Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

Chapter 7
The Skies Ahead
When controller Archie League arrived for his day shift at Lambert
Field in St. Louis, he did not don a headset. Radio communication
with pilots was another year off in 1929. The tools of the
trade for League, generally considered to be the first air traffic controller in the
United States, consisted of checkered and red flags, a beach chair, notepad,
water, and his lunch.
Every morning, the former barnstormer and
mechanic piled his equipment in a wheelbarrow
that he’d rigged with an umbrella to protect him
from the sun. Then he trekked across the 170-acre
dirt airfield, positioned himself at the approach end
of the runway, and waved his flags to issue holding
or landing clearances for inbound pilots.
League was employed by the city of St. Louis.
Other large airports followed suit and began hiring
controllers, too. However, pilots had a hard time seeing
them from above and it was nearly impossible for
the controllers to simultaneously direct more than
one arriving plane.
Within several years, flourishing traffic
forced dramatic changes. Twin-engine Boeing
247D and Douglas DC-2 airliners swarmed above
Chicago, Cleveland, and Newark. One airport official
said as many as fifteen planes often circled
overhead, “all of them blind flying and trying to
keep at a different altitude, and some of them low
on gas.” 1 Near misses occurred regularly. Local
officials worried about planes crashing into neighborhoods
and enacted flying restrictions around
major airports.
In response, Congress formed the Bureau of
Air Commerce in 1934 to create and operate an
air traffic control system. But the Great Depression
still gripped the nation and the new agency could
National Archives
Newark control: Earl Ward, left, and R.A.
Eccles track aircraft at the nation’s first
Airway Traffic Control Unit in 1935. Ward
helped to develop the concept of ATC.