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The Research Behind TRACON

You might think my background as a reporter would have given me an advantage while researching TRACON, but in one respect the opposite was true. Many of the controllers I interviewed pleaded with me: “If you're going to write a book about us, you’d better get it right because you journalists always screw it up.”

There’s truth to that statement. Outsiders often have a hard time grasping the essence of the controllers’ world and accurately synthesizing a situation in a few paragraphs. Even some professional pilots don’t entirely understand the nuances of air traffic control. However, I did know that controllers do not wave glowing wands on the airport tarmac. That got me off on the right foot, at least. To gather their story, I spent a lot of time interviewing and observing. I shadowed working controllers for a week in the tower and TRACON at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, spent another week at several more facilities, and even joined my new friends in the bar after their shift ended. I don’t claim that TRACON is 100 percent accurate, but I’m gratified that many controllers have told me the book ranks as one of the best accounts they’ve read about their profession. I was also honored to be commissioned by the national controllers’ union to write a nonfiction account of their struggle to reorganize in the wake of the PATCO strike in 1981. In many respects, TRACON is a work of nonfiction. To paint a genuine portrait of the largely unseen and often misunderstood world of air traffic control, I borrowed heavily from real life. TRACON includes authentic controller and pilot phraseology, ATC and cockpit procedures, references to air safety issues and aviation accidents, even real radio frequencies and airline flight numbers. And, yes, all of the humorous controller vignettes actually happened. Although the characters are products of my imagination, they’re composites of some of the 15,000 professional men and women controllers in the United States—and 45,000 others around the world, for that matter, who all share a common mission and bond. A midair collision eerily similar to the one depicted in TRACON occurred in July 2002—after publication of the book. A Russian Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev 154 and a DHL Boeing 757 freighter collided over Überlingen, Germany. Although the investigation is continuing, this much is known: Both pilots received and responded to an advisory from their respective onboard computer systems, the Traffic Alert/Collision Avoidance System known as TCAS. When TCAS went into operation in the late 1980s, teething problems frequently caused dangerous near misses. Computer software updates and other changes based largely on		suggestions from controllers—who were not consulted when the system was developed—have improved the reliability of this much-needed safety tool. And, as TRACON tries to point out, we’re better off with TCAS than without it. But no machine is fail-safe, and TCAS false alerts that lead to near misses still occur. The scenario in TRACON is based on several frightening incidents, including one over northwest China in the summer of 1999. Two 747s flown by British Airways and Korean Air whisked past each other, wingtip to wingtip, a mere 600 feet apart. There have been some changes in air traffic control between the time I began researching TRACON and the publication of this special edition commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the 1981 PATCO strike. Some are minor, others more significant, and at least one is potentially sweeping in scope. Sadly, some of the issues that led to the historic walkout and firing of more than 11,000 controllers—including outdated equipment, excessive overtime, and inept management at a few too many control towers and radar rooms—still exist today. The main stage for this book—the O’Hare TRACON—has moved from the base of the airport control tower to a new and much larger building in Elgin, Illinois, about twenty miles away. The controllers are happy to have more modern radarscopes and radios, and to avoid traffic congestion on the expressways around the airport. But some wistfully remember their old haunt, where they could walk outside and see airplanes. The cramped quarters helped foster a camaraderie that’s more elusive now because the controllers don’t all work within shouting distance of each other. The O’Hare control tower described in the book still stands, however, operations are conducted at a new and larger tower nearby. It’s so roomy, in fact, that shorter controllers standing on one side of the tower cab must perch atop a plastic stool to observe planes on the other side of the field. These and other new ATC facilities around the country are welcome news to the traveling public and a profession that, until recently, grappled with unreliable equipment often older than the controllers using it. With the first stages of a long-awaited system modernization moving forward in fits and starts, the Federal Aviation Administration has shed its dubious distinction of being the world’s largest purchaser of vacuum tubes during the late Nineties.
The above material is partially excerpted from the commemorative hardcover edition of TRACON.