A Few ATC stories

I was an Air Traffic Controller for around 10 years in both the Air Force and the FAA and got to see lots of interesting situations. This story is just a few of the ones that turned out OK even though they could have had a totally different outcome. These all happened at a civilian airport where I worked while an FAA controller.

So you understand some of the terms I will use I must give you some basic ATC info. The airport where these stories take place has two parallel runways and 4 flight schools plus lots of private planes. This means that the schools usually launch a whole bunch of planes every hour and they all come back to land an hour later. Normally the tower would have three controllers working:

1 Local Control position - He/She talks to the planes taking off, landing and in the air. Normally the same Local Controller handles both parallel runways but as the traffic increases a 2nd Local Controller is used. The airport is split down the middle between the runways and each controller takes a runway and all the airspace to that side of the runway.

2 Ground Control position - He/She talks to all airplanes on the ground taxing to/from the runways or on the ramps. Ground also handles the fire/rescue radio in emergencies.

3 Flight Data position - He/She uses land lines to coordinate with all other FAA facilities, especially for airplanes flying Instrument Flight Rules (IFR).

4 Supervisor - Only used at peak hours and provide back-up if needed.

The three working positions usually rotate every hour to spread the workload. Local works the hardest, then ground and the Flt Data spot is the rest position. Airplanes departing the area are easy since they take off and head out of the airport airspace. You just have to make sure they miss in-coming airplanes. Arrivals both Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and IFR are the hardest. You have to get all these arrivals sequenced so they get to the same spot on the runway over and over again; hopefully not at the same time. IFR airplanes are on dedicated routes and are handed off to the tower from radar via the Flight Data position using data strips with their vital information; altitude, airspeed, route, etc. VFR airplanes call up from any direction at the 5 mile airspace boundary. Local directs the VFR airplanes to an easily identifiable landmark such as the Power plant, gives them traffic info and tells them to report over the Power plant. When they report at the power plant they are then given a position in the airport pattern and an airplane to follow (this is sequencing the traffic). Local still has to watch all the airplanes in his airspace to make sure they follow his instructions. At the same time he finds holes in the traffic to launch departures. There is an FAA manual 2 inches thick that tells you the rules that MUST be followed. This is where the supervisor comes into the picture; his interpretation of the distance between two airplanes may be less than yours but he can write you up anytime he thinks you did not meet all the separation rules.

As the airplanes land and clear the runway they are directed to contact ground control on a different frequency. Meanwhile Ground is sending departures to the runway end and advising them to contact Local when ready for take-off on the tower frequency. During peak traffic Local and Ground cannot hear each others radios but can hear each other talk to their airplanes because they are only about 10 feet apart. Flight Data can also hear both Local and Ground because he is right next to them in the tower. Note: During slow periods all the radios come out in speakers so everyone hears it all but as traffic increases, everyone goes to headsets.

With this basic information you are ready to be an Air Traffic Controller!

 

Lady Mooney Pilot

A Mooney is a single engine, low wing retractable gear airplane that has pretty high performance (see picture). In other words it is not a training airplane and takes a bit more skills to handle. One day we had one of the local Mooneys taxi out and take off to depart the area with a lady pilot. Nothing at all unusual about that. About an hour later she called 5 miles out for landing. Local gave her directions to report over Turkey Mountain for a left downwind to Runway 27. She did as directed and entered the pattern. As she turned Base to final for landing she was told by Local to “Check Wheels Down, Cleared To Land Runway 27, Wind 270 at 9”. Standard phraseology given to all retractable gear airplanes. Local then started looking for some other inbound airplanes calling him. One of the other tower controllers looked out to final and saw that the wheels on the Mooney were still up. He advised Local who immediately called the Mooney to advise them of this. The Mooney pilot said “I put the wheels down” meaning she pushed the lever down but the wheels were stuck, she just didn’t know it. Local told her to make a go-around meaning don’t land but to enter the rectangle pattern to make another approach. She added power and went around as directed.

This is when it got interesting. In a Mooney if the gear doesn’t go down with the switch then there is a manual hydraulic pump handle between the two pilot seats that must be pumped numerous times to manually extend the gear. It just so happened that one of the controllers had lots of time in a Mooney so he gave her the directions on how to do this. Meantime she kept going around in the traffic pattern. All other air traffic was stopped either by holding them on the ground or telling them to stay at least 5 miles from the airport.

The gear would not come down no matter how much she pumped. After several trips around the pattern we were making arrangements to send her to the bigger airport about 15 miles away who had a better fire/rescue operation in case she had to land gear up. There is always the danger of fire in this situation so wanted to give her the best support possible. She of course was very scared and part of the controllers job was to try and make the pilot as calm as possible. The danger is that a scared pilot in an emergency forgets to fly the airplane and either goes too slow and stalls or too fast and flys into the ground. In this case she had the engine full power and going way too fast for the gear to extend. Finally we got her to slow down and the gear popped out and indicated lock. She landed safely and as she taxied to the hanger we asked her to come to the tower.

The controllers have lots of discretion on what to report to the FAA mother-ship for further action. Word to the wise, don’t Pi__ off a controller, you will not win the argument. When she came to the tower we asked her what had happened. She said she departed the airport and flew to an uncontrolled airport about 20 miles away to practice touch and go landings. Every time she got on final and lowered the gear some horn kept going off. She thought it was the stall horn so applied power and went around. She did this at least 3 times. Finally she came back to home base where this story started. What had actually been happening was that the gear was not coming down on any of those attempts and the horn was generated when power was reduced with the gear still up. It was to warn her about the gear!! We also found out that the plane belonged to her lawyer husband and she was a low time pilot learning to fly it. No action taken by us but we did tell her to get some more training on emergency procedures before going solo again. Her lucky day more ways than one.

Semi-Emergency Landing

One day in the tower we get a radio call from a VFR pilot saying he needed to make an immediate landing. We asked if he was having an emergency but he said no but he would like priority if possible. Any time we had an emergency we had to alert FAA mother-ship so he was smart enough not to say those words. We got him in the pattern ahead of the local traffic and he landed without a problem. As soon as he went over to Ground Control he asked to taxi back for take-off. This seemed strange because of his previous desire to get on the ground ASAP. Ground taxied him back to the end of the runway and sent him to Local Control who then cleared him for take-off. As he was taxing from the run-up area to the runway we saw him open his cockpit door and throw something out into the grass next to the taxiway. He got on the runway and took off heading out of the traffic pattern.

We had to know what he was in such a hurry to land and get out of his airplane. We had radio communication with the airport maintenence truck so sent him to investigate. He parked on the taxiway and went into the weeds to search for the disposed item. A few minutes later we got a call back and he said “You won’t believe what I found. It is an expensive leather brief case and when I opened it I found that it is full of sh__ (human waste)”. Evidently the pilot did have an emergency after all only he took care of it without our help! We told the maintenance guy he could keep the briefcase, we didn’t need it as evidence.

Airport Maintenance

We had a running battle (friendly) with the local airport maintenance guys. We would find trash in our cars and other irritants so we had to retaliate every way we could by making then clean rocks off the taxiway, etc. One day there was a stray dog on the airport and it was causing delays as it ran onto the runway and taxiways. We sent maintenance in hot pursuit. We were having a great time watching with our binoculars as he would almost get the dog to come to him then the dog would run off causing the maintenance guy to get in his truck and resume the chase. The maintenance guy was pretty overweight and it was a hot day so we expected at any time to have to send Rescue out when he finally collapsed. After what seemed like an hour the dog was tired and ready to give up. As the maintenance guy got close to the dog and reached down to pick him up one of the controllers barked into the radio. The maintenance truck had a speaker on it so they could hear radio calls if away from the truck. Upon hearing the bark from the speaker the dog immediately jumped up and bit the maintenance guy and ran off again. Now it was serious. If he didn’t catch the dog he would have to assume it could have rabies and have to take the appropriate shots. The “you will pay" look we got from the maintenance guy was clearly evident through the binoculars. With renewed vigor the maintenance guy finally captured the dog and took him in for medical evaluation (no rabies). We eventually had to call a truce because the repercussions of this episode was generating much more than just fun and games. I think it actually cost the barking controller (not me) a dinner for the victim and his wife.

Cassutt Racer

A Cassutt Racer is an extremely fast, very, very small single engine, single pilot, tail-dragger racing airplane (see picture). They do pylon racing very close to the ground in such places as Reno, etc. A Swift airplane is another small single engine tail-dragger airplane of above average performance but it can carry at least two pilots side by side (see picture).

One day we get a call from a Swift asking to taxi out to do some touch-and-go landings. The Swift took off and stayed in the pattern for about an hour doing T&Gs then finally departed the pattern. About an hour later we get a call from a pilot in a Cassutt Racer asking for landing. This was interesting because we did not have a Cassutt based at our airport and we were interested in seeing it come in and land. We treated it as any other arrival and the Cassutt entered the pattern, turned based to final and all looked normal. It was a busy hour with lots of traffic in the air and on the ground taxing. Just as the Cassutt touched down it immediately went off the runway into the grass between the runway and taxiway. It was traveling very fast and we watched in disbelief as the pilot applied full power and took back off directly over the ramp and taxing airplanes. He re-entered the pattern for another attempt. We asked him if he was having problems and he said no the wind caught him but everything was OK. We gave him another “cleared to land” but this time we made sure there were no airplanes close to the runway on the taxiways. Another perfect approach, touchdown and off into the grass again followed by full power and climb-out to the pattern. This time we declared an emergency, got the fire trucks out and stopped all air and ground traffic. Another perfect approach, touch down and immediately off into the grass, across the parallel taxiway and onto the ramp where it stopped just prior to running into a parked airplane. We told the pilot we would like to see him in the tower.

After he cleaned out his draws he came to the tower for what he expected to be the end of his flying career. He told us that he was in the Swift doing T&Gs earlier trying to get some high performance tail-dragger landing practice before he went to pick up his newly purchased Cassutt Racer. He then said that was his 1st, 2nd and 3rd landing in a Cassutt Racer. That made us all laugh so hard we couldn’t bring ourselves to chew him out or report him to the mother-ship. We did say he needed a lot more practice in the Swift (during light traffic hours) before taking out the Cassutt again.

Lost Pilot

As I stated earlier, we had four flight schools on our airport so we had to deal with a lot of low flight time students. I’m a pilot so know exactly how hard it is to not only learn to fly but to become proficient with flying into controlled airports (has a tower and maybe a radar facility controlling air traffic). Combine that with not having English as your primary language and you have all the ingredients for disaster. One evening before sundown we received a radio call from a student from one of the local flight schools and in his broken English we finally determined that he was lost and getting pretty low on fuel. There are several rules we used in this type of situation:

1 Do not have them change frequencies because there is a big chance he will not go to the right frequency and also won’t remember the one he just talked to you on.

2 You have to assume he will be very close to critical fuel because they always wait too long to call for help thinking they will get into trouble.

3 They will be scared and not fly the airplane safely; keep airspeed up and use flaps, etc.

We did have a radar repeater in the tower so we could see everything the radar controllers were seeing for our local airspace. We got him calmed down and finally determined what flight school he was from and that he was Nigerian. While Local Control gave him some turns so we could try to find him on the radar scope, another controller called the flight school and advised them of the emergency. We said we needed another Nigerian that could speak good English so he could transfer instructions to the lost pilot.

The sun was going down quickly and the pilot told us he had never flown at night before; great. The flight school sent us another Nigerian pilot so we put him on the radio and told him to ask the pilot what he could see out his airplane such as towns, highways, etc. They went back and forth for about 5 minutes non-stop in a language none of us could understand then he handed the microphone back to the controller and said “There are multiple dialects used in Nigeria and he is speaking one I don’t know”; great again. By this time it is pitch dark. Every few minutes the pilot would freak out saying he was out of gas. The first couple of times we actually though his engine had died but we finally determined he was looking at the gas gages which were dancing on E but the engine was still running. We had narrowed down our possible targets on the radar and thought we had him identified. He was right over the top of an adjacent airport for which we had their tower on the telephone. We told the pilot to look for the runway lights while we had the other tower run them up to maximum then back to low continously. Runway lights are extremely bright but also very directional. The pilot was almost screaming that he could not see them. We were sure by this time the target was him and told him to look straight down. He yelled “I see them” or at least we think that’s what he said. His English got worse with the less gas he had. We kept him on our frequency, coordinate landing approval with the other control tower and then walked him through the landing. We made sure he kept his airspeed in the green, used the correct flaps and didn’t come in too low at the threshold. We finally lost radios with him as he got near to touch down but the other tower gave us the confirmation he had landed safely.

As a side note we got word back from the flight school they could not even get a reading on a dip stick when they checked his tanks for gas.

Just a few stories from my days as a controller.