I've Never Seen THAT Before: 30 Years as an Air Traffic Controller
A decade ago I trained a student air traffic controller. There must have been a job somewhere in the world that Ron was suited for, but air traffic control wasn't it. His favorite excuse during training debriefing was, "I've never seen THAT before!"
There is always something we haven't seen before.
The key is to put two and two together of what you know and come up with an answer that makes sense.
I've been an air traffic controller at St. Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) for over thirty years, and no two days have been the same.
When the weather is bad (low ceilings and/or low visibility) pilots approach the airport and land following flight paths based on radio beams. Specific procedures with altitudes and headings to follow are published. A bird's eye view of the path would show a path toward the runway and a cross-section or profile view would show descending altitudes in a path that looks like a slide on a playground. A minimum altitude to start the "slide" is published for safe obstruction clearance. If a pilot is on the "path" or the "slide" below that minimum altitude, the radar sounds a "low altitude" alarm and the air traffic controller must issue a safety alert to the pilot immediately. If a pilot follows the "path" and "slide", at a predetermined altitude and point over the ground, s/he should see the runway. If s/he does not, there is a prescribed procedure for climbing and turning to safely manuever back for another try. At St. Louis Downtown Airport, the altitude to start the "slide" is 2100 feet, and the altitude to climb for another attempt is 2200.
One dreary Saturday recently, a military Gulfstream was being directed by the radar controller to the "path" to land at CPS. A Gulfstream is a large, business-type jet. Though smaller than an airliner, a Gulfstream is the cream of the corporate airplane crop.
Waiting for the pilot to transfer to my frequency, the computer generated a low altitude alert. I transmitted "in the blind": Low altitude alert, check your altitude immediately, altitude indicates 1900; altitude at [the slide] is 2100.
The pilot responded that he needed a climb. As I obtained a heading from the radar controller for the pilot to fly, the pilot started climbing. 3000 feet. 3500 feet before I could tell him the heading. He was now above my airspace and at altitudes that airplanes inbound to Lambert International Airport typically fly. He was at 3800 feet when I gave him the heading, and despite instructing him to not climb any more, he was climbing like a homesick angel. He needed to talk to the radar controller, and I told him to do so.
My heart was in my throat as I watched on the radar screen as he reached 7000 before he leveled out at 6000.
Visualize merging onto a busy highway and cutting across four or five lanes of traffic without looking. You might get lucky and there would be no one in those other lanes. But chances are you'd hit another vehicle. Climbing blind through several altitudes used by other aircraft is very similar.
Once again the pilot lined up on the "path" and "slide" and was able to make an uneventful landing. After landing, I asked him for a report of his flight conditions.
He said, "Tell the radar controller that we really, really, really appreciate his help. We hit severe turbulence [on the "slide"] the last time and we had to climb out of there."
Yikes! Straight from the Aeronautical Information Manual: "Severe turbulence causes large, abrupt changes in altitude and/or attitude usually accompanied by large variations in indicated airspeed. Aircraft may be momentarily out of control. Encounters with severe turbulence must be remedied immediately in any phase of flight." No wonder he started out too low and then climbed like a bat out of hell. It was miraculous that no other airplane was in the airspace. Since that day, I've watched the radar screen on Saturdays at the same time of day, and there are ALWAYS airliners descending from 5000 to 3000 feet in the area where that Gulfstream was.
Thirty years and I've never see THAT before! I told the pilot, "You deserve a Klondike Bar."
