I could still see a way out ~ there was a chance they'd find it too. This required a lot of poise, patience and self confidence but I was short on all three. If I stepped in too soon (highly likely at my stage of development) I'd preclude an important learning experience. Step in too late and I'd end up listening to tapes and filling out paperwork.

I learned that making this work meant having to advise trainees ahead of time whenever I was going to let them dig holes for themselves. If I didn't at least do that, they'd usually assume, based on experience with a few other instructors, that I would likely step in and straighten things out for them.

There were also a few developmentals who liked to debate with me during the training session. While a civil debate could be useful during the debrief, it only got in the way during OJT, while the airplanes were flying thick and fast.

I also learned that my technique in a particular situation might not have been the best. A few trainees had some damned good ideas that I'd have never learned if I'd made them do it my way. "Out of the mouths of babes" as they say. I'd show them my techniques but never insisted they do it my way. Creativity is an amazing thing to witness and learn from. I believe I learned as much or more in the process of providing OJT than I did when I was receiving it.

So The Seventies rolled on. Planes flew in and out of Big Time's airspace as I joined with various trainees in their struggle to succeed. Most made it while others faded off into failure. Of those who failed ~ some were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time but went on to become impressive controllers elsewhere. Others departed in anger and bitterness. Blaming their shortcomings on everyone and everything that moved; they left ~ victims of an overweening ego and self-deception.

The ones who concerned me the most were those who couldn't make it as controllers at Big Time, yet eventually ended up working in the Regional Office ~ judging our monthly Tracking Reports.

© NLA Factor, 2010

OJT ~ A Caterpillar's Journey

On-The-Job Training, call it OJT, seems a daunting process. There are so many things to learn and so little time allocated to getting it right. While the academic environment gives you time to study, memorize and rehearse, often among others who are doing the same, OJT places you midst practiced professionals who know the job cold. You come across as the caterpillar slinking through a cluster of butterflies. And like the caterpillar, you are the one most likely to be stepped on.

Depending on who I was working for, the substance of hands-on training varied pretty widely. In the military, OJT was mainly an exercise in knowing precisely what to say and when to say it. Phraseology and procedure took precedence over the more practical skills needed to actually work the traffic. Tools like turning airplanes away from their intended course, delaying them in order to accomplish more pressing priorities, slowing them down or speeding them up to benefit a bigger picture were always there in the toolbox but rarely used. For example; nobody would instruct an F-4 pulling a drag chute to "expedite off the runway" for landing traffic. Nor would they risk raising some high-ranking eyebrows by clearing a flight of three for "immediate takeoff." It was understood they'd taxi onto the runway, line up in departure formation, finish their checklists and await word from the flight leader. They would roll in their own good time. So my initial OJT on Ground and Local Control was steeped in phraseology, procedures and learning the rules, both written and unwritten.By the time I was transferred to my next duty assignment at Desolation Air Base, phraseology was second nature to me. All I needed to do was learn the local rules and numbers. The idea of actually reaching into the picture and manipulating my traffic was still obscured behind a veil of military protocol. Fighter jets, transports and helicopters hustled in and out of the base at their own pace, their pilots taking the controller's traffic information under advisement as they decided the order of events. When the day came to step into my first FAA facility, it would be like stepping into a bathtub with an electric toaster.

Suddenly I was expected to muscle and hustle the traffic situation; pushing, pulling, bending it to my will then cramming it into the big picture, whether it wanted to fit or not. Waiting for things to happen was frowned upon and rarely tolerated. Trainees were taught the assertive art of making things happen.

For pure pushing, bending and cramming, there was no better place than Local control during one of Big Time's peak hours. Long lines of departing flights inched toward the runways while one arrival after another flashed across each landing threshold and touched down; leaving a cloud of burnt rubber behind as they rolled on toward a high-speed turnoff. If a Local Control trainee waited till all that happened before clearing the next departure into position there'd be hell to pay. That airplane had better be moving toward the hold line in time to continue right onto the runway just as the arrival went by. It came down to learning how long it took the various kinds of airplanes to reanimate after sitting, inert, on the taxiway. Not to worry though. There was always a red-faced OJT instructor standing ready to facilitate your learning process in a loud, demonstrative and often profane way. Once you got that piece down you could understand the timing of events. You could anticipate required separation and make it happen while quickly adjusting the tempo for different types of airplanes. These were the skills central to keeping Big Time out of departure delays and the OJTI off your back. Thanks to the Air Force, I already knew how to say "Taxi into position and hold." I just never guessed I'd be saying it while the next arrival was still somewhere out over the approach lights.

Dealing with intersecting runways involved similar skills. Being able to accurately anticipate just how soon an airborne arrival would roll through the intersection versus how long it would take your departure on the crossing runway to get there had important benefits. The Final controller could maintain an efficient interval to one runway while the tower kept a crossing flow of departures moving without delay. Getting it wrong would create some fairly intense consequences, such as a go-around, an aborted takeoff or both.

For even higher drama you might end up with both a departure and a go-around ~ who's trajectories would take them simultaneously to the same point in space. This was not simply a Kodak moment but one that could add years to your life in a matter of seconds. To a developmental it meant an immediate end to the OJT session and a training report that was so hot he'd have to pick it up with oven mitts.Training in the radar room was an even bigger challenge. Since my Air Force career never provided me the opportunity to obtain a radar certification; Big Time TRACON was as alien an environment as I could imagine. Just getting acclimating to the odor down there would take months. The stink of sweat, cigarette smoke, stale ashes, jet exhaust and flatulence (because farting was seen by some as hilarious) sometimes made the place smell worse than the bargain basement of a second-hand coffin store.

The TRACON even sounded bad. There was a nearly constant cacophony caused by the incessant chatter of flight data printers mixing with ringing telephones, chiming interphones, nagging voices amplified through overhead speakers and controllers shouting from one end of the room to the other. It was sensory overload. It was also the ideal learning environment because this was where I'd have to work.

Actual, practical learning in the TRACON had to begin with an understanding of the interrelationships between Big Time's sectors. None of them could function autonomously but were rather like a series of gears that had to turn and mesh with clockwork synchronization. During rush hours or times of rugged weather the room became a swiftly spinning mechanism that hummed and murmured along; pushing and pulling the traffic in what seemed an endless pageant of arrivals and departures. One after another, they hammered the runways or hurtled off toward some place known as "the destination airport." If any one part of the mechanism slowed or stopped it could eventually slow or stop the entire operation. This changed the sound of the radar room ~ an audible change in the pitch, detected immediately by the supervisor, who would soon appear at the source of discord. One or two controllers would then be extracted from their positions like bad teeth and replaced. Soon after, the gears would start whirling and humming again.

It was also about timing. You and I know that, in life, timing is nearly as important as it is in air traffic control. Its also a difficult concept for trainees to seize onto. Learning to recognize the moment when an aircraft must be turned, when speed control must be applied, new altitude assignments made or handoffs completed were just a few of the challenges I wrestled with. The timing of other, more subtle events was even more difficult to understand. When to initiate a pointout, when to stop departures or begin holding arrivals, when combining sectors was a good idea and when it was not were ambiguous junctures on an ever changing continuum. Learning to recognize them, however, was unequivocal.

Most important to the whole OJT experience were the instructors themselves. At Big Time in 1975, there was a veritable smorgasbord of talent ~ ranging from the mad and meticulous to the lax and lazy. I had my favorite. He was a perpetually angry little anal retentive named Charles. Charles's attitude may have been a bi product of his relatively short stature. I don't know but, at just over five feet tall, he looked up at nearly everyone ~ unless he was working radar. In that particular arena he was at least equal to but usually greater than his peers. A savant; he knew the books and could handle what seemed to be a limitless amount of traffic. To watch Charles at work was to witness the perfect synchronicity of knowledge and praxis.

Most of the journeymen resented Charles because of his low tolerance for anything less than perfection. Still ~ he was the guy they'd want working Departure Control if they were stuck on Local with dozens of departures that needed to get off the airport, around a few thunderstorms and up into Center's airspace. The trainees feared him because of his brutal frankness, impatience with inadequacy and eruptive temper. He also had no tolerance for excuses and if you were dumb enough to proffer one after screwing things up ~ you'd be talking to yourself.

Charles was just what I needed and he was usually available because nobody else wanted to train with him. I learned that if I came to an OJT session prepared and willing to listen, Charles would spend the ensuing hour or so working as hard as he could to improve my game. If, however, he asked a question or two that I couldn't answer ~ he'd shake his head, unplug my headset and tell me to get lost.

When I finished up my OJT at Big Time, the final check-ride with my supervisor seemed anticlimactic. I thought I was ready for anything the system could throw at me. Little did I know the Facility Rating was merely a licence to sink or swim. It was just another landmark on the map to my future; a jumping off point from which the truly hard lessons would eventually be learned. It was nothing more than my first solo flight around the traffic pattern was some years before. Landing the airplane safely didn't make me a pilot and this rating didn't make me a controller. That would take much more time.

© NLA Factor, 2010

The Martinet

Martinet:
Pronunciation: \ˌmär-tə-ˈnet\
Function: noun
Etymology: Jean Martinet, 17th century French army officer
Date: 1737
1. a strict disciplinarian.
2. a person who stresses a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods.

I knew this guy. Between the crest of his garrison cap and the soles of his spit-shined shoes stood a man who's mind was heavily laden with the laws of military life. He didn't walk ~ he marched. He didn't stand at ease ~ he stood at attention. He didn't discuss ~ he commanded.

He wasn't in touch with reality ~ he denied it.

August of '81 brought a kind of military surge to the airport. Lets just say it marked the beginning of our Fall offensive. Dozens of controllers from the Navy and Air Force were rushed into Big Time Tower after the PATCO strike, where they immediately found themselves in hostile territory. Their mission was to help us fight an adversary they couldn't have even imagined when they enlisted. We were glad to see them. Reinforcements are always welcome when the battlements are being stormed and the battering ram is knocking at the door.

Even on a good day, Big Time Tower was a combat zone of fast-flying projectiles, bold battlefield maneuvers and well hidden land mines. But these were not good days. With two thirds of our forces on AWOL and the remaining troops suffering from shell shock, there was talk of a retreat. That's when the military arrived.

Most were sent in from bases around the Country that, in terms of air traffic, saw little activity. Nearly all were just kids in their early twenties, low in rank and light on experience. They were accustomed to the hierarchy of military air traffic control; where controllers are enlisted grade and all pilots are officers. This was an overriding factor whenever professional disputes came up between a military pilot and, say, an Airman First Class. The controller usually deferred to the pilot. It was a powerful mindset among these controllers that would be absolutely necessary to change if they were to survive and succeed in their new environment. They were also astonished by a volume of traffic heretofore unheard of in their military world. They'd have to get over that as well.

Of all the quirks and qualities they brought to Big Time, the most important were their high spirits and eagerness to help. That was enough for us. We put them right to work in the Training Department ~ learning everything they would need to begin on-the-job training. They'd come to class in uniform, study hard and were anxious to work airplanes. Polite and respectful; if you happened to run into one, they would greet you as "sir" or "Ma'am." Accustomed as I was to being addressed in mostly disparaging terms, "sir" was a little disorienting. Such formality would quickly dissipate once they started working in the "Fight Club" control rooms of Big Time ~ unless The Martinet had his way.

Lieutenant Swift arrived at Big Time a few weeks behind the other military controllers. As the only officer in the bunch, he became their surrogate commander in lieu of whoever they would report to back at their home base. Unhappy with what he perceived as a total breakdown of military discipline and protocol, he began taking immediate steps to restore order. This involved checking the troops daily to ensure proper attire and yelling at them for any infractions. They were already being yelled at twice daily while traversing the picket lines with the rest of us at shift change. It made The Martinet's ranting all the more annoying.

Our military controllers were losing the spirit they'd arrived with and that's where The Martinet's utopian boot camp bullshit world conflicted with ours. The reality was that we needed a continuation of the momentum they'd built up before Swift appeared on the scene. Saluting might have been suitable and addressing Lieutenant Swift as "Sir" might have been seemly but we needed certifications more than ceremony.

In addition to bringing his spit and polish prospects to Big Time, his agenda also included checking out on a few radar positions. He made it very clear, however, that he saw no need to take the normally mandatory academics. That was something the inept enlistees might have needed but not an officer with an extensive background in military air traffic control. After much debate in the front offices, a decision was made to begin training Swift on the Final Control Sector. Since he purported to have radar experience (quantity and quality unknown) it was presumed that he could learn to vector aircraft onto an ILS with relative ease.

Several of us attempted to train him. The consensus was that he knew how to marshal his traffic into lines but there was a problem. He was not controlling a military marching band and everything was not moving at the same pace. Speed control was a concept he apparently never had to deal with. Perhaps it was a little used tool in the control of fighter jets. Unheeded instructor suggestions invariably lead to the loss of required spacing, unnecessary vectoring, late acceptance of additional handoffs and global turmoil in the TRACON.

His young wards who's rank was sewn to their sleeve rather than pinned to their collars would watch The Martinet do his daily battle with airplanes and instructors. I can only imagine how hard they must have bitten their tongues to suppress an otherwise audible snicker. Those of us working with him finally reached our breaking point. We petitioned the front office to arrange for a "Swift" departure; at least from the OJT process. His obvious failure to meet requirements on Final Control and the attending embarrassment caused him to become even more heavy handed with the enlisted troops; who, in turn, became even more demoralized. We needed all the help we could get and could have used Lieutenant Swift but, in this case, the cost was becoming far too high.

He lingered on at Big Time for several more weeks; barking and snapping at his subordinates like a rabid dog. His presence in the control rooms gratefully dwindled to an occasional visit. We eventually heard he was being summoned back to his home base due to mission requirements ~ or something. We weren't ready to believe he'd been involuntarily removed from Big Time ahead of the anarchy that was brewing within the ranks. It did seem odd though. He was the very first of our military allies to be called home and well ahead of the others. Just sayin'

I couldn't fault The Martinet for doing what he believed was the right thing. I worked under enough autocratic supervisors and managers to recognize the almost religious reverence they held for the written rule. It was the security blanket they wrapped their careers in. I could respect that. However, I could not respect arrogance, inflexibility and a stubborn unwillingness to recognize the extraordinary circumstances we were trying to cope with. Logic and compromise were key and the ability to bend a rule or few without breaking them was a survival skill.

There are many circumstances and applications befitting a Martinet. I don't believe an air traffic control facility is one of them. Like piloting an airplane; managing an air traffic operation requires, among other things, a light touch on the controls, close attention to attitude indicators and the willingness to change course when clearly necessary. In another venue, a military campaign perhaps, The Martinet's "rigid adherence" approach might have been the best tool for the task at hand. Not at Big Time Tower though and clearly not in August of '81 when rigid adherence to anything could lead to your undoing.

© NLA Factor, 2010

A New Approach

I got both my Private and Commercial Pilot's license sometime between 1972 and 74. The exact date of my check rides, my log book and even the original copy of the license have eluded me for years. Not that it matters. Your odds of seeing the Spruce Goose at twelve o'clock and five miles are better than seeing my dumb ass flying another airplane. It was fun at the time. However; when I began training at Big Time Tower in '74, the attending euphoria somehow addled my brain, which gave rise to a patently unwise idea. Why not go for my Instrument Rating at the same time? Sheer genius.

So, armed with only a fully instrumented Cherokee Warrior and one terrified flight instructor, I donned the IFR hood and headed skyward.

The instruments all looked so different to me from under that hood, especially the altimeter. I'd never seen that needle spin counter-clockwise so fast before! I'd never heard my instructor shout so much either but soon grew accustomed to both as, one lesson at a time, I pushed at the structural limits of that poor Warrior.

Meanwhile back at Big Time, I was plodding through the boring necessities of my training. There were dozens of Letters of Agreement to learn, frequencies and landlines to memorize, airfield diagrams and airway charts to draw and, well, you know the drill. Part of my day was also set aside for OJT. These brief respites from the academic environment provided an opportunity for my instructors to hit me where it really hurt; right in my fat but frangible ego. One of them was a guy who had actually flown fighter escort for American bombers over Nazi Germany. So, he had no qualms about shooting me down for not having the right answers or making one too many stupid moves with his traffic.

After my shift, I would go home, grab a beer and study such things as wake turbulence separation and the tower's responsibilities during a radar outage. Then I'd grab another beer and ponder the fine art of holding pattern entry over a non-directional beacon. Oh, the many "teardrops." This went on for months as my brain slowly shifted out of weight and balance from an overload of information. Then one day my flight instructor suggested I was ready for my instrument check-ride. Too dumb to disagree, I allowed him to set the date.

The check-ride began reasonably well and soon we were tooling along a nearby victor airway toward our destination. At about sixty miles out, the flight examiner said he wanted me to request an ILS approach. He also told me I could either opt for the full procedure from the Initial Approach Fix or request vectors to the final. My first mistake was just a frequency change away.

After checking in with Approach I asked for vectors to the ILS; thinking this would be much easier than messing with all those VOR radials and intersections. The controller assigned us a heading off the airway and onto what I imagined was a long base leg to the localizer. Then came the turn to final . . . and a late turn it was! We crossed the final, right to left, before I was even half-way to the assigned heading. Now left of course, I swung that Piper back to the right but it was waaay too late to save this approach. Crossing the localizer again, I turned left to chase the needle. For the next minute or so I nearly made the two of us seasick trying to find the final approach course. The glide slope? Who knows where the hell that went.

By the time we got to minimums, the examiner had a look like Mt. Rushmore. He managed to say I could cancel the IFR and head home. On landing he told me to come back in a few weeks to try again.

I learned a lot that day. No excuses. I should have gone for a missed approach immediately upon recognizing how unstable the situation had become. Perhaps I should have tried again rather than attempting to make the most of a bad situation. I would go on to see many unstable situations in my career. Sometimes a bad turn can put people too far left or right of where they need to be. Never miss the chance to start over; maybe with a new approach.

© 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