What does TRACON mean?

    Aviation is filled with acronyms and this is one of them. It stands for Terminal Radar Approach Control. There are about 185 of these dark, windowless radar rooms across the country. The controllers who work in them handle airplanes just after takeoff and right before landing. TRACON the book (pronounced tray-kon) takes you inside the radar room at O’Hare Airport—the world’s busiest—where the best of the best each juggle up to a dozen planes at once.

Why did you write a novel about air traffic control?

    I’ve also been fascinated by aviation and ATC ever since I was a boy. I wanted to lift the veil on a world that few of us get to see. A world in which thousands of professionals sit hunched before radarscopes, playing a “game” of 3-D chess with human lives. A world where humorous stories and heroic saves happen all the time, but rarely make the news.

Why were you thrown out of O’Hare Airport during your research?

    Every moment of a controller’s working life is dedicated to preventing midairs, so they were only too happy to tell me how collisions can happen and what they do to prevent them. But O’Hare’s top manager of air traffic at the time—a bureaucrat who’d never been a controller—ordered me to leave as soon as he heard I’d brought up the issue of midair collisions. He cut my three-day visit in half and sent me packing. The controllers were furious. I suspect I touched a nerve because TCAS—the onboard anti-collision system that plays the antagonist in my book—was going through teething problems at the time. There were many frightening real-life near misses.

Why do controllers think the midair collision in TRACON is a disaster waiting to happen?

    They’ve watched it come close many times. The scenario in the book is caused by a computer glitch involving a collision avoidance system called TCAS (pronounced tee-kass) that is installed on every commercial airliner flying in the United States. Although TCAS has prevented some potential midairs—and is much more reliable today than it was in the early 1990s—it is susceptible to frequent false alerts caused by several key limitations. Some of those false alerts have led to dangerous near misses.
     The issue really boils down to this: To what extent are we willing to entrust our lives to technology?
      When TCAS goes off, pilots must follow its instructions and controllers cannot interfere in any way—even if a collision seems imminent. Although TRACON is suspense novel, it is really a fictional exposé about the conflict of man versus machine. A wake-up call to encourage people to recognize the limitations of technology and the importance of human interaction.

What’s it like to be a controller?

    I liken it to tending to a group of wind-up toys, all buzzing in different directions at once. If you stay on top of the situation, everything keeps running smoothly. Fall behind, though—which can easily happen—and tension sets in as you race to catch up to each target on the scope just as a crisis is about to break.
     Controllers possess an unusual ability to think in three dimensions. They also multitask well: talking on the radio, answering phones, joking with their colleagues.
     One controller confessed to me that his wife once accused him of ignoring her while she talked about her day. But even though he’d been watching the news on TV at the same time, he was able to repeat everything she’d said. And because controllers spend all day telling pilots what to do, it can be hard for them to stop when they go home.
     Another controller confided in me that he told his two daughters a little too forcefully one night to brush their teeth and go to bed. One whirled around, hands defiantly on her hips, and shouted: “Stop ordering us around, Daddy. We’re not airplanes!”

How do controllers handle the high stress?

    Most controllers consider their work a video game that involves nothing more than talking to pilots and moving little green blips around on a radarscope.
     Controllers by nature have a low boredom threshhold. They like to keep busy and enjoy the challenge of juggling many airplanes at once. What stresses them out are the mundane issues that aggravate us all—like equipment breakdowns and Dilbert managers.
     Some controllers suffer medical, marital or other problems because of job stress, but they’re in the minority. The world of air traffic control is not very forgiving. Make three mistakes in 2½ years and you’re fired. So most of those who can’t handle the pressure wash out of training or leave the profession after a few years. It can take a toll on you after several decades, though. That’s why the mandatory retirement age for controllers is 55.