Persistence Of Memory, Part II

My eyes aren't as sharp as they once were. Maybe it's their way of telling me I've already seen too much. These days, my memory isn't so sharp either. That might be good news for someone who'd rather not recall certain things. Unfortunately, my worst memories are still as brilliant and annoying as a pair of oncoming high beams. To me, bad memories are like volcanoes. They may lay dormant for a while but, sooner or later, they'll erupt again; sending me running to find quieter thoughts. Regrettably, experience has proven I can never outrun the flow of sad, bad or completely mad memories. One of them caught up with me recently - most likely triggered by a news headline I saw somewhere. 
   
You've probably had a few of those 'jump up and click your heels' kind of mornings. It was one of those rare days at work. No bedlam, no bad weather and none of the usual workplace bullshit. The day could only have been better if it was raining hundred dollar bills, so I was actually happy when the boss sent me upstairs. I mounted the last few steps into the tower just as the local controller, my old Air Force buddy Rob, cleared a medium sized twin engine airplane for takeoff. I watched as the flight rolled onto our longest runway and surged off toward the blue sky ahead - all the while wondering where it was headed and wishing I could be along for the ride. The day was as fine for flying as it was for air traffic control.

Spring filled the air - along with the usual swarm of airplanes buzzing around Big Time like gnats. The airfield between paved surfaces had already begun turning a very seasonal chartreuse; easy on the eye and a welcome change from the achromatic tones of Winter. Yeah, on a day like this, a few hours in the tower were just what I needed.

Looking around, I took in all the normal activity on Big Time's bewildering maze of taxiways, ramps and airline gates. Tugs, baggage trains, catering trucks, maintenance vehicles and planes were all moving to the cadence of another busy day. There was some repaving in progress at the intersection of two key taxiways; requiring a tricky reroute to the departure runway. The project had been going on for weeks so most of us were pretty tired of bitching about it. Billy, on Ground Control, was chattering non-stop at his traffic. He had a funny habit of pointing at each airplane he called; claiming it helped him keep the picture. It seemed to work. Never a "still life with planes," Billy's traffic was always a moving picture show. Even though his voice kept that West Virginia mountain twang of his roots; the pilots understood, complied and rolled into lines like a precision drill team. One of the tower trainees started referring to him as "Skillbilly" - an appellation that caught on quickly. Billy was a masterful tower controller,

Another departing flight rolled onto the runway and held as the twin became airborne. I watched the wheels retract as it began climbing but my attention was mostly on Billy; who I had been sent upstairs to relieve. Several air carriers were pushing out of their gates as others were already forming lines and moving toward the taxiways. Billy was doing a lot of pointing. Our first departure rush of the day was beginning and I couldn't wait to get into it. Glancing at the flight plans and our list of the center's departure restrictions, I tried to figure out what Billy's plan was. Then I heard Rob mutter something that sounded like "Jeezus!"

Glancing left I saw the twin engine aircraft, now midfield and five hundred feet or so above the runway. Seemingly poised in space, its nose was pointing nearly straight up but beginning to lean leftward. From there, it tilted into a vertical dive, hit the ground with a thump we felt through the tower floor, then vanished in a flash of flames. A roiling mass of black smoke rose from the ground and spread across the blue sky like spilled ink. It looked as though a hole had opened up next to the runway and swallowed that airplane.

Several other aircraft were lined up on the parallel taxiway awaiting departure but none of them said a word on tower's frequency. I guess everyone was as awe-struck as we were. No doubt there was widespread horror among those passengers who were unfortunate enough to see what just happened.

There was a graveyard kind of silence in the tower cab. I began hearing sounds that were normally masked by the cacophony of control instructions, complaints and cursing; things like the tower's ventilation system and the low murmur of electrical equipment. Our supervisor never spoke either. He simply turned, picked up the emergency hotline and started talking quietly - undoubtedly restating the obvious. This was not the usual emergency notification like an inbound flight with an engine out, unsafe gear indication or on board medical emergency, This was a story that was actually beginning at the end.

I had only been in the tower for a few minutes. That's all the time it took for my memory to record an image that, in all the ensuing years, has not faded. As a radar controller; I'd been involved in a few aircraft accidents over time but each one took place many miles from Big Time Airport. I never had to actually see the aftermath. Those off-airport crashes were traumatic enough for the controllers involved but this one was especially grim. I tried to imagine the pilot's thoughts during those final few seconds of life. Frustration? Resignation? Was there any time for realization or regret? And how about the passengers? I still wonder. For me it was simply stubborn disbelief.

The intense fire was eventually extinguished and the smoke blew away. Once again it looked like Spring across the airfield - except for that large black spot next to the departure runway. In the days ahead; FAA would do its required reviews, interviews and reports. The NTSB would investigate and draw its conclusions. I never heard what they decided about a probable cause.

I do know one thing for sure. From that day on, whenever I went to the tower, a bad memory followed me up the stairs. It was as inevitable as your dropped coin that rolls under the vending machine. Good thing smart phones hadn't been invented yet or I'd still be dealing with the "You Tube" videos.

Bad things happen and sometimes you can protect yourself from them. Friends of mine recently had one of those "safe rooms" installed in their garage. Unfortunately, it'll only protect them from things like fires, hurricanes, home invasions and, with luck, cable news networks. I wish someone made a product that could lock out my bad memories. They don't always fade with time. Alcohol can blur them for a short while but, when they come back into focus, they seem even worse than before.

© NLA Factor, 2015

Radar Love

Radio Detection And Ranging, known more affectionately as "Radar," appears to be going the way of dinosaurs and Dodos; replaced by a system of satellites that would deign to look down on the ever changing, challenging and, to me, charming world of aviation. Me and my radar always looked up to that world though. I guess we always will. 

Call it progress, like the days when low frequency radio ranges (LFR) were being replaced by a network of VHF omnidirectional ranges. Sure; the VORs were far more precise but still a long leap of faith for airmen. Or how about the first pilots to descend their planes into thick clouds and/or rain squalls while watching a couple little instruments on the console; ending up relieved and amazed, just 200 feet above the surface, with the runway in sight. They all must have experienced the trepidation of change; as I would over the advent of "NextGen." Fickle though it was, I did love my radar. We worked a lot of planes together, moved millions of people and even saved some lives. We kept each other company during those long, tail-end hours of every mid-shift; when my frequencies were silent and radar's eye saw nothing but empty sky. There were a few brief separations but, as we know, the lack of something we love and rely on serves to intensify our desire for it. I know this to be true and have the gray hairs to prove it. 

I remember the first radar PVD (plan view display) I ever laid my nineteen year old eyes on.  It was inside a Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) radar trailer at the Air Force's Air Traffic Control School. Up till then, I'd never even heard of radar. Learning how to work airplanes from inside a GCA , using a relatively tiny PVD was tough enough when I had no idea what I was looking at. Even so; I felt a stirring of love at first sight. There was an allure to the ceaseless sweep of energy around the scope, the itty-bitty blips it revealed and the glow of the compass rose. Even the little back-lighted knobs used to adjust the display were pure magic to me. They were warm to the touch; like a woman's nipple. Maybe it was just the heat from all those circuits and such behind the radar display but they made me hot.

Unlike the fixed radar antenna you might see spinning at your local airport; GCA units were designed to be moved - sometimes frequently. They have wheels; which means they can be rolled onto an airplane or across the landscape, to end up along the runway of some far away airport. Whether it's a war zone or just another time zone; GCA units make it possible for military controllers to take their old friend Radar along whenever they have to travel.

GCA trailers can also be installed semi-permanently on a large turntable and rotated whenever the wind dictates a change in landing direction. Whether rolled or spun, the unit must be re-aligned whenever it is moved. At my Base, radar reflectors, which looked similar to satellite dishes, were mounted at each end of the runway. Whenever the unit was turned around, the display had to be re-calibrated to align perfectly with the reflector. Chances are the GCA might have shifted a little during the turn but that reflector was always in the same place. They were permanent echos, at a known range and azimuth. Alignment could be tricky but if you didn't do it correctly; the next precision radar approach you conducted could end up heading for the base housing area or worse. The Airman's Club, with all its cold beer, was out there somewhere.

Arriving at Big Time Tower in the early Seventies, I had never seen an ASR-7 display. My first impression? It was huge; like looking at today's flat screen TVs compared to that little portable you once kept on the kitchen counter. And to deepen my love affair with radar; it had been adorned with some dazzling accessories like digital data-blocks that displayed, among other things, each aircraft's callsign, altitude and ground speed. Everything was all wired into a large antenna that spun continuously atop its tower between the runways. Altogether, it did a fine job of helping us guide our traffic into, out of and through Big Time's airspace. Well . . . most of the time anyway. As I said; radar could be fickle.

Those radar scopes needed a relatively dark room. Light, even a modest amount, would bleach out the display; making it nearly impossible to see what was happening. If you came into the TRACON and saw all the lights on; it was either very late at night, when the janitor did his cleaning, or the radar had failed. If the room was quiet, you could assume the former. Assume the latter if there was a lot of noise and commotion. No, the controllers wouldn't be the ones causing all the stir. It would be the shift management. One Supervisor might be talking to a departure sector at the center. "Do you see Lear five eight alfa, ten east of Big Time, leaving seven thousand?" The answer; "Yeah, he's radar. Climb him to twelve and switch him." Another Supe would be pumping one of the radar technicians for answers about what went wrong and how long it would take to fix. Above it all, the Area Manager would be terminating one discussion with the Regional Office and starting another with the Command Center. But how about the controllers? What happened during those first few minutes after the radar quit?

Along each side of the radar room; controllers would sit at their now opaque radar scopes, intensely focused on finding a way out of the Hell that comes with sudden blindness. Just moments before; departure controllers would have been sorting out airplanes that burst off the airport like a fountain display, vectoring them toward their route of flight and handing them off to the enroute facility.

Now the departures, stalled on ramps and taxiways, were stopped indefinitely. This was not the time to be in the tower working Ground Control. At times like this; you were liable to hear the dark side of a few otherwise affable and professional pilots who suddenly found themselves stranded; up a creek without a prognosis.

Approach controllers would have been tweaking their long lines of airplanes; merging, slowing and spacing whatever they had between the outer fixes and the outer marker. Most of their traffic would be in-trail and at the same altitude. Now, the flow of additional traffic from arrival fixes was stopped. Holding patterns were filling up. With a blind eye, approach controllers scrambled to gain some kind of "non-radar" separation between the planes already on vectors to the final approach course. That meant diverging courses, altitude changes for some or, if fortune smiled, visual separation. Anything to keep the planes apart.

Everyone was concentrating - trying to recall what the radar picture looked like in their sector just before it blinked out. At times like this; good flight strip management paid big dividends for controllers. It meant they could still tell who was following who, what altitudes the planes were cleared to, the last assigned speed restriction and maybe even the last assigned headings. Next to radio communications, our flight progress strips were the only other clue as to what was going on just before the radar died.

Some controllers were meticulous about their strip marking and could recover from radar loss fairly quickly. Some tried their best but would get so busy they'd forget to keep their strips updated. Like me; they relied heavily on their habits and past practices to fill in the blanks. For others; strips were merely a distraction that diverted their attention away from the traffic. They were the ones voted most likely to shake, sweat and swear when the radar stopped spinning. Even if the radar was running, problems could arise when it came time to relieve one of those guys. But if the radar was out? Inherit the sector and, for better or worse, you also inherit the outgoing controller's flight progress strips.

My first unexpected radar failure occurred while I was working an arrival sector, in the middle of a moderately flurry of inbounds. My display flickered a few times then, just as radar's eye swept past the 'seven o'clock' position, it went dark. Everyone in the room gasped and studied their strips; hoping it was simply a 'blink' rather than an extended outage. I had seven or eight planes on vectors at the time but there were more coming. Fear, hope and despair kicked in immediately but there was no time to deal with it. I gave my traffic the bad news, advised them that radar contact had been lost then called my adjacent center sector to break the news. They'd have to hold whatever was headed my way. I climbed or descended some of my planes to get a little altitude separation then reached above the console to grab a copy of Big Time's non-radar "cheat sheet." This included a set of maps showing non-radar (pilot navigation) routes from our outer fixes to the approach in use, timed approach procedures, some unpublished holding patterns where we could hide a few airplanes till the dust settled and other information we couldn't remember due to its infrequent need. Everyone on the frequency got a new clearance limit, along with some detailed holding instructions, while we sorted this thing out. I may also have pooped myself but, through the miracle of selective memory, I prefer to forget certain things.

I felt as blind as the radar. With those 'first time' jitters rattling my self-confidence; I began to recall some radar failure horror stories the old timers used to tell around the camp fire - just to frighten us new campers. There was the one about the DC-9 in a holding pattern somewhere, who's pilot took a descent clearance intended for another flight. The plane ended up spiraling down through three or four holding altitudes occupied by other aircraft - in instrument conditions the whole way. Nobody else in the pattern saw or said a thing. The controller only realized there was a problem when the DC-9 reported reaching the altitude intended for another aircraft. Unfortunately, that aircraft was not supposed to be a DC-9. The descent clearance was supposed to be for a DC-8; which was still holding 1000 feet above the altitude now occupied by a death-defying DC-9 driver. Apparently there's some truth to the "Big Sky Theory."

The other popular "scary story" involved a controller running timed approaches from a holding pattern at the outer marker. A light twin engine aircraft had been cleared for the approach and was now on the tower frequency. The next flight to be cleared was an air carrier. Somehow, as if by magic, the air carrier landed ahead of the light twin and without a scratch. I didn't know whether these stories were factual or simply ATC folklore but they haunted me just the same. Left groping for my traffic picture; I kept hoping the radar would come back for me. I loved my radar and was truly sorry for the times I'd cursed its infrequent foibles.

Radar returned in about 45 minutes but we controllers learned long ago to not jump right back into a 'business as usual' operation. Traffic was resumed tentatively; as though we expected radar's recrudescence to be temporary - a sucker play. Our confidence in the system had to be regained before we could get back into the furious radar operation we used to move so much traffic with.

Most controllers have been through an unexpected radar failure at least once in their career. Like sex; they probably remember that first time. But unlike sex; they hope it never happens again. It's just one of those things you do not want to repeat simply for a chance to improve your score.

"We've got a thing that's called radar love.
We've got a line in the sky, radar love."
Golden Earring - 1973

© NLA Factor, 2014

The Persistence Of Memory

Those who've been following this Blog understand it's mostly about memories. In the beginning, I was afraid I'd forget the many things that happened before I could capture them in print. You know, before too much time passed. I now understand those memories are persistent, palpable and perpetual. They're always here with me. I can even feel them. Salvador Dali illustrated it pretty well in his masterpiece "The Persistence of Memory." With apologies to Salvador, I flew an airplane into his painting because, to me, the memories of air traffic have a persistence all their own.

Time, on the other hand, is of no real significance. It comes and goes; preceding each passing second and concurrently vanishing; leaving us with a "now" that is just too short to measure. Thankfully, it does leave those persistent memories of ours behind; scattered across the panorama of our lives.   

As to my life, it seems I spent most of it diligently winding clocks and watches, setting alarms or trying to correct the time if it was running fast or slow. According to the clock; I usually ended up being too early or too late anyway. It took a while but I finally figured out that I shouldn't even bother trying to set, sway, speed or slow the hands of time. The Universe calibrated my clock, then synchronized it to my life - and life isn't measured by hours and minutes. It's measured by events and those events always happen precisely when they're supposed to; which could be described as "right on time." I may never have believed my entire life happened on schedule - but it did. Take the early Seventies for example . . .

Life was moving at the speed of continental drift since my departure from military service. My application for an ATC position, eagerly and optimistically submitted, had apparently vanished into some minor FAA functionary's file drawer. I found an odd assortment of menial jobs to keep me busy. If you're interested, they're described somewhere in the back end of this blog. The work kept me afloat financially but my spirit was being swamped by waves of anxiety. I knew it was crazy but whenever my travels took me past the local airport, I'd glare at the control tower,  mutter a few expletives and shake my head. Frustration brought me to a point where I was seriously considering the idea of going back into the Air Force - just so I could work airplanes again. Looking back on life, I have to love that and every other mistake I almost made.

Living high on the extravagances that a minimum wage income allows, I moved into an affordable efficiency apartment on the north side of town. Although the classified ad called it an "efficiency," I referred to it as the "deficiency." There were so many deficiencies that I lost count half way through the list of health violations. Small, slightly smelly and unnecessarily outdated; it was the kind of apartment where police might one day discover 200 cats and a desiccated corpse. It was affordable though - as long as I stuck to my diet of deviled ham and bananas. I worked onward but could never quite reach my future.

Years passed. In the long run, the FAA did make me a job offer. Ironically, I had to think twice about accepting. By then, I'd worked myself into a pretty well paying and enjoyable job. I even had a better apartment! Going with the Feds would mean an initial (and substantial) decrease in pay. There was also a requisite relocation in the deal. The move would put me in an expensive metropolitan area that I couldn't possibly afford on a GS-7's salary. The offer was a "take it or leave it" deal though. I had one week to respond. That wasn't much time but it didn't really matter. My decision was preordained, so naturally I had to accept. There was simply no choice because, by the end of my Air Force career, air traffic control had become a vital organ that I couldn't live for long without.

I remember the subsequent months being a blur. The only time that mattered was my training time. Then, in nothing but an eight month instant, I found myself checked out through all tower positions and working on my radar certifications. Two years from that first foot in the door, I was fully certified at Big Time. Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Looking back, I'd say no. But back then? Looking ahead was intimidating.

It wasn't long before my first round of mids as a journeyman was scheduled. Trainees were always sent to the tower on mid shifts. But now, as a full performance controller, I could pull TRACON duty. Driving in to work, I knew what I would find when I got there. After all, I'd been home all evening, watching the lightning and listening to the din of heavy rain on the roof. I knew the crew on duty was dealing with a mess and that there'd be plenty left for me and my teammates to clean up when we arrived.

Mids, for me, usually began with a touch of circadian sleep disorder. Failing in my attempt to nap that afternoon, I would arrive at work a little out of sorts, off-balance and unshaven. By 10:45, traffic would normally be light and most of the radar sectors combined at two or three positions. Not tonight though. Walking into the TRACON I saw a Supervisor tearing strips off the printer and running them to the sectors. There were five still open and all were busy. Three of the evening shift guys would be held over for a couple hours to help us put a lid on the madness.

My mid shift teammate relieved both departure sectors and combined them into one. I was told to relieve the Final controller and let her go home. Airplanes that had been delayed at their departure points, some of them thousands of miles from Big Time, were only now beginning to show up at our arrival fixes. It was exciting. The approach controllers talked non-stop and their lines of planes stretched more than 40 miles from the airport. Radar vectors were flying in every direction. At least the bad weather had moved out and the field was VFR for the first time since that morning. After a brief consultation with the tower, I tried cutting some downwind traffic in tight on visual approaches. The first two worked nicely so I told the approach guys to start tightening up the arrival sequence. Everything was going well. The departure backlog was gone by 1:00 AM. Our holdovers from the evening shift left at 2:00 but the persistence of air traffic continued till after 3:00. The mid-shift Supervisor sat silently at his desk; counting strips, calculating the delays and catching up on log entries. In the ensuing years, there would be many more such mid shifts.

In sharp contrast with the FAA; I remember mid shifts in the Air Force being abnormally quiet. Still in the early stages of learning how impossible it was for me to sleep during the day; I'd lumber up the tower steps with my mid shift teammate, moving like a reanimated cadaver. Where I was stationed; most of the military air traffic was down for the night before 11:00 PM, so we'd be greeted by a bored looking NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge) who'd dutifully mutter his way through a review of the tower's daily log. I would dutifully nod with feigned interest in what he was saying. He and his evening shift crew would then rush down the steps as though the fire alarm had just sounded. In a moment, my partner Vince and I would be left in the complete silence of an empty tower cab, overlooking an empty runway. It was on such a night that a most incredible thing happened. My memory of it hangs on like the melted clock on Dali's tree limb.

By 3:00 AM, each of us had pretty well covered what we knew of the latest Squadron gossip and were settling into our chairs, feet up on the console, for a little quiet time (sleep). A light appeared across the airfield, just above the the horizon. It was moving slowly in a northerly direction; almost parallel to the runway and definitely inside our Control Zone. Certain it was a plane without a working transmitter; we simultaneously hailed it on both UHF and VHF emergency frequencies while signaling "Cleared to land" with the tower's light gun. As the craft continued north, we could see there were actually several lights glimmering; like the windows of an airliner's fuselage. But unlike the lights of an aircraft, these were indistinct; almost ethereal. They glowed like pale blue neon.

Curious about any sound this thing might be making, Vince dashed down the first flight of steps and out onto the catwalk. I called the radar unit. Did they see a target just Northeast of the field and moving North? I expected a wise-ass comment about flying saucers in the traffic pattern and I wasn't disappointed. Of course, the radar guys saw nothing on their scopes. After listening to the requisite dose of sarcasm and good-natured ridicule; I was told to leave them the hell alone and go back to sleep. Vince returned to report the night outside was as quiet as a crypt. None of the jet or propeller noise we were used to hearing. Nothing. The strange lights soon vanished over the northern horizon.

Me and Vince had an odd feeling about what had just happened. I picked up a phone and dialed the Watch Desk at our local Center. I was afraid that telling this story to anyone else was a mistake but decided it was worth the risk for a chance to have it corroborated.  The Supervisor, clearly much older and vastly more experienced than me, listened to my story. I could tell he was writing things down and figured he was making notes for a future discussion with our Squadron Commander. I'd be in trouble for sure. But no. He said my description of the object, its low altitude, slow speed and direction of flight matched reports some of his controllers had received from pilots flying across the region. Several people claimed to have spotted it but no one ever saw a radar image.

I remember watching the sunrise that morning, making a fresh pot of coffee for the day shift crew and talking to Vince about what we should do. The Air Force had a reporting program in place at the time. Named "Project Blue Book," it was a way of officially documenting what may have been a UFO sighting. Vince and I concluded there would be no report and no further mention of the incident to anyone; especially the incoming day shift guys. Along with the wry ribbing, we'd likely be labeled as lunatics by the Squadron brass; thus hobbling our chances of ever seeing another promotion. It was decided that what we saw that night must surely have been a weather balloon or another of those spontaneous outbreaks of swamp gas. We just left the tower, lingered over breakfast then moved on to the first open bar we could find. By the third round of beers, we were ready to admit what we'd really seen - but only to each other.

Another mid shift sticks in my memory - one clear and very cold night in the 1970s. A Center controller's urgent sounding voice came across the handoff line. "Hey Big Time, you talking to that guy twenty east of MALYN squawking 4543 at eleven thousand?" It was nearly 5:00 AM and for the last hour or so I'd only been talking to myself.  I saw the target he referred to though, so I pushed the handoff line button and responded. The center controller said he'd been working the plane, a Piper Navajo, for the last 45 minutes but had recently lost radio contact. It was also way off it's planned route, now about 70 miles off course and headed toward some very unfriendly terrain. After checking with the other sectors, it was clear the pilot wasn't talking to anyone at the Center. The controller was now calling all towers and approach controls along the aircraft's flight path. It seemed no one was talking to the Navajo, which was still holding its last assigned altitude of eleven thousand feet. The situation would change but as we know; change isn't always a good thing.

I called the tower and, between us, we transmitted on every frequency we had. No joy. The plane flew on and soon left my radar coverage. It wasn't till nearly 7:00 AM that the Center sector called and told me the plane eventually began losing altitude then vanished from his radar screen. Wreckage was never found and we were left with our theories about what happened. The most plausible one was that the pilot had dozed off - his plane eventually running out of fuel. With luck, he died in his sleep. This incident lodged itself in my memory like a fishhook and became a shot of adrenalin whenever I felt myself getting sleepy on mid-shifts or long drives.

I have so many many memories; some good and others, well, not so good. They don't go away though. They accumulate over a long career and, like my old record collection, become disorganized and eventually take up a lot of space. I've put some of them away in storage but still retrieve them now and then for my own enjoyment. In a way, memories are a lot like my old records. They can both be played over and over again. Someone or something just needs to push the right buttons. Case in point; I recently discovered one of my old teammates from the Big Time days, on a social media site. That pushed some long unused buttons and the memories started playing immediately. Like me; this guy was brutally insane in those days. We shared secrets and experienced many control room tantrums, terrors and temptations together. The memories of them persist, even after all this time.

Time passes. I don't even care where it goes. It takes nothing of mine when it leaves but it leaves me with plenty. Those persistent memories; they stay like my skin color. I don't know exactly where each one is at the moment but, like my old Big Time buddy, I'll eventually find them again. 

© NLA Factor, 2013

How To Raise Hair On A Controller

Learning to trust others takes time and can be difficult. I don't understand all the dynamics of how trust happens but I'm sure it's one of life's building blocks. I also know that trust is a requisite resource that controllers must be able to draw from if they're going to succeed. They need to develop a trusting relationship with coworkers pretty quickly because there are too many obstacles in the business that cannot be overcome individually. It's never long before you need help from someone you can count on.  

Apparently, learning to trust one's self is an even lengthier and more complicated process. In some cases, it might take a lifetime. It is, however, an essential tool of the controller's trade. Call it self confidence if you like but I'll tell you this. If you can figure out where it's being dished up and are planning on becoming a controller; you'd better go back for a second helping. Thinking about all this reminded me of a particular evening shift I worked long ago . . . 

I never knew a fat FAA Supervisor. Watching our TRACON Supe that evening, you'd understand why. He was a man in perpetual motion, burning his calories and shoe leather at a steady rate. He'd spent the last 90 minutes or more pacing back and forth behind the Arrival Sectors, leaning over shoulders to point at specific targets on their radar displays then rushing off to consult with the guy working Final Control. Periodically, he'd sprint up to the Area Manager's desk to report on our arrival delay status. It was only about two hours into our shift and several team members were already exhausted. I don't know . . . maybe they were worn out when they signed in for this, our third evening shift. One of the two main arrival runways had been closed for weeks due to a re-paving project. All the landing planes were being funneled onto one runway instead of the usual two or three. They say good things don't come easy. In these conditions, neither do the airplanes.

The day shift crew looked worn out when we got here. Holding patterns began filling up around noon and some mildly IFR weather meant the small, propeller-driven planes that normally landed on a shorter VFR runway had to share the same instrument approach the big guys were using. It gets tricky. Put a DC-10 behind a Cessna Skymaster (we called the "suck and blow Cessna" because of its front and back propellers) on the ILS and you'll need to start off with about ten miles of spacing if you hope to maintain legal separation till it touches down. You have to make it work. Tell the Cessna they're being followed by a DC-10. Ask them to keep their speed up as much as feasible. Ask them to land long so as to reach the first exit taxiway quickly. Then ask the jet to reduce to, ohh, maybe stall speed? Well, something close to it anyway. Rinse and repeat over the course of eight hours and its easy to see why the morning crew was beat. Now it was our turn.

When my carpool buddies and me walked into the TRACON, somebody told me to relieve Departure Control. That was a good way to ease into what would probably be a crazy eight hours or so. There weren't a lot of planes waiting to go because many of our future departures were still hung up in holding patterns. I watched the approach sectors. Because of mounting arrival delays, the tower supervisor had given Final Control carte blanche to run traffic as tight as he could.

The early part of the shift was going as well as any of us could expect for prevailing conditions. I turned another departure over to the Center, sat back in my chair and admired the Final controller's artistry. He was jamming planes into the airport like a madman. Miles away, other flights were slipping out the bottom of their holding patterns and banking toward the downwind leg. Everyone else in the stack was dropped down a thousand feet and the Center would clear another one into the top of the pattern. You could have set the whole thing to music.

I was relieved from Departure Control after a couple of hours and went off to the break room for coffee. On return to the radar room, Pete told me to relieve Tommy on the East Arrival Sector. It looked like I'd finally have to do some work.

It was getting dark outside. I imagined the airfield lighting was being turned on and the tower crew would see all the orange "Caution" lights blinking along the closed runway. Big Time's East Arrival fix was always pretty active. There were several planes on vectors toward the Final Sector and the holding pattern was stacked and spinning. Tommy had it all under his thumb but, as usual, was working without a handoff man. There were handoff positions next to all the radar sectors but rarely enough controllers around to staff them. A good handoff controller could monitor the radar sector, mark strips and handle most of the coordination between sectors and other facilities. This relieved the radar controller from a lot of workload and potentially dangerous distractions. I listened carefully to the position relief briefing; scanning the flight strips to see who was holding at what altitude. Everything matched what Tommy was saying to me, so I settled in and started working the sector.

Everything looked good. Final had taken the first two handoffs and in a moment, I would flash the next flight at him. I had laddered all the planes in my holding pattern down a thousand feet and was just waiting for the floor Supervisor to tell me how many more I could run toward Final. The number would be based on how many flights the other Arrival Sectors had off their holding fixes, how many planes the Final controller was already working and how the spacing on final was looking. The Supe would figure it all out. Working traffic during these extended holding periods wasn't really so tough as long as everyone stayed on top of things. After a while, you kinda fell into the rhythm of it. This evening; it was all good!

Actually, it was more like cruising down the Interstate, car radio howling rock and roll music, and never noticing that huge pothole up ahead until you found yourself standing along the roadside, staring at a broken axle.

I had cleared a foreign air carrier (Lets call it "Air Anywhere.") to the next lower altitude in the holding pattern and was waiting for the pilot to report reaching that altitude. While waiting, I revised a few other flight's 'Expect Further Clearance' times, issued a couple vectors, a speed reduction, then switched a plane over to the Final controller. I watched the other arrival sectors to see how many planes they had off their holding fixes. Air Anywhere reported reaching his assigned altitude so I started another plane down to the altitude he'd just vacated. A short time later, Air Anywhere transmits. "Uhh, Big Time, you have another flight holding at our altitude?" Well uhh . . . not as a rule.

My mind raced. This was one of those "heart in the throat" moments. I tried to wash it down by re-checking my strip marking on the flights still holding. Strips looked good. I turned on the alphanumeric data blocks associated with the holding flights. These were often turned off during extensive holding scenarios because all the overlapping data was impossible to read. I asked the next lower flight to "verify level at" whatever altitude they had been cleared to. All the while, I was considering what to do next. If there were two flights at one altitude, I couldn't very well climb or descend one of them. They were sandwiched in by other planes holding above and below. Perhaps I could assign an exit vector to Air Anywhere to get him the hell out of the pattern? All this happened within five seconds after his last transmission.

I keyed my radio. "No sir." It was all there was to say but I could hardly hear the sound of my own voice for the pounding in my eardrums. His reply - "We see landing lights coming toward us." Yes, the flight holding directly above him was indeed turning inbound, about ten miles away - just as Air Anywhere turned outbound. Dark skies, a few clouds, an optical illusion and, next thing you know, a coronary occlusion! I told the guy he was looking at opposite direction traffic a thousand feet higher. "Okay Big Time" he replied.

I really should have gotten over this as quickly as it happened but I couldn't. It rattled me. Thank goodness there were too many other things to do at the moment, leaving no time to brood over this. But later, in the break room, while pretending to read a magazine, I began thinking about the level of trust I had in myself. I thought it was pretty high. My strip marking was nearly always up to date and I made sure I got a pilot readback of any new altitude assignment. Still, I had to concede this holding pattern thing hit me with some serious, albeit momentary, self-doubt. For an instant, I was actually ready to believe I had two planes holding at the same altitude! I'll tell you - that's a hair raising experience for any controller!

© NLA Factor, 2013

Going Home ~ The Best Way

Once upon a time, way back before Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii, Pliny the Elder wrote that "Home is where the heart is."  More recently, Thomas Wolfe qualified old Pliny's wisdom when he wrote "You Can't Go Home Again." True enough ~ especially if you lived in Pompeii. What I get from these two guys is that you can't always follow your heart; even if it's heading home.

"Sunrise" By Steven Kenny - 2005

Many of us have that special dream every now and then. It's a colorful, hopeful dream and it leaves us believing, even just briefly, that we are capable of accomplishing something impossible, or at least highly improbable. Perhaps we dream of a return to something that still shines brightly in some seldom visited corner of our memory. In that dream we soar across time - toward a day long past. Maybe it existed years or even decades ago. Maybe it never really existed at all. Dreams, like recollections, can be inventive, you know ~ and very kind to the past. In time though, most dreams become like badly spliced scraps of faded film footage; void of color or continuity. They gradually decay into monochromatic images that eventually vanish completely. But not always.

I've been having one of those improbable dreams since my retirement.  They're becoming less frequent and more confusing as years pass but the basic theme is always the same. In the dream I'm back at Big Time, standing in the TRACON. It looks much the same as when I left and I also see many familiar faces. They look exactly as they did when I last saw them so many years ago. That's the comforting part. I stand and watch the controllers working. There are so many damned airplanes. I think to myself how much busier it's become since I worked there. Then I realize I'm there to enter training and get re-certified. Knowing there's no way I can do it, I'm overcome with dread. Thankfully, that's when I wake up. It's craziness, I know, but it won't go away. I guess the memories of a long, adventurous career, with its schemes and scares, schisms and scandals, scuffles and scars, are still too vivid to forget. They keep calling me back.

 By the mid-eighties, half burned out by the strike recovery, I had already taken a couple of small steps away from full-time air traffic control. There were the unhurried years working in Big Time's Training Department followed, in time, by fast moving years spent as a First Line Supervisor. In each case, the work was challenging, satisfying and good for the career. But one of the best things about those jobs was being able to go back. I could return to the tower or radar room with my headset in hand. There, I'd still be able to go home to a world that few others could ever imagine. I needed to keep at least one foot in that world. It was the foundation of my career aspirations, the essence of my identity and it was home.

Then along came the infernal Area Manager (AM) years. I was still physically 'home' in the control rooms but it was like eavesdropping on family members from another room.  It was as though a door had closed. Gone was the requirement to stay current on control positions. The luxury of only having to concentrate on the fast moving madness of air traffic was gone too. As an 'AM' my workday was fragmented into dozens of vastly different tasks punctuated by an occasional exigency in the front office. At first, I tried to keep current on a few radar sectors so I could at least relieve the Supervisors for meal breaks, etc. Other demands eventually rendered those altruistic aspirations impossible. In time, my workday evolved into a sausage mix of tasks that, by day's end, I couldn't even identify. I often thought of Pete; the battle hardened Area Manager of my early controller years. He always made it look easy and, in a way, it was. That's because Pete was among the few people remaining in this profession who's roots were connected to another time.

Prior to the '81 strike, the FAA seemed a more close-knit organization. Back in the late Fifties, Pete had actually worked airplanes with the guy who, by the mid Seventies, had become our Facility Chief. Pete knew most of the people he talked to or yelled at on the phones. The Chief knew nearly everyone he had to deal with in the Regional Office. They'd all entered service during the Eisenhower Administration, worked the first jet airliners, drank together and kept each other's secrets. Some had even joined the fledgling PATCO before entering into Management. Their value system was chiseled in stone, their work ethic exhausting and their sense of loyalty to one another was as unquestionable as gravity.

"Talkin' bout my generation."  - The Who

Those of us lucky enough to be recruited in the early Seventies were strongly influenced by those guys. At Big Time, they started retiring three or four years before the strike; most of them exhausted, disillusioned and ready to leave home. They'd already endured earlier job actions. Now they could see another one brewing and didn't want to deal with it. I couldn't blame them. Some stayed on though and were still around in the Summer of '81. A few of them were loyal PATCO janizaries who were actually eligible to retire within months of the strike. In spite of the pleading by some of their former friends in upper Management, they went out; betting their retirement benefits and the future of their families on a successful job action. They lost everything except the camaraderie of their fellow strikers. The few 'old timers' who remained hung on for a couple more years but it was easy to see they were losing their edge.

Many controllers hired after the strike had little patience for their professional predecessors ~ or me for that matter. They were a solipsistic mix of inexperience, impatience and intolerance. They thought they knew it all and had their college degrees to prove it. The older guys couldn't relate to them. With unmistakable annoyance, they trained their younger protégés under a more liberal and less effective succession of mandates. These were set forth in an endless blizzard of Directives the FAA hoped would change their autocratic image. Far from fooled; the old guys kept an eye on their calendars ~hoping they could reach retirement without having a "deal" (controller-speak for an operational error).

Within a couple years after the strike, they were gone. In their place were the so called 'strike baby' controllers hired after 1981. Gone also were the mid-level managers like Pete. They were replaced by guys like me who were caught between eras. What we knew about the business we had harvested from those who were all but forgotten fossils ~ pressed in the strata of aviation history. Far too young to retire, I had to adapt. The home I had once known now resembled a foreclosure. Much of its contents, the familiar things I had grown up with and my professional 'family' had been removed. It was beginning to look like Thomas Wolfe was right.

I needed a plan. This wasn't the time to become one of those guys who held court in the break room, boring everyone with tales of the old days. For that, I'd wait till the next century and maybe start a Blog. But for now; these were new days and new challenges ahead. It was time to adapt and try reinventing myself. This wasn't going to be easy. By the late Eighties, FAA's Management, diluted by inexperience, was beginning to reveal its lack of depth. No wonder. The majority of our collective history had retired; including many highly skilled Managers. Many others had been fired. Who was left to ascend into Management jobs? The answer was guys like me, along with some fast track strike babies.

I made my way through a series of Staff Officer jobs; managing the Plans and Procedures, Quality Assurance and Training Departments. Although challenging, none of it was like working a busy, IFR evening shift in the radar room. The younger specialists working for me did much of the heavy lifting while I attended meetings, which were lined up on my calendar like planes in the departure queue.  The problem was; you couldn't stop the meetings. Other facilities, the union, the Regional Office, airline representatives, airport management officials, General Aviation advocates ~ everybody needed their meetings as urgently as I needed aspirin afterward. My immediate Supervisors, the Asst. Manager, seemed addicted to these things. She insisted on regularly scheduled meetings; regardless of whether there was anything to discuss or not. You'd have thought she had nothing better to do. Meetings might have been a security blanket for her but for me; they stole much of the time needed to get real work done.

Meanwhile, back home in the tower and TRACON, all seemed normal. Controllers continued pushing planes in and out of the airport, griping about Management and gossiping about each other. Shifts were still being swapped, holding patterns were still filling up, people were hollering into handoff lines and everybody was sweating. It was all as it should be. But whenever I went into those control rooms I felt like a visitor in my own home. My heart was still there but I didn't fit anymore. Matters were made worse by the fact that I was growing bored and frustrated with my own job.

The endless meetings were enough to get me there. Even worse was the gnawing notion that I couldn't trust most of the Management people I worked with. Without that on-the-job interdependence controllers rely on to make things work; Management relied on their simple pecking order and subtle intimidation to get things done their way. Tasks were completed because someone higher up asked for it. Any resistance or refusal usually had unsavory consequences. Posturing was preeminent and professional differences were seen as subversive. I couldn't stand it much longer. Home didn't feel like home anymore and the interests of my Management peers didn't coincide with my own. It was time to leave. There was a song that went . . .

"This old airports' got me down
it's no earthly good to me."
 - Gordon Lightfoot

I took a position working for our Regional Office; where I bided my time till retirement. Surprisingly, the work was a lot of fun. I made new friends, met some memorable people and had many interesting experiences. While there, I never missed my old facility. I didn't miss the controllers or the airplanes either - not until I retired. That's when I realized my 'heart' was still somewhere else and it was controlling traffic. In time, I started having those colorful, hopeful, impractical and impossible dreams of going home again. I still have them now and then but always wake up smiling. I smile because, in those dreams, my heart goes home but I stay right where I am. The way I understand Pliny and Wolfe, it's best that way.

Here's a short epilogue. I have no lingering regrets over my career decisions and I won't whine about them. Durrell once wrote that we create our misfortunes and they bear our fingerprints.  Wise words. Besides, there are a lot of positive lessons to be learned from negative experiences. Whether it's taking a job you really weren't cut out for or breaking a second floor window with the lawn mower; you learn something useful. I've also come to realize that absence really does make the heart grow fonder. The further I get from my controller years, the more fun it is to look back ~ even on the worst of times. And those folks in Management that I once might have enjoyed strangling with a length of barbed wire? If I met any of them today, I'm sure we'd speak of nothing but the good times. To do anything else would be pointless. 

© NLA Factor, 2013

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