Chapter Seven

 

“Hey Ratliff, I’ve been gone for ten minutes. How many planes you run together so far?” Gary Lee led Dirk across the dimly lit room. Claude was calmly seated at the radar scope choreographing the procession of targets on the screen toward the final approach course for runway 23.

“None,” he scowled in mock frustration. “Every time I get a couple of them headed toward one another, one of them damn pilots looks out the window, sees what’s comin’ his way, and turns.” Claude continued the ruse, obviously contrived for Dirk’s benefit.

“Careful what you say, Ratliff. This here’s Dirk Johnston from Channel Six news. He’s certified media trash. He’ll repeat every word you say, and broadcast it with film at eleven.” Gary Lee inflected a very sarcastic tone to the “film at eleven” cliché.

“I know’d he was trash when I seen him walk in with you,” Claude replied. “Now get the hell out of here. I’ve got important work to do. And go get Jefferson back from the break room to take over this sector. I want to get back to the serenity of my desk.”

He led Dirk back out into the brightly lit hall. With its white walls and highly polished tile floor, they both squinted until their eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lights that ran the length of the narrow corridor.

As they entered the small break room, its walls lined with packaged food and soda machines, Gary Lee turned his attention to a man slouched down into a well-worn upholstered chair.

“Hey, Jefferson, you better get your butt back up to TRACON. Claude is up there working East arrivals alone,” Gary Lee announced in a derisive tone.

Reginald Jefferson lowered yesterday’s edition of USA Today so that just his eyes appeared above the purple banner of the sports section. He quickly surmised that Dirk was a visitor and without any coaching continued the mockery.

“Who let him back on the scope?” He feigned a sense of alarm. “That boy is more dangerous than a queer with a chipped tooth . . . Oops! Sorry, Gary Lee, I didn’t mean to disrespect your sexual preferences.” He stood, tossed the paper on the chair, and walked toward the door, pausing as he passed Gary Lee. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Reginald commented, “We’re so proud of Gary Lee. He’s the first transvestite we hired here, and he’s doing so well.”

“Don’t you just love Reggie’s big brown eyes?” Gary lisped. “Now get your cute little buns back to the radar room before Claude kills a couple hundred people.”

“You got a real mutual admiration society around here,” Dirk said.

“Hell bubba, it’s all in fun. It’s kinda how we get through the day. The truth is, every one of these guys is top notch,” he confessed.

“What about Claude?”

“Especially Claude,” Gary Lee confirmed. “He’s as good a supervisor as you could ask for. He can untangle any ATC mess that you throw at him on that scope. I tell you what, if my momma is on a flight coming into Charlotte and the weather is really lousy, I want Claude Ratliff on that sector when she arrives. Now if you ever tell him or anybody else that I said that, I’ll tell the whole world about those three illegitimate children you fathered in the seventh grade.”

“I still think one of those kids is yours.”

Dirk changed the subject to a more serious matter. “So what was going on up here when Consolidated 243 passed through your sector?”

Gary Lee’s grin disappeared. “I was sequencing arrivals from the southeast and northeast into one long line of traffic for landing on runway 23.”

“Why do they call it runway 23 anyway?” Dirk asked.

“Runways are named based on their magnetic compass orientation,” Gary Lee replied, noticing a confused look on Dirk’s face. “Let me put it this way. There are 360 degrees on a compass. If you start at north and go one fourth of the way around the compass, you are at zero nine zero, or east. Continue another ninety degrees around and you are at one eight zero, or south. Ninety degrees more puts you at two seven zero, or West. Another ninety degrees puts you back at north or three six zero,” Gary Lee paused to ascertain Dirk’s level of comprehension. “We have two runways here that point straight north and south. Since they are parallel to each other, the runways that point to the north or three hundred and sixty degrees are called three six left and three six right. If you were landing in the opposite direction, these runways would be referred to as one eight left and right.” Gary Lee paused again to let this information soak in. “Now to answer your question about runway two three, it points to the southwest or about two hundred and thirty degrees. You with me so far?”

“Yup.”

“O.K., test time,” he said. “If we were landing aircraft in the opposite direction of runway 23, what would that runway be called?”

“That would be two thirty minus on one hundred eighty, so, ah, fifty. Runway fifty,” Dirk confidently replied.

“Close, but no cigar,” Gary Lee corrected him. “That would be runway five. We always drop the last zero from the compass direction,” he explained.

“Why?” Dirk asked in frustration.

“’Cause that’s the way we’ve always done it,” Gary Lee replied. “Unfortunately, most of the ATC system operates on that same logic, or lack thereof,” he confided. “I assume you’ll be talking to the Consolidated management folks about this too. Don’t be surprised if they use the same misguided logic to manage their operations as we do. They’ll try to convince you otherwise, but don’t be fooled by their rhetoric.”

“One final question on the runway name thing,” Dirk continued. “Why don’t they just give the runways sequential names like runway one, two, and three? Wouldn’t that be simpler?”

“Situational awareness.”

“Oh Shit!” Dirk quipped. “Is this going to take as long to explain as the runway number thing?”

“Not really,” Gary Lee replied. “That’s assuming you’re half as smart as coach Kincaid’s dog. Pilots can’t always see the runway when they line up for landing. In order to keep up with where the runway is, one of the things they do is compare the direction they’re flyin’ to the direction the runway is pointed. By combing this information with his distance from the runway, a pilot can plan his approach descent for landing. It is the pilot’s awareness to both his vertical and horizontal distance from the runway that enables him to maneuver his aircraft so that he can land safely.”

“I thought you guys just told them where to go and they followed your instructions.”

“Not exactly. Our primary job is separation and sequencing. If I issue a clearance for a pilot to maintain a speed or altitude that he feels he can’t comply with, he can refuse that clearance.”

“What happens then?”

“Well, between the two of us, we come up with an alternative plan that meets both my separation and sequencing needs and the pilot’s operational concerns.”

“It sounds like a lot of cooperation is required between the two groups.”

“Absolutely,” Gary Lee agreed. “But the airline marketing folks don’t make it any easier for us. They keep scheduling more flights to arrive at the same time. We do the best we can to get them lined up and on the ground, but the runway two three approach procedure made it a lot more difficult today.”

“Why’s that?”

“The glide slope was out.”

“Glide slope?”

“It’s an electronic vertical descent path that is transmitted from the end of the runway to a flight instrument in the cockpit. It helps the pilots maintain their situational awareness to their landing profile by providing a safe descent angle for them to approach the runway. Since the glide slope was not working today, they only had a localizer beam to tell them if they were aligned laterally with the runway.”

“And a localizer would be . . .?”

“That’s part of the Instrument Landing System, or ILS as we call it. The glide slope gives descent path information, and the localizer gives them left or right information.”

“How can they land without the glide slope information?”

“They fly what we call a non-precision approach. Rather than following a constant descent path, they fly at one altitude to a point that is a specified distance from the runway. When they reach that point, they descend to a lower altitude. It’s kinda like going down stairs, as opposed to sliding down a slide. They then fly until they either see the runway, or they do what we call a missed approach, which is another way of saying they don’t land.”

“Is it up to the pilots to decide if they should land or not?”

“Yep! It’s totally the Captain’s call. According to the Federal Aviation Regulations, he’s ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft.”

“So if the Captain decided to land, and the aircraft was too high or close to the runway, the airplane could run off the end of the runway.”

“You got it, good buddy.”

“Why don’t you just bring them in low enough so that doesn’t happen?” Dirk suggested.

“If all we had to do was land airplanes that would work just fine. But unfortunately each time one them planes lands, sooner or later it wants to take off again. We gotta keep the arriving planes above the departing planes. The departures are climbed to eight thousand feet initially. The arrivals are descended to ten thousand feet. Once they clear each other, we descend them for landing. Where it gets a little tricky is when we have a lot of planes in sequence for landing, and we try to put one into a space for landing that is kinda close to the airport.”

“How do you know when a plane is low enough to turn toward the runway?”

“It’s based on our judgment. You get used to seeing what works and what don’t.”

“Coach Kincaid used to say,’ Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.’”

“A-men brother. That’s why it takes so long to become an air traffic controller. They have to train that bad judgment out of us. Getting back to your question about turning the airplane towards the runway; once we get the airplane pointed toward the ILS, we give them an approach clearance, which basically means we’ve done our part. Now it’s up to the pilot to guide the airplane the rest of the way to the runway. If the pilot accepts the approach clearance, we assume he’s confident in his ability to land the airplane safely. He can always refuse the clearance if he thinks he’s not in a position to make a safe landing.”

“I would think without that glide slope information, it would be more difficult for the pilots to make that judgment,” Dirk inferred.

“I’d have to agree.”

“Do you think this might have contributed to the crash of Flight 243?”

“Well, I did turn him into a pretty tight spot, but like I said, it’s ultimately the Captain’s call as to whether or not he wants to accept the clearance. Dirk ol’ buddy, keep one thing in mind. We’re all under a lot of pressure. The airlines want more flights. We try to get them all on the ground safely. The pilots do the best they can to comply with our requirements. We all work under a very bureaucratic system that seems to have ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ as the standard for acceptability.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Any chance we can go up to the control tower to get a better view of the crash site?”

“Follow me, ol’ buddy.” They left the break room and walked a short distance down the hall. Gary Lee opened a door revealing an iron spiral staircase that looked as if it might be some sort of fire escape.