In August of 1981, I got fired from a great job with lousy working conditions. Me and about 10,000 other colleagues walked off the job as a protest to the failures of the FAA. For our efforts, several of us were jailed, and we were all fired. I collected unemployment for a few weeks, but I’ve worked since I was a kid, first on our farm in Colorado, then in the Army. I went back to work as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office, and then when I wanted to be a part of what I kept hearing, I went to the Academy and became a Deputy Sheriff. For about sixteen years, I wore a badge and gun to work every day, working my way up to Detective.
In the mid-90s, a Federal Court overturned the illegal order banning fired Controllers from working in ATC, and a lucky few of us went back to work. I took an early retirement from the Sheriff’s Department and returned to the job I loved. That’s why I was where I was at 5:15AM when I got pulled over.
I rolled onto a side street, zipped up to the gate, punched in the security code and went up the short driveway to the tower.
Metro Airport was one of the first airports in the area. Originally a private airport, the city bought it through an “imminent domain” maneuver. When the owners fought them over it, they were given a 100-year lease for a portion of the airport land at one-dollar per year, plus an option for another 100 years at the termination.
Most of the airplanes that come and go are what we call “dinks,” after the noise they make when they hit the ground, or “flibbs,” which is an acronym of “fucking little itty-bitty bastards.” We get biz-jets in and out, but most of our traffic consists of the numerous students from flight schools and local private pilots. I used to work in the radar room, back in the day, but I found the tower a little more fun simply because there was only one rule: keep the runway clear.
Let me clear up a few misconceptions about Air Traffic Control. First of all, every single airplane in the sky is not talking to the tower. There are three distinct entities in ATC: Tower, Approach, and En-Route. An airplane may be talking to one of these facilities at any given time, or none of them.
Towers control the area in the immediate vicinity of the airport, normally. Their real responsibility is the runway, or runways, at the airport. Yes, there are other responsibilities, but their primary role is to keep the runway clear so someone can take off or land. Just because an airplane is in the air does not mean the tower is talking to it. So many people call us from who-knows-where to complain about a low-flying aircraft, and want to know if we’re talking to it. Well, unless it is within five miles of my airport, it is highly doubtful. And even then, if you did not get the color or tail number off the plane, I can’t really help you. I will give you the number to the noise abatement office, or to the local Flight Standards District Office.
Approach (or Departure) Control are the guys who take an airplane, normally operating under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), who leaves an airport and help them transition to high altitude, or watch and guide him at the lower altitudes (also known as Tower En-Route). These are the people who primarily use radar to monitor the flights. They are also the ones who help the airplanes to descend from high altitude into an airport, either via some sort of electronic instrument procedure, or via a Visual Approach, which means the pilot sees the airport, or the preceding airplane to follow. These are the people who make the nice lines you see going into your major airports.
En-Route, or Center controllers, are primarily talking to high and medium altitude airplanes. When you are screaming along in those shiny metal tubes with wings at five hundred miles an hour, these are the controllers who are guiding you. Things happen really fast in the Center, and those controllers have to be on their toes, just like the guys and gals in the towers and approach controls.
It is a stress-filled environment, kind of like being in the medical profession. Each day is filled with mundane and routine stuff, but then, something goes awry for whatever reason---weather, aircraft malfunctions, pilot gets lost and scared---and you realize that now, your heart is in your throat and the only thing that stands between someone dying is literally a wing and a prayer. Code Blue in the hospital means one person is in mortal danger; in ATC, it may mean several dozen, if not hundreds of people are in mortal danger. And every day, any controller working airliners has around 10,000 people’s lives in their hands. I’d like to meet the doctor or nurse who can take care of as many souls in the same time span. Controllers may work over a million patients in their careers.
Any small wonder why the average lifespan of an Air Traffic Controller is sixty-four years?
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