Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

122
1990
Against the Wind
FYI
Heard on the Airwaves
Controllers are rarely at a loss for words and their sharp wit can lead to interesting
exchanges on the radio. The following actual transmissions appeared as part
of an occasional feature in the Chicago TRACON newsletter Intentionally Left Blank
during the mid-1990s:
Controller: “The traffic at nine o’clock is gonna do a little Linda Ronstadt on you.”
Pilot: “Linda Ronstadt? What’s that?”
Controller: “Well, sir, they’re gonna ‘Blue Bayou.’ ”
Controller: “Sure you can have eight miles behind the heavy—there’ll be a United
trijet between you and him.”
Pilot: “The first officer says he’s got you in sight.”
Controller: “Roger. The first officer’s cleared for a visual approach runway two-seven
right. You continue on that one-eighty heading and descend to three thousand.”
Pilot: “Approach, what’s the tower [radio frequency]?”
Controller: “A big, tall building with glass all around it, but that’s not important
right now.”
25
Jan.
An Avianca 707 crashes on Long Island, New York, after running out of
fuel while waiting to land at Kennedy Airport. The accident kills seventythree
of the 158 people onboard the plane. In its probable cause report,
remained minuscule compared with a membership
numbering close to 12,000 (though its activity
outpaced larger unions in the AFL-CIO). On a
busy day, perhaps twenty users would exchange
messages on NATCAnet. One of those who logged
on was Doug Laughter from Salt Lake Center, who
quickly joined the move to expand the union’s Web
presence.
Initially, the communications activists were
stymied by a lack of support from the national office.
Financial backing was nonexistent, even though
nearly 1,000 members were using the Web site and
BBS by the end of 1998.
Limited technical knowledge at headquarters
also hindered their plans. At the convention in September,
two computers were sent to Seattle to disseminate
information for controllers who couldn’t
attend. Unfortunately, the PCs lacked modems.
Laughter unwittingly saved the day by bringing his
PC from home as a backup.
The activists grew increasingly frustrated. “All
the people in the field who were doing communications
work didn’t have a voice in communications,”
Thompson says.
They found an influential ally in Rodney
Turner, who was serving his first term as Southern
Region vice president and embraced open communication
with the membership. His detailed weekly
updates of union activities, which he dubbed “Rod-
the NTSB cites the flight crew’s failure to manage the plane’s fuel load and
declare an emergency to controllers. The board also notes that lack of
standardized terminology for fuel emergencies was a contributing cause.