Musings From The Tower
An air traffic controller takes a bumpy trip down memory lane
By Clayton Taylor

While I now fly for a major airline, in a previous life I used to be an air traffic controller. It was a good job, but the whole time I was on duty in the tower, I wanted to be out flying airplanes. Being a pilot and a controller, you have a unique opportunity to see things from both sides of the microphone. My supervisors would often tell me that I was too friendly with the pilots, and on more than one occasion, my sense of humor landed me in the tower chief's office.



One day, while I was on duty in the tower, a guy flying an Ercoupe called inbound for a full-stop landing. By the sound of his voice, the guy sounded like he was 90 years old (although I'm not actually sure of his age). His transmissions were somewhat hard to understand because every time he keyed his mic, you could hear his giant German shepherd barking in the right seat. The wind was 100 degrees at 20 knots gusting to 30, split right between the two runways, 27 and 34. Since he was inbound from the south, I asked him to report a three-mile final and, as usual, I issued the wind and altimeter setting. Both he and the German shepherd responded with a "roger."

Anyone familiar with an Ercoupe knows that most of them don't have any rudder pedals. This normally isn't a problem, but anytime there's a crosswind, your arrival is little more than a controlled impact. With the wind gusting to around 30, I was a little concerned for the guy. He reported a three-mile final, and I cleared him to land and issued another wind check.

The Ercoupe touched down in a fairly large crab, and suddenly, the aircraft tipped up and went off on a wingtip. The old man and his Ercoupe cartwheeled wingtip-to-wingtip, missing all of the runway lights and ending up in a ditch off the side of the runway on about a 45-degree nose-down angle. The ground controller reached for the crash phone as we both peered over the edge of the catwalk to view the carnage that had just taken place. We had expected the worst, when the old guy keyed his mic and said, "Hey, you guys want to see me do that again?" We could hear the German shepherd in the background, barking his objections to the rough landing.

Another time, an Army King Air called inbound from the west with a couple of "code 6's" on board. What do I know from a code 6? I'm a civilian. So I told the guy to report on a three-mile final to runway 9, and a few minutes later, he made the report. I advised the King Air that he was not in sight, but was cleared to land. The pilot, sounding more than a little annoyed, said, "If you would just bother to get up from your seat and look outside, you'll see me on final." I told the guy that I was looking out the window and still didn't see him, but regardless of that fact, he was still cleared to land. The pilot then told me that as soon as he landed, he would need progressive taxi to Army parking.

After a minute or so, the pilot asked for progressive parking to the Army ramp. I told him that as soon as he landed, it wouldn't be a problem. Sounding even more irate, the pilot said, "I don't know what is with you guys and your fear of looking out the window, but I am on the ground." He also made a suggestion that I have my eyes checked. I was thinking that this must be the best-camouflaged King Air in the world because I just didn't see him.

I asked the pilot if he had the blue hangars in sight, and he responded affirmative. I then advised him that he was on the ground at Orange County Airport, eight miles to the west. I told him to switch to Unicom and call me back on a three-mile final. When he called me back to advise me that he really was on a three-mile final, he talked to me like we were old buddies.

In one of the towers where I worked, we had these drop tubes to the radar room. The local controller would clear an airplane for takeoff and then put the flight progress strip in this long tube that would deliver the strip to the sector in the radar room that would be following the airplane. I was working on flight data that day, so I was only a witness to this one. A flight of four fighters came back from an MOA (military operations area). They wanted to come in as a flight, and then one of them wanted a full stop, one wanted to stay in the traffic pattern, another wanted to do an ILS approach and the last one wanted to go north of the field for a VOR approach. The guy in the tower was a little busy at the time and gave two separate squawk codes to the two airplanes going out for approaches. He then dropped each strip down the wrong tube.

When the tags acquired, they were code only, no call sign. The guy on east departure was talking to the plane in the west controller's airspace and vice versa. You can imagine the confusion as the controller told the pilot to turn left, and he either didn't turn or he turned the wrong way. Each controller was yelling at the airplane to listen up, and the pilots were yelling back that they were doing exactly as they were told. One of the fighters popped out of a cloud and saw a United 737, and he joined up on his wing. The United pilot never said a word. There was screaming and hollering that lasted for about five minutes, until the radar room coordinators took the flight strips from each controller's bay and swapped them without saying a word. A calmness then returned to the room.

One time, a pilot called me for permission to "transgress" the area. I said to him that I thought that transgress meant to go backward, but if he wanted to go backward through the area, it would be fine with me. The next day, I got a phone call from the irate pilot who wanted to know if I was going to start grading pilots on semantics. I apologized and told him that I was only kidding and had hoped it would generate a laugh in the airplane. It didn't. My attempt at being a controller with a sense of humor had blown up in my face.

I was working ground control on a very cold winter morning when one of the local charter pilots was cranking up a Navajo. After he got the engines running, they started popping and backfiring, and it was quite loud. I had spent a bunch of time in Navajos, so when he called to taxi, I told him that I've had that same problem in the past and found that if you pulled these two fuel pump circuit breakers, the engines wouldn't backfire like that. He failed to appreciate the help I was offering him, so much so that it earned me a trip to the tower chief's office. I got tired of hearing the chief say, "Mr. Taylor, in the future, would you please stop helping the pilots quite so much?"

When I was a new hire and training on approach control, I had a pilot call for traffic advisories. I had him squawk a code and asked him for his destination, and it sounded like he said "Stupidville." I asked him to repeat his destination, and again, he said, "Stupidville." I turned around to the instructor and said, "Hey, I've got a guy here who says he's landing at Stupidville. Who in his right mind would live in a town called Stupidville, and why would a town want to be called that?"

My instructor looked at me like I was from Stupidville and said, "Stubenville." Oh yeah, I knew that....