the real football

To best understand this part of the story, a primer about air traffic control centers might be in order. Go to the ATC page to get an idea of what Air Route Traffic Control Centers are about. Our facility has six areas, and spans from western North Dakota to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from the Canadian border to the very northern part of Kansas and Missouri. I work in an area that covers eastern Nebraska and Western Iowa, mostly, with a sliver of Kansas and Wisconsin, and a small part of southern Minnesota and southern South Dakota.

I got back to my area, which has six sectors (smaller chunks of airspace), and relieved the person who was working in our Sector 26. This sector covers the eastern part of Nebraska, from Omaha to just west of Grand Island. It is a low altitude sector, which means that we control air traffic at or below flight level 230 (23,000 feet above mean sea level). We deal with approach controls at Lincoln and Omaha, adjacent sectors from our facility as well as Kansas City and Denver Centers, and high altitude sectors from our facility. At the time I got back to the area, the typical day sees an east to west “rush” of aircraft in high altitude, and a few low altitude aircraft. In this regard, 9/11 was a typical day.

As soon as I got myself situated in the sector, I started planning for what I thought was at least possible, and maybe even likely to happen. In the air traffic business, we can handle quite a few aircraft when they are in the air. The real sticking point comes when we have to put aircraft on the ground. Those who have flown into the JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Dulles, National, and other busy airports have felt the effect of this. Regardless of how many aircraft can be handled in the sky, only so many can arrive or depart within a given time frame, because of the amount and configuration of the concrete on the ground.

My hunch, and that of many controllers at this time, was that we were going to be landing all the aircraft that were currently flying. The FAA had already imposed a nationwide “ground stop”. A ground stop is usually implemented for a single airport, or maybe a group of closely located airports, and it means that no aircraft that are planning to land at that airport (or set of airports) can depart. It can be for a number of reasons – most often weather related – but the reason is because there are already too many aircraft in the air planning to land at that airport, and they are beyond capacity more than usual.

This ground stop was different. Nobody could depart any airport, for any destination, for any reason – with just a few exceptions – “lifeguard” (medical) aircraft and military/official government aircraft. We had never seen anything like this, and could only guess how it would turn out.

However, we did not sit still. Controllers are generally pretty good at sensing when something is about to get a little crazy. That was happening in most every sector in our facility; I am sure it was the same all over the country. We had not yet gotten the call, but many (most?) of us were pretty well convinced that we would soon be called on to land all the aircraft that were currently in the air. In the sector I was working, we had three other facilities with whom I would likely interact a great deal if this order came – Omaha Approach Control, Lincoln Approach Control, and Grand Island Tower.

We had the normal light traffic for this time of day in the sector, so I was not very busy. Anticipating the ensuing craziness, I decided to initiate conversations with the three facilities mentioned above. I know we can give them quite a few aircraft, but just how many can they park? I had no idea, and guessed (correctly) that our management team was not leaping into action, so I started working it out myself.

A side note here. One of the things we become good at as air traffic controllers is recognizing situations, making decisions, and adapting those decisions in an ever changing environment. Those who cannot do this well or are uncomfortable doing this under the pressure of time that we have in our job, either do not make it in our program, or look to move on to other roles in the FAA – most often management positions. There are decisions to be made there, but not very often are they under the pressure of time, and sometimes making decisions can be avoided altogether. When pressed into making timely, accurate decisions, and adapting to an rapidly changing situation, often we see guys in these positions either lock up completely, or come up with some really odd plans.

The results of either of these usually has limited or no impact at all on the managers. Instead, the impact usually falls on the shoulders of the controllers involved. In this case, it was clear that the avoid a decision routine was well at work; many were in full vapor lock! Therefore, those of us on position did what we always do – we started to plan out how we would handle a variety of situations that we could see potentially occurring.

As we are making our planning calls, of course, regular business was continuing. A couple of arrivals came in; there were some low and slow general aviation types out there, a couple of T38s heading to Offutt Air Force Base from Vance Air Force Base. We had to operate like nothing had happened. After all, none of the guys in the air at the time would have the slightest idea what was going on.

So, in between calls to aircraft, I spoke with these different facilities. They were preparing themselves for what we all believed would be inevitable. Here come the T38s. Sometimes they have some strange requests, so I stopped talking to those other facilities, and just waited for them to check on my frequency. Then my blood boiled again.

The T38s were being flown by middle eastern pilots!

Yes, I know we have many allies from that part of the world. I understand that other countries often send pilots here for training. I have spoken to many over the years. Today, though, was very difficult. Had we helped train some of those who just flew a couple of airliners into the World Trade Center towers?

Time to clear the head again, and immediately. No time for crazy thoughts to go through my head. Although I was almost choking on my anger, I was able to regain my composure and refrain from saying something stupid to these guys. (For those who know me, you know just how hard that was!) Just get these guys to Omaha Approach (who controls the airspace around Offutt as well), and keep moving with planning.

The military jets now gone, the other few aircraft in my sector going along fine, time to do a last check with Lincoln Approach. Lincoln has the advantage of being able to put a television in their radar room to keep updated through one of the news channels. They are all ready, and we are working out a couple of final details when the Lincoln controllers blurts out,

“Holy shit, they just hit the Pentagon!”

BLEEP!

As air traffic controllers, we are trained and practiced at handling situations efficiently and safely, no matter how tricky the situation might be. We tend to de-emotionalize the situation to do this effectively. On September 11, 2001, this was easier said than done.

Among the first thoughts that rushed to my mind was of my sister-in-law. She was many months pregnant, but still heading to work most days, taking the subway through (you guessed it) the World Trade Center. Right away, I got to my cell phone and tried to call her. Yeah, me and several million other people on the planet, all trying to call Gotham at the same time. That worked well. I recognized how emotion was clouding my judgment – and that I was going to have to stop it from doing so before I went back to the sector.

As I was gathering myself, my mind drifted to our recent vacation. My family had just returned from a wonderful driving vacation that took us to New York, Washington D.C., and Charlotte. I was not yet aware just how this trip would affect me. Here are some images that I took during that August vacation.

I’ll come back to this vacation later. For now I’ll just say that having so recently seen the Manhattan skyline for the first time, it was almost beyond belief that the twin towers were now gone. Bleep!!!

This is where it gets interesting for me for the first time on this day. Although I felt stronger emotion later that day, many different emotions were swelling in me at this moment. Shock at what I had seen. Anger at those who were responsible. Fear for my sister-in-law; I still had no idea where she was!

Anxiety for the NJ firefighter I had met on a recent flight back from Spokane. He had been in Northern Idaho fighting the forest fires that were raging that year. My father was a career firefighter in the US Air Force. I learned first hand, when I was about ten years old, what these guys are wired like. An F4 Phantom went down just after take off from RAF Lakenheath, in England. My sisters and I were at a playground with my father when we saw the smoke rise a few miles away, from the land where my dad and I had hunted many times.

He immediately told my sisters to go in to where mom was working (the playground was just outside her work) and tell her that dad and I were taking off to see what the fire was about. As soon as we got there, and he realized what had happened, he swore under his breath, and parked the car across the street from the entrance to the property. He told me to stay there, unless the wind changed; if the wind changed, I was to drive the car away from there. Sounds crazy today, but for some reason it made complete sense to the ten year old that day!

After he was sure that I understood, he fought his way into the crash site past the military cops, to go help fight the fire. This was the same sort of thing that I sensed from the NJ firefighter I had met on the plane – he chose to spend an extra week in Idaho after his two weeks was up. I realized that this guy was likely one of those guys who would be heading into the city to help FDNY.

I had to clear my head. Certainly, something was going to happen in the National Airspace System. Two airliners had just flown into a major landmark in our country’s largest city. It was clear to me that we would be shutting off departures, and, at the very least, be watching those currently in the sky very carefully.

My mind was still racing, as was my heart. I needed a couple of minutes to myself, so I wandered up to the top of a little used stairwell in our building. I am not one to break down very easily, but I did that day. I needed control of my emotions if I was going to be effective in my job. A little yelling, some tears, and some breathing exercises – those classes when my wife was pregnant really came in handy today!

OK, I am ready to go to work…