ATC’s Snow Job

Despite a false spring here in the mid-latitudes, it’s still winter. I hate it, and it despises me, but we coexist in mutual competition. I like to think I’m winning. I like to think many irrational thoughts when shoveling snow outside my Iowa hangar, such as, is the effort to extricate an 80-year-old airplane worth the 40-minute reward of numbingly cold flight? I have no answer but refuse to let winter think it’s ahead.

I learned to fly 50 years ago in Hawaii where locals amusingly referred to winter as “rainy season.” My solo cross-countries in a Cessna 150 were scud-running nightmares using VORs—which I didn’t understand—on puckered routes across ragged ocean while hoping to spot an island, any island. Most were large and friendly enough to host an airport, so I’d land and ask, “Is this Molokai?”

“No, Braddah, it’s Maui. You musta’ made a wrong turn at Lanai!”  

Gifted with such navigational skills, it was inevitable that I’d become an FAA air traffic controller. But I never envisioned that fate would plant me in Des Moines, Iowa, where winter is humorless and unforgiving. It can be rainy, but that’s either atop yesterday’s snow or a prelude to the next snowzooka invasion about to fire all of its guns at once. Working inside the control tower provided a luxury box seat view of how snow reduces aviation to a crawl until a battalion of snowplows busts through like Patton’s Third Army taking credit for liberating Bastogne.

February, years ago. I arrived for the midnight shift at 11 p.m. where I would work tower, ground, clearance delivery, plus radar approach and departure control, until relief arrived at 5 a.m. In good weather, the last of airlines would’ve been tucked in for the night, and a few students might crawl through the pattern for night currency. Easy stuff.

Around 2 a.m., the freight dogs would appear like biker gangs in a wide array of check and chicken haulers ranging from Twin Beeches to thirdhand Lears, Cheyennes, and Mitsubishi MU2s, with a dozen lighter piston twins in between. The pilots were sharp, frequently young men and women all requesting straight-in to the nearest runway for quick turnarounds before launching again to Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Denver. The lone, sleep-deprived controller—who’d worked the previous morning shift—had to spool up for the late-night rhythm to work this circus as sole ringmaster. In VFR weather it was exhilarating, an ATC junkie’s adrenaline surge. Followed by exhaustion. Add snow, and traffic stops but doesn’t go away. Never close your eyes or you’ll nod off.

And so it was the snowy night that I entered the tower and watched plows struggle to open a single runway and two connecting taxiways leading to slick ramps. Around 4 a.m., the sky and pavement cleared enough to taxi—braking action “poor”—and the radio growled to life with tired pilots, way behind schedule, requesting IFR clearances. Working all ATC positions normally staffed by five controllers, I was busier than a one-thought politician juggling multiple lies. Still, the ground traffic moved, and I launched the first departure while taking radar handoffs from Center (Chicago and Minneapolis) on IFR arrivals that had been delayed by the storm. It was slow going on one slippery runway; nothing fancy, and pilots complied. Except one.

I watched a DC-9 (yes, it was that long ago, Kevin Garrison) slowly clear the runway and creep toward the gate when I cleared another aircraft at the outer marker to land. In dry daytime weather I easily could’ve hit that slot with a freight dog departure. Such pilots wasted no time complying with instructions. Except, given surface conditions, I didn’t think it wise to launch a United Boeing 727 that was holding short. I was surprised to hear: “Hey tower, United could’ve made that slot.”

You know how you shouldn’t smart-mouth a cop who’s asked for your license? Controllers aren’t cops. I took a breath and calmly said, “I’ll get you out as soon as possible, United.”

Immediate reply: “Ah, United didn’t say that!”

I explained to all listening that I was working all ATC positions, solo, with one runway and crappy braking action, and that I’d been awake since before dawn the previous day, was very groggy, had to pee, and didn’t want to screw up.

Every pilot, except one, in a Mitsubishi, reported, “We didn’t say it, either.” They sensed there was a crazy man in the tower, squinting his vengeful Eye of Sauron.

I then cleared each aircraft in turn to “taxi around the Mitsubishi” and “cleared for takeoff.” When all were twinkling strobes fading in the pre-dawn sky, I softly asked the Mitsubishi, in a Clint Eastwood voice, if he was “ready now.” He was, and off he went. Ennio Morricone music would’ve fit nicely.

At 6 a.m. the day shift arrived, and I surrendered tower, ground, clearance delivery, approach, and departure to a seemingly awake crew that would work until 2 p.m. One of them would then go home and try—but likely fail—to sleep before returning that night to work the mid-shift. Throughout the day the snowplows would clear the aerodrome until winter was just mounds of white debris, and air traffic would resume as though nothing had ever happened. By then, I’d be asleep and dreaming of rainy season on Lanai.

Today, it’s winter in Iowa—again. My Aeronca Champ is entombed inside her ice palace, and my snow shovel beckons. With each passing year the effort vs. reward winter equation gets tougher to compute, and I don’t think I’m winning.

Aloha.