Tin Pusher part three

Tin Pusher Part Three (of Three)


I clear an aircraft for takeoff to New York. He lifts off safely and as I switch him to the departure radar controller I turn back to the television just in time to see the second airplane hit the second tower. Within seconds a notice comes out to stop all traffic to New York. Almost all of the aircraft taxiing to my runway are headed in that direction.

“Attention all aircraft; All traffic to New York and surrounding airports has been stopped. Please contact your companies and then Ground Control to return to your gates.” “How long will the delay be to New York?”…One pilot inquires. I look at the two burning towers and answer, “Sir, I don’t think that anyone is going to New York today.”

Minutes later the reality of the situation is filtering through the system. These were not lost small aircraft, others are now missing. The new message comes out… “STOP ALL TRAFFIC IN THE UNITED STATES!”

Our jaws drop but only for a second. There is much to do. They can not take off but thousands must still land. “Attention all aircraft; All traffic in the United States has been stopped. Contact your companies and Ground and return to your gates.” I simply can not believe that these words just came out of my mouth. I am shaking. A walkie talkie in the back of the tower crackles and then the voice of the Radar supervisor booms that a United Airlines Aircraft is a confirmed hijacking and heading towards the Washington D.C. area and that we must evacuate the tower.

A couple of brave controllers stay behind to assist returning airborne aircraft to the airport. Just before one of them leaves to catch up to us, she sees and reports an unidentified primary target heading towards Washington D.C. Our supervisor notifies the White House and it, too, is evacuated. Within seconds one of our brothers from National Tower can be heard shouting over our speakers that the Pentagon has just been hit by an airplane.

We gather at a nearby restaurant, not too far but not too close to the airport, to await further instructions. Like everyone else, I dial repeated and unsuccessful calls to reach family members; my children’s father, the airline pilot, my sister, the flight attendant, my brother who works at another Washington D.C. airport.

We sit together watching the events and information unfold on the restaurant TV. The newscaster suddenly announces the identity of the aircraft that had hit the Pentagon. Wait a second…that was our airplane! It is the first time that we realize that the fated aircraft took off from our own airport by our own instructions---how long ago was that? It seems like days and yet it was only a couple of hours ago. In horror we realize that we just talked to that very flight crew and then the other reality sets in; that as we parked our cars that morning and we got our Starbucks and went through the security lines, we walked among them. Not just the victims but the terrorists, too.

It will be hours before I reach my aviation family and am assured that they are safe. Eerily though, the pilot ex- spouse was number two for take off at the fated Boston Logan when air traffic was shut down.

Along with all other Americans that day, our lives, our security, and our sense of safety are forever changed. For Air Traffic Controllers, we are still reminded every day as the procedures have changed, and a new type of vigilance is required that adds to the stress that we already experience as controllers. We police the skies above Washington now, along with separating thousands of airliners. We talk to every single private pilot now, tripling our workload with no extra staffing to do so. And we watch every second of every day, every single target on the radar scope, to ensure that America is safe.

It’s 2005 and I have just read some disturbing and inaccurate public comments from our Administrator. It seems the FAA thinks that I am under worked and overpaid and that this job just isn’t that stressful.

I return home from another late evening shift; I see uneaten cold and spoiled dinners on the counter; I see backpacks still by the door most likely untouched since the bus dropped off the kids, and homework, what homework? One teenager is asleep on the couch, always afraid to go to bed until Mom is home for the night. With the rotating schedule I haven’t seen them in four days. I kiss the littler one good night and the older one, well you can’t find her through the mess in her room.

I peel another ruined blouse off and contemplate burning it or attempting to save its life. Like so many before it, it has been sacrificed to an overworked, understaffed day and it finds its way into the trash. Tonight I lay awake sleepless and my mind is unable to quiet down. Some nights it is caused by too many airplanes in too little space that we are expected to work miracles with; sometimes it is nightmares of the pilot who turned left when you said right and the ensuing chaos as you pry him apart from another aircraft. Just yesterday the sleepless night was due to the pilot who descended too low over a hill in Leesburg, Virginia, a knoll that has already claimed so many lives before this one and how I yelled frantically for him to climb, climb, climb.

But tonight I lay awake thinking and worrying about contract negotiations and how I will pay the bills if this administrator were to cut my job or pay. Even a pay freeze would devastate my family as inflation and bills rise along with my mortgage but my pay wouldn’t. In high cost of living areas controllers are already forced into long commutes in order to serve. And let’s face it, I made my financial commitments based on the agency’s commitments to me. To rescind that now would mean certain bankruptcy for thousands of us.

So, as I lay awake I wonder…how does a single mom find time to supplement income to feed the kids and start this year’s college? Do I work planes by day and then waitress all night? Do I clean houses by day and then planes all night? Can I stay awake on the job and stay healthy? How do we controllers who leave before the kids and miss dinner with them every night find time to salvage our financial futures if the FAA freezes or cuts our pay?

Or will they resort to this “productivity increase” we have been hearing about. More hours per shift in the trenches and less breaks. We are already short controllers, and the FAA themselves said they would start hiring!! Never mind the down time needed to de-stress and refresh that is absolutely paramount in between nightmare sessions of chaos during the rush hours of the skies. Never mind the time the mind needs to quiet down in between the roller coaster rides in order to approach the next turn in the barrel refreshed, sharp, and ready to turn another Heavy Metal rock band into a Classical Symphony.

My mind is ablaze. What of the sick time or vacation time that the FAA might reduce? I have climbed those twelve flights of tower stairs pregnant and resembling a whale; I have climbed them on crutches after surgery; climbed them with swollen joints and Lyme disease; I have transmitted separation instructions raspy with Bronchitis, and after cancer prevention surgery; I have shown up to push tin hours after my teenager rolled her convertible, and hours after she broke her ankle at the prom; and thankfully it was a darkened room when I moved those airplanes so efficiently, in spite of a face swollen and covered in Chicken Pox.

But what of the times when you are so sick or injured or so worried about a family member that you can’t safely concentrate on airplanes? Even a migraine headache or a sleepless night can reduce the sharpest controller’s decision making process and slow the critical response time in crucial moments. Would the FAA require us to work at such times? Is that what they desire for the safety of the flying public? Is that a productivity increase?

Ms. Blakey says that we are overpaid compared to others. I wonder…are they home for dinner; home for French toast and coca coca on Christmas mornings? Can they take Nyquil when they have a cold, or take the morning off for a school play? I wonder if everybody just tells their kids they can’t play high school sports because there is no way to pick them up when Mom is on evening shifts and there’s no one to watch them anyway.

I once had an Orthopedic Surgeon tell me that the only cure for the painful locked up muscles in my back was to leave this stressful job. After several months of medicines, MRI’s, and physical therapy I was told, “You know, your job is just too stressful. Your back won’t relax until you leave your job.”-------and yet again I read in the papers that the FAA Administrator says that I am under worked and overpaid.

Her words still ring in my ears about our salary. For my eighteen year FAA career I have always worked the busiest facilities and the top paid. And yet as a single parent living in the expensive Washington D.C. area, just a few years back my salary was $63,000 per year. Around here these days, that gets you subsidized housing. The “Bad deal” contract that Ms. Blakey
detestfully refers to took that income and raised it on a steady incline over several years to reach the competitive and fair number that is correctly proportionate with the skill levels and sacrifices required to perform our duties. (And which by the way are still not the incorrectly inflated numbers the Administrator quotes to her audiences in those controller bashing speeches.)

August 20, 2005: We drop my daughter off as a freshman at college. She is the age that I was when I first became an Air Traffic Controller. It is a four hour drive there and we don’t arrive until 8pm at night because I couldn’t leave work early. The other parents have all since come and gone. A quick unpack of the car, a hotel night, and a quick goodbye breakfast to rush four hours back to the evening shift. This monumental moment in our lives is befitting of the last eighteen years of my daughter having an Air Traffic Controller mom; Quick hello---good bye---gotta go to work.

On the ride home from the college I tearfully wonder where the years went. Twenty years on the job and the only Christmas I spent all day with her was when I had that nasty Chicken pox. Eighteen years as her mom and I never had weekends off with her. Twenty years of, “sorry, I have to work on your birthday, sorry I can’t see you leave for the prom, sorry I was late to your graduation…”

We sacrifice our families, our friendships, our health, and our lives. Overpaid?! Is there any pay worth that 50 feet of separation and that agonizing wait to exhale? Is there any pay worth running out of the airport after hearing one of our own just went into the Pentagon and another is heading this way? Is there any pay worth permanent back aches, hundreds of ruined blouses and countless sleepless nights? Is there any pay worth dropping your kid off at college and realizing that you missed her growing up and it’s too late to pick another job and do it all over?

We don’t do it for the pay. It is who we are. It is what we take pride in doing. Even now, as the atmosphere has turned sour and negative and the agency is trying hard to take our pride away from us. We still know what we do every day even if Marion doesn’t. And we are still proud! Getting the lost student pilot with the cracking voice safely on the ground; hearing the quick “Nice Job” from a sympathetic pilot as he switches frequencies because he appreciates how busy you are and how exhausted you are after getting him and thousands of others to the end of their routes. I am still proud!

The four hour drive from the college is complicated by an insidious illness that has been sneaking up on me. By the time I arrive at work I am doubled over in pain. It is a Saturday night. The neighbors are having a Bar-b-Q. No sorry, I can’t make it, you know, gotta work: No they don’t know. They are home every weekend. I limp into the Tracon to await a position assignment. Surprise, you’ve been randomly selected for drug testing. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not stay with your nervous daughter for the weekend or help her unpack. Do not go to the neighbor’s party. Go directly to the special room so you can pee in a special cup for the stranger.

Escorted to the water machine by the stranger like a common criminal, it then takes two hours of bottled water and direct supervision to give her what she wants and then I am free to limp sickly back to work airplanes. As I hobble back to the cold dark room---the place I see more than my children---I am embarrassed and ashamed, resenting the drug testing I was just forced to humiliatingly endure. I am modest and ill and I have never tried so much as a cigarette. Then it comes to me; those words twenty years ago from that very first flight surgeon on that very first day.

“Congratulations. You are going to be an Air Traffic Controller. Your body is no longer your own.”

They can try to take away a lot of things from us, John, but they can’t have my soul. And I have the soul of an air traffic controller. Tell the FAA that’s the one thing we’ve got on our side that’s non-negotiable.

Sincerely,

Controller X