The Reality of High-Stakes Responsibility

Michael Regent is an air traffic controller So the top of the tower where the controllers work is called the cab And it's stocked with high tech equipment And one of the most effective tools he uses to do his job It's called window You're gonna to catch an air much more quickly with your eyes out the window than you will looking at the ground radar That's why it's really important because you would be like, oh There's no way that guy's going to stop. you know, if you're looking at it out the window like I told him to hold short at Juliet. I know he's not going to do it. So you'd call them up on the ground, Hey, delta four thirty if five. Just hold sure to Juliette So it turns out there's a good reason controllers work from the tallest perch on the airfield surrounded by glass You know, it's a good way to make sure that what you think is happening is happening I'm Dan Heath, and this is what it's like to be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, an aircraft carrier commander, a pharmacy technician, a baker. We want to know what they do all day at work Today we'll ask Michael Regent what it's like to be an air traffic controller. We'll talk about what happened when a jet he hadn't cleared for takeoff took off, the puzzles he solves to keep jets from bunching up, and the pilot's words that put the whole tower on alert Stay with us. One quick note before we keep going here Michael still works in the world of air traffic control, so he asked us to share this message The views expressed here are my own and do not constitute an endorsement, official policy or position of the Federal Aviation Administration or the Department of Transportation Okay, let's zoom out. Why do we need air traffic control at all pretty much for the same reason we need traffic lights With enough planes in the sky, it gets unsafe. And you need a way to figure out who goes where and whose turn it is. There are multiple levels of air traffic control. We'll get to that later. Let's start at the airport. Michael worked in a tower at Detroit Metro Airport for years Detroit is a big, complicated airfield. It's got six runways, hundreds of flights day. To handle all that, the controllers and the cab are split into three roles So there's a clearance delivery section and then three ground controls and three local controls. Okay, a little more about each of those roles Carance delivery pilots their flight plans before the planes ever leave the gate Local control is in charge of clearing planes for takeoff and for landing And in between is ground control The controllers suit direct planes taxiing between the gate and the runway ground control Man, you are you're busy. You couldn't sit down. That was. If you sat down, you were you were missing something. And I know that one of the things that you're always thinking about is What's the right kind of rhythm or flow of aircraft because on one hand If you get too safety conscious and create like massive buffers between planes. And then you get clogs and people can't get to their relatives' weddings and go see their sick, you know, grandma, you know, so that's a problem But if you cram in too many planes, you're obviously creating a safety risk. Like how do you kind of balance those tensions Well, that's that's exactly what it is. It's a very delicate balance between Safety first And then efficiency And it's always a constant calculation that You're running If you have optimal conditions where you know, it's clearing a million You know, meaning you can see everywhere. The sky is blue. Very calm wind. you know, nothing really there to obstruct the optimal flow of air traffic All of your equipment is working properly. You know, Detroit's arrival rate is like one hundred and thirty two flights an hour Okay, so that's like a measure that you're thinking about is flights per hour. Okay. Yeah just Yeah. because it's all time based. you know, how much time does it take from the flight that's on five mile final to Touchdown on the ground How much time take for it after it touches down on the ground to turn off the runway on the high speed taxiways, you know? So there's all of these things that you're constantly balancing in your mind And when it's perfect weather, like, hey, man, it's like clockwork. Things are smooth. It's a well oiled machine. Everybody's working together. it's great. But when that anomaly comes into play, like you start getting some clouds on final or you know you get fog, it all starts to slow down. That's where the efficiency starts to decrease because of the actual conditions that make it unsafe. That's really helpful. actuallyually. I hadn't thought about it through that lens. It's almost like a volume knobber, in this case, instead of volume, it's flow, where if conditions are perfect, you can kind of crank it up because it merits efficiency. Yeah. But as things degrade for various reasons, you've got to kind of dial it back and increase the safety factor Right? Michael told me about a time when they had to turn down the quote unquote flow knob because of weather Thunderstorm had just rolled off the airfield in Detroit dearchers had been frozen and Michael was in the tower working local control. So remember, It's the local controllers that are clearing planes for takeoff and landing We had a heavy airbus. It was an A three hundred fifty nine They were taxed out. They contacted me at local control And I had just gotten word from the Tayon that, hey Your departures are released FreyCon, by the way, is the radar facility that handles planes once they're in the air around the airport. So they're the next link in the chain after the tower Allright, so Michael clears the airbus to take off on runway twenty two left with an immediate hard left turn to dodge the storm. Meanwhile Another plane, a CRJ, with about sixty people on board. was also ready for departure, and Michael gave them instructions And I said Sky was one hundred twenty five hotel, Mel your tower, runom my two one right Line up and wait Caution wake turbulence, traffic. Heavy airb departing two two left. Eastbound Okay, so Michael is basically saying to the CRJ Hold up, You're not cleared for takeoff yet because he knew the airbus was going to cut across the flight path of the CRJ. So The airbus takes off. And he is in an almost an immediate left hand turn to avoid flying through the worst part of the thunderstorm that just moved off of the airfield to the south. So I look over there, I see that happening And then I look over at two and right and I see the CRJ about five hundred feet in the air. Halfway down the runway. Michael realizes the CRJ did not line up and wait It took off with the Airbus right in its path And I am like, what the heck You know, and everybody in the tower Looks right at that CRJ and they're like, holy smokes, you know, like there were some curse words in there. I suspect the language is a little worse Yeah. I was like Thiscy was one hundred twenty five hotel caution w turbes, heavy air bus, crossing right to left turnurn right immediately, basically like, what the hell are you doing, you know? But my heart's saying because I'm thinking Did I do something wrong And then I go back to the CRJ and I'm like Sky W was one hundred and twenty five hotel, I don't ever recall giving you a clearance for takeoff. Yeah. I'll never forget it You know, and then I went back to the airbus after I realized it was no factor because I'm trying to like peel the CRJ away from him you know, switch the heavi airb that was, you know, going to Korea to departure. so they were radars control. And I I held on to the The CRJ, he remained on my frequency And we have to give them like a brasher warning, which is like, hey, possible pilot deviation You know, I have a phone number advisory to copy, blah, blah, blah. So they write that down. What does all that mean? Is that just like you might be in big trouble, Bub, basically or Yeah, but here's the thing, like we as controllers, in instances like that We are not the police. We don't place blame or fault because that is not the time for it. Don't any of those things on the frequency because don't want to affect the psychological state of the pilots like they're thinking, Ohh my God, I made a mistake and that's not good and I'm going to get into trouble and I'm going, you know have my pilot's license suspended You don't want to do any of those things because they have people on their plane That is not the place for it. So that's where we give out that phone number onnce they get to their destination They call it and then the information is handled at that point. and then there's an investigation and then then you know we figure out what happens How close did the two planes get in this situation? Well, I don't know I'm telling you it looked like it was hundred feet. Oh my gosh. I don't know what it was. It could have been much further than that It was too close And I went back My supervisor was like, you screwed up You screwed up and I'm like, no, I didn't. I know what I said, you know, But there's still like that little bit of doubt in the back of your mind, right? But I man after I got off position, I ran downstairs and I listened to the tapes. I checked the tapes. That's something that we say, you know, when we're trying to like defend ourselves. like check the tapes, you know, because everything's recorded I went downstairs I was right He took off without a clearance What was the aftermath of that like for you? Like how do you, I mean, did you go back to work after that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went back like thirty minutes later. Whoa. I mean, how do you kind of settle your emotions after something like that happens? Um You know I guess you kind of like You kind of stick it away, you know And u, I'm sorry I'm a little emotional, but When you think about air traffic and it's not like I'm not getting emotional for this particular instance, but just overall, right? It's like In the terminal environment, like things happen immmediately There's a mistake made. The consequences are immediate You see them immmediately I mean, the thing that strikes me so much about this job is It is so and there's an order and there's a protocol and there are clear communications and I mean, it must almost lull you into you know, habit But you also have to have this kind of maniacal focus at the same time because if you slip, like the pilot thinking he had clearance when he didn't have it People can die instantly. and lots of people How do you maintain that intense focus when from day to day, Nothing is happening. like everything is going in an orderly way Yeah You have to know that at any moment somethingomething can happen and If you have a plan You can adapt and react Don't have a plan It is so to crawl out of that. And as far as dealing with the stress, I mean, some people put it away And it's demanding you to be O. All the time You have to be pererforming at your highest level. everyvery single time you're on position Ting the mic and I don't think Pople really realize how tough that can be After a short break The one phrase that makes every controller in the room pause and look up I'm Alice Taylor, host of the twenty thousand Hertz podcast. On our show, sound designers, musicians, and experts reveal the secrets behind the most iconic sounds in the world fromr the I'm Loving it Jingle the sound effects of Star Wars from the Netflix to Doom to the music and sounds of Zelda. To unlock your Sonic world, follow twenty thousand herz right here in your podcast player Let's flip to the other side of the spectrum. I mean It sounds like just Crazy stressful job, intense focus, big stakes there's something about it that appeals to you, clearly. like what is it It's The adrenaline that you get The Problems that are new that you have the ability to solve and I think humans really enjoy that for the most part. I mean some people are going to say, well, I hate solving problems. I just I want it to be easy. It's like, well, okay, well maybe air traffic's not for you. you know, But it really is you're always solving problems. you're always using your brain, thinking about different scenarios and trying to maximize the safety while balancing that efficiency. Give me like an example if one comes to mind just to give us a sense of what you're talking about. those moment to moment problem solving. So I'll use, you know, ground control at Detroit as an example, you know, you have different spacing between your aircraft departures, right. If you have two aircraft that are going out the same departure gate They need five miles in between one another so that it's manageable for the radar controller to control them. They're not too close, right? Okay You know, this happened quite often at Detroit where you would get six or seven planes that you're sequencing to the West departure runway And They have Th different departure fixes that They're going to be passing through after they they get in the air. Well you don't want to put all of those aircraft back to back that are going out the same gates, right? You want to kind of We call it sequence. You want to sequence where they are on the ground so that your local controller All they have to do is just say clear for takeoff and they don't have to worry about that spacing because The first guy is going out due west The second departure is going to the southwest and then the third departure is going to the south. And then you just start that all over again. And by the time that you get Yeah, by the time that you get to that fourth aircraft, that is going due west, you have maybe twelve miles between those two aircraft, which is plenty of space for that radar controller. to use to manage the departures without being too close Oh that helps me understand like the puzzle aspect of it. Yeah It's like you're just trying to build in these almost natural buffers between different planes by clever sequencing Right. And you would do that on the ground by, you know Those those departures aren't all coming from taxing out of the same spot. They're in different areas. So you might have to you know, hold one short of a certain taxiay so that the guy that's going due south can pass him and then you tuck the due Westbound guy behind him, right? So it's kind of you're kind of creating like a stoplight on the ground, on the movement area at the terminal Michael doesn't work in a tower at an airport anymore. He's been promoted to a place most people have never heard of FAA's Air traffic Control System Command Center just outside of Washington, D.C So bear with me here. We talked about the airports. then TracCon, which is the airspace around the airport Then there are in route centers, which handle big stretches of sky and hand off planes like a relay race There are twenty of them in the continental US, Cleveland Center, New York Center, and so forth. Where Michael works now, the command center sits above all of this of the food chain, the fourth level of air traffic control ports, Trayon and Route centers, and the command center Cand center is critical because It's trying to keep a problem in one part of the system. Cascading throughout the whole thing Kind of like you don't want a traffic jam in one spot to paralyze the whole city's flow of cars Command center can help reroute planes around problem areas So we'll say, okay, hey New York Center. we see you have some weather there Can we move some of these flights up through Boston that are coming from Cleveland And you decrease your miles and trail request from Cleveland so that we're not holding planes on the ground at O'Hare Miles in trail That's padding. the distance between planes. sort of like the knob idea we talked about earlier, when conditions deteriorate, you want more padding. That's more miles and trail And theyll say, Yeahah, sure Let's talk to Boston. So we talk to Boston Center, Boston Center says, Yeahah, sure, we'll take some of Cleveland's flights, you know, Cleveland, you give us twenty in trarail twenty miles in between each of those flights. So Cleveland kind of works with Boston then And they they essentially like create a new highway in the sky on a route that's kind of already there. So it's basically like creating a little bit of a detour decrease that bottleneck in the miles and trail that's passed back R. Right. Right So it's sort of like on Google Maps. like if there's a clog on some interstate highway, like Google Maps is crafty enough to to tell you, okay, take this feeder road, go around. It's apuitous route, but it's still Number one, helping you, but also helping the system flow Right. And I guess in this that particular scenario there that you presented, the command center picks the route for you Yeah. So the command center tells the driver, Okaykay, you're looking at Google Maps. You've got twenty four minutes, twenty six minutes and thirty minutes. All right, you know, Joe, you're coming from Cleveland. You're going to take the twenty four minute route Tim, you're going to take the twenty seven minute route and Fred, you're going to take the thirty minute route and it's all going to blend in. The other big thing the command center does is watch the weather. They have the National Weather Service embedded right there in the building forecastters who do nothing but track aviation weather. So when a line of thunderstorms is bearing down on a major airport like O'Hare, Michael knows almost to the minute when it's going to hit and how long it will sit there. Qion is what to do about all the planes already heading that way and all the ones about to take off. So The command center will say, all right. Well We already have these flights in the air. And we don't want anything to get airborne will be affected by whether byy the time they get there, so we put out what's called a first tier groundstop. So we will tellell all of the the adjacent centers that are within An hour flying time of Chicago hair Hey. All of your O'Hare flights on the ground due to thunderstorms. So you're the groundstop people Yes, the ground stop Yeah. I'm I'm the ground stop and the ground delay programs and the airpace flow programs Well, before you leave the Chicago one, I'm just curious like, if you have a flight coming from Korea to land at O'Hare and, you know, obviously when they left, the thunderstorm may not have been foreseeable Do they still land or what happens? No. if the weather is directly impacting them and they're not comfortable landing through the weather then they will hold. And that's why we put that ground stop out at the command center to minimize the amount of aircraft that are going to hold and really that are going to have the potential to divert to one of their alternate airports And the pilot from Korea, like if they wanted to land in the thunderstorm? Is it up to them or are you saying no, don't even try? No, it is it is the pilot's decision. Oh wow. is It is up to the pilot. to land. Okay We're air traffic controllers. We're not pilots. Yeah. We don't make decisions for them in that regard. You know, they are in charge of their aircraft and responsible for their passengers and that decision is ultimately up to them What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about air traffic controllers I think one of the biggest misconceptions is, you know, that we control everything and that's not always the case, you know? We're not trying to Dlay your flight. We're not trying to cause you to miss your connection I do think people need to realize that it is a very, very complex and large system and T to fifteen minutes of delay in the morning for your First flight of the day turns into potentially an hour and a half for flight and that crew end of the day So that's where it's like cascades. I mean, you can't you can't really make all of that time up So Michael, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know And what does it mean? Gossh, I bet you got about a thousand choices here. Yeah, I do. Well, we could say No joy That means I don't have the traffic in sight or sometimes pilots will say, Tally ho, I have the traffic in sight. No joy and Tally ho Yeah The pilot would use no joy in the scenario where The controller has pointed out traffic to them. that they are either to follow or avoid. and The pilot will say, No joy. We don't see that aircraft to follow. No joy You know, no joy on the traffic. And then when they do see them, they might say, Tally ho. We got him in sight. We'll follow him or will avoid What phrase are sentence strikes fear in the heart of an air traffic controller I'd like to declare an emergency. O And who would would the pilot be saying that or your colleague or The pilot would be saying that. o, okay. I don't know that it strikes fear But that's where you're put your hand up in the air. and snapping your fingers trying to get the soup's attention or get somebody's attention. You know, hey, And you're you're doing that as the pilot saying it, right? This this is deelta one thirty two heavy. I'd like to declare an emergency. We've got engine one out, you know, That's getting your attention You know what? when we talk to the pilot, we talk to a commercial pilot who's been working for thirty five plus years And he had one of those situations where one of his engines caught on fire. And so I imagine that would be a call you would get, right Yeah, absolutely And so what happens from there So at that point, you know, the controller is getting information from the pilot, you know, what's the nature of the emergency, what are your desires Souls on board, feel remaining impounds. You know we're getting some very brief information when they have time. We're trying not to talk to them as little as we can because we know that they're running checklists, going through everything that they need to do to make sure that they're going to operate their aircraft the way that they're supposed to. So we're trying to leave them alone But Wh all of those things are going on with a pilot in air traffic side in the background, we are Like I said, getting that supervisor's attention getting another controller's attention and saying, hey, this guy's got an emergency. He's going to be going to Dullas and we need to clear the airspace because He needs a straight end right now. you know, he lost an engine or something to that effect What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savor I really saor and cherish being able to help people get to where they need to go I really enjoy that in every decision I make I have that in the front of my mind is How do I get these people where they need to go You know, life happens and Sometimes you need to you need to get places a wedding funeral Go back home from your work trip. I really am honored to be able to help the country and the flying public. get to where they need to go And this is one of we've talked to other people who have jobs that have this characteristic, but this is one of those jobs where You only really notice it when there's a problem or a catastrophe Yeah We have a phrase in air traffic. And It's kind of sad in a way, but We always say that you are only as good as your last transmission . So you could be the best dam controller in the world But if you make a mistake, That's what everybody's going to hear Michael Regent is an air traffic controller He currently works at the FAA's command Center near Washington, D.C You're only as good as your last transmission Vigilant focus is the heart of what air traffic controllers do. It reminded me of the ocean lifeguard we talked to in the sense of constantly having to fight complacency and stay alert That got me thinking about other kinds of focus Think about Brain surgeon, for instance. Hours of sustained focus during a surgery Notice that kind of focus feels different It's more of a constant performance oriented focus more like an athlete in a game versus the lifeguards focus, which has more of a monitoring quality Brain surgeon isn't monitoring doing something intensely. but then the surgery is over or the game is over and the focus can stop Unlike in Michael's situation where it's always on All this made me a little curious. Are there any professions where focus can be a detriment the work. come up with anything. So I ran it by Claude And it actually came up with a great example, psychoanalysts. They're apparently taught to withhold focus hold focus for fear They will unwittingly bias what they're hearing. or latch on to some particular comment or theme Sigmund Freud advocated for evenly hovering attention This iss not a great phrase And it's such a contrast with the Ocean lifeguard who is actively scanning for swimmers exhibiting warning signs like They're facing the shore and they have hair in their face So maybe this is one way we can distinguish professions by looking at the shape of focus that they require Looking out the tower window to catch what radar misses Sequencing departures like a moving puzzle Balancing, safety and efficiency and turning a crowded sky into a choreography And That's what it's like to be an air traffic controller This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath See you next time