The Tin Pusher Chronicles

By DW Bergendorf

Next week, next month, you'll climb aboard that big silvery airliner, perfectly confident that your life is in the hands of professionals. Professional pilots who are overworked and underpaid. Professional air traffic controllers who are stressed beyond belief--and ready to snap.

These are the stories of three Tin Pushers:

The troubled African-American who is starting to see things that aren’t there.The burned-out swivelhead whose only true friend is a bottle of booze. And the not-quite young woman who keeps pilots from trading paint...while embarking on an intoxicating romance.

Then there's the private pilot who hides a dark secret that threatens to kill dozens of people. What happens next will have you turning pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DW Bergendorf
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310523144

DW Bergendorf

DW Bergendorf is a career journalist and writer--who happens to love flying. I'm a former military air traffic controller and an admitted aviation junkie. For years I was a staff reporter/anchor/writer at Indianapolis' big news-talk radio station, WIBC. I was also briefly on the staffs of UPI's Indiana bureau and Indianapolis Monthly magazine.As a free-lancer, I've written for Field & Stream, Oklahoma Today, Modern Maturity, the Associated Press, ABC Radio News, and others.My wife Barbara and I have been married over 30 years, and live in an exurb of Indianapolis. We have six kids between us (all grown), and 13 grandchildren (on their way to being grown). The grandkids are all good looking and above average in every way.

Book preview

The Tin Pusher Chronicles

Your Life is in Their Hands

DW Bergendorf

The Tin Pusher Chronicles

Copyright© 2014 Dennis W. Bergendorf

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written permission of the author.

While many of the events depicted in The Tin Pusher Chronicles actually occurred, the characters are works of fiction, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

Acknowledgements

Two human beings were absolutely essential to the writing of The Tin Pusher Chronicles, (both retired air traffic controllers). Ron Mohr was a career controller in the busy Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center, and Kerry Painter pushed tin at the also-hectic tower at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. They gave me invaluable information on the inner workings of air traffic control.

Training officers at both Chicago TRACON and Indianapolis TRACON (and tower) provided a tremendous boost by allowing me to tour the facilities.

Much of the procedural information came from on-line sources, including the FAA’s very public web sites. Several pilots and controllers were kind enough to respond to questions posted in forums.

I’d also like to commend (and recommend to passengers who haven’t discovered it) the web site liveatc.net. For hours, I’d listen to harried controllers at Chicago TRACON and Baltimore-Washington tower as they kept pilots from taking the aluminum shower. For visual references, I leaned on the sites flightradar24.com, radarbox24.com and flightaware.com. All are free.

The Tin Pusher Chronicles

Contents

Part One – The Passenger

Part Two – The Dreamer

Part Three – The Drunk

Part Four – The Private Pilot

Part Five – The Romantic

Part Six – The Incident

Epilogue

About the Author

THE TIN PUSHER CHRONICLES

PART ONE

THE PASSENGER

(Aboard TWA flight 837 at San Francisco International Airport. A Monday in late May. 7:50 AM)

Eric Martin slid into his seat. No, that would not be accurate. He wiggled and squirmed, sucked in his gut, silently cursed and audibly grunted, finally plopping into 6B, next to a cute but overweight young woman who smiled and said hi in an accent that most likely came from the heart of New England. He shoved his laptop under the seat ahead, latched up his belt and, grunting again, cinched it to a point only one degree this side of painful.

With no business class available, Eric was in coach, one of 117 passengers to be shoehorned into this aluminum sardine can—a living, breathing mummy in the center of three seats, hoping that the Airbus A-318 wouldn’t be full, that he could discretely ease himself over to the one on the aisle—yet knowing that such hope was laughable (when are airline flights not full?). Of course. It was only a minute or so until the two strangers were joined by a third: a balding, 50-something man wearing a navy blue windbreaker, the name Radco, Inc. silk-screened over the left breast, along with an insignia that looked like a micrometer and a bulldozer engaged in some quasi-erotic coupling.

Eric exhaled a loud sigh. To get to the lavatory—the restroom, the john, the upright coffin with running water—he’d have to offer his apologies and squeeze past this fashion-statement at least once, and more likely twice, during the three-hour, 37 minute flight from the Bay Area to Dallas.

Ah, the price paid for adventure. Eric Martin, aviation buff and dreamer of dreams played out in the near-vacuum six miles up, is a man in love with flight. Even this, the lamest of endeavors (sitting in an airliner parked on the tarmac, breathing that peculiar and sometimes nauseating blend of oxygen, ozone and burnt kerosene) gets Eric, as they say farther down the coast, stoked.

Not only hearing but feeling the clunks of the suitcases being heaved into the big jet’s belly by burly men hell-bent on reaching an unstated quota of suitcase mutilation; listening to the robotic instructions of the bored-beyond-tears flight attendant (… in the unlikely event of a water landing…) and watching her well-practiced pantomime (delicate fingers pointing this way and that toward emergency exits) invariably gives him a rush.

But Eric is not a pilot and never has been. Never took the lessons. He'll tell you he lacked the money—a lie. He'll say he lacked the time—another lie. What he lacked was the guts to inform his wife that he would indeed plunk down more than three grand for the training, to be followed by hundreds of dollars in plane rentals or time-share dues. Yeah, they could probably afford it. But there were so many other priorities for the buttoned-down professional man and his risk-averse mate.

No, Eric Martin is but a middle-aged guy resigned to his role as a member of the proletariat of the wild blue: the millions of passengers who swarm through a thousand airports every day, human penguins marching in lock step across a floor made not of ice, but imitation marble. Yet, within this airliner on this Monday morning, Eric Martin was about to embark on one of the great adventures of his soft and sometimes timid existence.

The news that TWA had been resurrected the previous year had sent him into a state of near-elation. If only these investors (surely as romantic and prescient as he!) could do the same with Eastern or Braniff or the other airlines of the gilded age of commercial flight! (Actually, Pan-Am had been reincarnated, but it was just a tiny little schlub of an air carrier.)

Because this was the new and bolder TWA (and because 9-11 was a distant memory), company officials had adopted the policy of allowing passengers to tune into radio communications between the pilot and air traffic controllers, where crackly commands and responses pulsed through the three-dollar headsets. Customers could dial up tunes they'd heard a thousand times, even news, sports, and the markets—as well as ATC. Eric chose that particular channel with an almost childlike enthusiasm.

As the Airbus pulled onto the departure runway, Eric thought back to a flight years earlier, when he was on the rarest of passenger jets: one almost empty. With fewer than 40 souls on board, the take-off roll had been rocket-like, the G-force pinning him to the seat back as though it had been drenched in super-glue. Not so with this jam-packed Airbus. The big bird seemed to lumber down the runway, sluggishly and grudgingly (as if being propelled by will power alone, the pilot imploring it to get moving) piling on knots until the battle with gravity was at last won, the surly bonds were slipped, and the big silver bird lifted into the heavens. With thin low clouds racing by, the jet began its slow climb out over the Pacific, then quickly doubled back toward the southeast. It was only after becoming airborne that the pilot finally (finally!) activated the sound system.

The first communication told Eric that control of his plane had already been transferred from San Francisco tower to Northern California (NorCal) Departure Control, the facility that would shepherd it through what on radar was a beehive of digital airplanes, until it got to 13 thousand feet and then slid into the air space of Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center, where the next seamless hand-off would be made.

Yes, the ATC channel on the Airbus’s sound system was something only a guy like Eric could love. To the uninitiated, the talk would be a confusing, even mind-rattling, jumble of techno-jargon:

His pilot: Good morning, NorCal. TWA 8-37. We’re at 12 hundred for 13 thousand. Air Traffic Control: 8-37, NorCal Departure, good day. Radar Contact. Report level at one-three thousand.

A different airliner came on: Delta 803 will maintain five thousand.

Air Traffic Control: Southwest 1182, contact Oakland Center, one-one-nine point four-seven-five. Good day, sir.

It was a fusillade of commands, responses and advisories—each statement crisp and tight, something that could be likened to verbal surgery. The controller’s tone was matter-of-fact with a hint of the emphatic, the pilots’ dripped with something approaching ennui.

Departure, SkyWest 812 out of one thousand 200 for one-five thousand with restrictions. SkyWest 812, departure. Radar contact. Cancel DME restrictions, climb and maintain niner thousand for traffic. Up to nine thousand, unrestricted. SkyWest 812. The pilots acknowledged their instruction by ending transmissions with their call sign (for airliners, the flight number), and stated in the common vernacular. Eric’s jet was TWA eight thirty-seven.

For the next couple of minutes, the headset buzzed with the NorCal controller’s matter-of-fact orders of altitude and direction changes, along with the responses from the many pilots, all (or almost all) of them following the FAA's strict communication protocol.

Eric's plane, flight 837, had been approved to pick up the airway Jet-110, one of dozens of invisible highways that stretch between powerful radio beacons. Jet 110 would take the Airbus southeastward to a point 25 miles from (but six miles above) Death Valley. Then it was an easy left turn onto Jet-72 (skirting the restricted airspace of Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base and its Red Flag school for aerial gunslingers) for an 800-mile hop to Jet-58 and the gentle descent into DFW. The flight plan called for a cruising speed of 465 knots (just over 500 mph) and an altitude of 37,000 feet. The cockpit crew had made the trek at least 200 times. It should be as easy as a jaunt to the supermarket.

Through his headset, Eric heard a series of transmissions between center and other planes, then his own pilot reporting flight level two-three-zero. It’s aviation-speak for 23,000 feet, and it’s just a checkpoint. The captain knew his plane would continue upward. The controller quickly cleared 837 to flight level 370. Looking past the cute chubby girl and through the window, Eric gazed at the snow-capped peaks of the Sierras through cubic miles of crystalline air. Amateur aviator Eric Martin, totally at peace, smiled and closed his eyes, letting the soft movements of the airliner caress his body. Minutes later he opened his laptop and began reviewing figures related to his Dallas project.

It wasn’t long until the flight attendants began the ritual of serving soft drinks and snacks (as well as booze to passengers who could ring up eight bucks on the credit card). On TWA, pretzels were still complimentary.

I’ve been flying since I was a kid, Eric said to the girl pressing into his left arm, more than 30 years. I remember when you got a free meal on a long-distance flight.

Yeah, she chuckled. My dad gripes about that whenever he flies.

He took off his headset. "Things were different then. But I remember how much my first airline flight cost. My parents reminded me enough. Must have been back in ’76. I spent a summer with my grandparents in Illinois. One-way from L-A to Chicago was $335. I paid $375 for this roundtripper to Dallas. Nearly 40 years later."

I suppose so. But they’re making up for it with lousy service. At least, that’s what my dad says, she quickly added.

What’s your dad do?

He’s a union steward at Delphi’s plant in Alameda.

That explains it.

"Explains what?"

He hesitated. Oh, it doesn’t matter. No, I’m an accountant, and I know a little about the business. For instance, did you know that the airline industry is the only industry—I mean the only major, functioning industry—that only turned a profit a few times since World War-Two? The industry as a whole, I mean. A few airlines have done okay, but they’re offset by the dozens who have gone bankrupt.

His lecture was met with stony silence, but Eric plowed ahead. Take TWA. You know that this is the second TWA? It was one of the very first international airlines. Started back in 1930.

I don’t know much about airlines. I just got on the internet and bought the cheapest ticket…

That’s just it! Eric exclaimed. At one time, the federal government set ticket prices, and they were pretty high. It was actually cheaper to drive halfway across the country than fly, even when you factored in hotels and meals. Then they deregulated, and let the airlines set their own prices. There were critics who said it would be a license to print money. Nope. Tickets went down. And now you have all kinds of competition, so the price stays down.

Seems like tickets are pretty high…

That’s because of the high cost of fuel. You can’t have hundred-dollar oil… Eric trailed off, realizing that he'd gotten carried away. The flight attendant was handing the row their drinks and food. He took his Diet Coke and mini-pretzels and sipped and munched in silence, his plump neighbor having gone back to her e-book.

Later, with his laptop again stowed and his first trip to the lavatory behind him, Eric moved his seatback its two full inches and closed his eyes, hoping to grab a quick power nap during the last hour and a half of the flight. He dozed for what seemed like seconds, but he knew it had been much longer, as he was awakened by the sound of an electronic chime, followed by an announcement from the cockpit.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. Again, thank you for flying TWA this morning. We expect to begin our descent into the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in just a few minutes, but it looks like there’s some weather, uh, a little west of … uh, northwest of Dallas… so we’re going to change our course just a bit…. There was a long pause. Uh, we’re going to go a little to the south to get around it. Another long pause. Uh, air traffic control will try to keep us fairly close to our original route, but it looks like we may be, uh, about ten minutes late getting into Dallas-Fort Worth.

An aisle passenger a couple of rows up stopped a flight attendant to explain that he and his wife had only a half hour to make a connection to Houston for a charter flight to Cancun. He said if they missed that flight, their vacation would be ruined. With a well-rehearsed smile, the flight attendant tried to reassure him that the pilots would do everything they could to get down on time.

The captain’s gravelly-voiced announcement had been low-key, almost laconic, but the information was anything but. Eric quickly put on the headset, hoping to hear what would surely be some harried communication between the airliner and controllers, now that Mother Nature was throwing aviation one of her famous curves.

Center, United seventy-nine-heavy, we’re getting some pretty good chop up here. Can you send us a few miles south?

Eric didn’t know where that particular airliner was, but the heavy designation meant it was a jumbo jet, possibly a 747, nearly three times as big as the twin-engine Airbus he was riding. And if a jumbo was feeling the chop—the unnerving, rapid-fire bumps of turbulence—it could be lights out if his relatively puny airplane got sucked into it.

79-heavy, turn right to one-eight-zero. Advise when you get out of the chop and we’ll bring you back around.

Right to one-eight-zero degrees. 79-heavy.

Eric deduced that the United wide-body was up ahead, maybe 20 miles or so. Then came a transmission that made him cringe. It was from his own pilot. Center, TWA 837. Our radar is showing that thunderstorm getting pretty close to the airway. Can you advise?

837, this is a rapidly-growing cell. It's in a squall line that stretches… uh… we’ve got red from east of Oklahoma City down to… uh… close to Abilene. It’s moving east at, uh, about 50 miles an hour. Be advised, there are tornado warnings in the Guthrie area.

"Center, it’s starting to get a little bumpy up here. Can 837 get a vector south?"

837, we're trying to move some aircraft down there, but there’s a smaller cell building down by, uh, San Angelo. We’ll try to get you between ‘em. Stand by.

Good God! Two Storms! thought Eric as he strained to look through to the northeast, thinking that he might see a tornado along the back edge of the big cell. But it was still too far off, and the plane was in the wrong position. He could just glimpse the trailing edge of the black boiling monster, and even made out the strobe-like flash of a lightning bolt, dulled by the thick clouds above it.

Then he, and everyone else on board, felt the aircraft drop slightly and shudder, rolling left to right, those beautiful flexible wings undulating, up and down, as though waving at the thunderhead. A man behind him exclaimed that they’d hit an air pocket. Eric let out a soft, nervous chuckle. Air pocket, my ass. Air pockets are a myth, and had nothing to do with it. It’s turbulence, plain and simple. Strong, swirling winds. Winds that go up and winds that go down. Unpredictable winds. TWA 837, with its 117 passengers and crew of five, was in a significant weather event. And things were going to get hairy.

He heard the center controller talk to a couple of planes, then: TWA 837. Turn right heading one-six-zero. Descend and maintain one-eight thousand.

"Uh, right to 160. Out of 37 for 18. 837."

The Fort Worth Center controller issued short, terse commands to several other jets. All were being funneled into a rapidly shrinking ribbon of airspace, and every movement had to be finely orchestrated. Not only were there the 20 or so aircraft inbound (from the west) to the nation’s third busiest airport, but there were another dozen outbound, maybe 10 already between the airport and the storms, and more standing on DFW taxiways, awaiting clearance to go. Departure control would hold those planes on the ground for the duration, but if that duration was more than a few minutes, it could trigger serious problems throughout much of the North American aviation system, one gigantic ripple effect.

The severity and rapid growth of the big cell had taken meteorologists by surprise, and the FAA had issued its ground stop only a short time before. TWA 837 was one of the airliners that had taken off before the stop was ordered. Controllers would try to get those planes in before the airport was shut down.

Commands and responses coursed through Eric's headphones as he felt a series of sharp bounces, accompanied by gasps from a few passengers. He noticed the entrepreneur to his right holding the arm rests in the white knuckle death grip. It was amusing in a perverse way, but Eric wasn’t laughing.

His pilot again: Fort Worth Center, TWA 837. Our radar shows that, uh, gap closing, uh, 15 miles ahead. Can we get a higher altitude?

837, Negative on the altitude. We’ve got the tops of the main cell at 48 thousand. A 767 reported turbulence at 33… about ten miles south.

"837, roger. We’re passing through 21 thousand… uh, we’d like to stay at 21 till we get through that gap. And any way we can get a higher speed?"

837, negative on the speed. You’ve got a couple of aircraft just ahead. Maintain 410 knots. But you’re cleared to stay at flight level two-one-zero till advised.

"Maintaining flight level two-one-zero at 410. 837."

The juggling continued: American 156, descend to one-seven thousand, and please expedite. Descending to one-seven thousand. 156.

United 79-heavy, contact approach at one-one-nine-point-eight-seven-five…..

God, thought Eric, how do they keep all this straight? There was no doubt that everybody’s computerized flight plan had been rendered useless by this storm, that the fates of more than 40 airliners and a few private planes were now in the hands of human beings in the air and on the ground, people who were trying to shoe-horn more aircraft into less space than regulations would normally allow, while keeping those jets away from that big angry storm and its little brother. And those fates depended on whether the absolute correct decisions were made—and communicated properly.

If he were in the cockpit, would he trust the guy on the ground? The first rule of piloting: in bad weather, trust your instruments, not your instinct. The second rule: trust air traffic control. But would he have the gonads to do it?