The Man with the Red Phone: Controlling Chaos at 30,000 Feet

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to today's episode of Type A Unhinged.

Our guest today, he's the kind of guy who had a literal red phone in his office, and

not just because he liked dramatic decor.

After serving in the Air Force, he spent decades inside the FAA doing everything from directing

air traffic to investigating crash sites, running major control centers, and even helping

redesign the national airspace.

Basically, he's made a career out of keeping chaos organized.

No big deal.

He says he's finally retiring this December.

We'll believe it when we see it.

But before he does, we're digging into the stories that shaped his career and maybe change

yours without even knowing it.

Let's dig into it.

So, Ted, were you always Type A?

Or did the Air Force kind of bring that out of you?

Well, thanks for the introduction.

That was kind of cool.

And as being Type A, I don't think the Air Force brought that out of me.

I think it was the job that the Air Force trained me for that brought that out of me.

When I was looking back at roles that I had in the Air Force as a squadron leader, as

a publicist for the Air Force.

Being their public affairs officer, being the historian for the squadron, looking back

at those roles and the tasks that the Air Force put me in to accomplish the needs for

the Air Force, I don't think that created my Type A personality.

I think it was the job that I trained for as being an air traffic controller that set

the foundation in the Air Force.

And then when I transitioned from the Air Force after eight years of service into the

FAA, the Civilian Environment of Air Traffic Control, that's when it really became solidified

because there is no room for mistakes.

Just out of curiosity, would you say to be an air traffic controller, would being Type

A be a prereq?

Or do you think, were there people that you recall that succeeded as not being Type A?

I would say yes to the.

The second part of your question is that there are individuals within the air traffic

control environment that are not Type A personalities.

For an air traffic controller to become successful, there is a very high level of focus that needs

to take place.

I often tell people that the training that I had in the FAA to become an air traffic

controller was worse than basic training in the military because there was no room for mistakes.

Oh, wow.

You made an error and the next day you were unemployed.

When I first applied for the job back in 1987, October, excuse me, it was May 1st, it was

my birthday.

I went and I drove three hours down to Grand Rapids, Michigan to take the test.

Walk in the room the next day and there's got to be 250, 300 people in the room taking

the same test that I'm taking.

From that, going down to Oklahoma.

Oklahoma City, after getting selected, Oklahoma City is where the actual basic training for

air traffic controllers takes place and it still does today, although it's changed on

how it's provided.

But walking into an auditorium with 350, 400 people and they're at the front saying, look

to the left, look to your right, because only one of you will be here at the end of the

session.

So the numbers dwindle pretty quick in those masses where they're in those facilities.

From the initial test all the way going down to Oklahoma City.

From Oklahoma City you get into your environment and your facility.

And so in all where that Type A personality is focused is that you have to learn massive

amount of knowledge, numbers, letters, routes, the basic flight, weather, there's so many

things that you have to, that you're learning.

You cannot make a mistake.

If you get a radial off of VOR for a NAV aid back then, wrong, you failed.

And if you had enough of those, you were gone.

You didn't have employment the next day.

But from the time I took the test to the time I became a full certified air traffic controller

up in Minneapolis, I advanced pretty quickly because I think it was my military career

that helped me.

At the end of that, people ask, well, you know, what type of ratio do you have for success?

Well, from the people who took the test in Grand Rapids, Michigan to me getting selected

and getting, achieving, being air traffic control certified, probably I would say less

than 5% of the people make it, maybe even less than three.

Now you can go online and they'll tell you that 60% of the people at Oklahoma City pass

out of 100% obviously, 60% pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that pass.

They get to the facility and there's another, you know, 60% that make it.

It has changed a lot.

From when I went through like I said you were ingrained in your head every day that if you

don't succeed, you're going home the next day.

And literally the instructors were telling you that.

And the testing that came over and over weakly down there was constantly thrown into your

mindset.

And I think that's where the solidification of my Type A personality came to be.

And it doesn't end there.

I get back into when we got to Minneapolis,

I had my kitchen floor, which is a big home though.

It was an old century home.

Probably the kitchen had to be 20 by 20.

And I had documents laid out all over the floor.

This is all the information that I had to learn.

And the same thing.

And it was even worse once you got up into the facility

because you had a separation error.

You were gone.

And so obviously, a Type A personality wants to succeed.

You don't want to fail.

You're going to do everything you possibly

can to go ahead and succeed.

And whatever it takes at that particular moment in time,

that's what you do.

And in 1988, when I became an air traffic control

and the FAA to the time I got certified,

I want to say I was certified probably in 19,

probably 1990.

Earlier, I think it was like February.

So it's not a better feeling when you get that certification.

But that entire way of not knowing.

And you want, obviously, to do good for your family.

And I had two girls at the time.

They were little.

And this was the start of my family's evolution,

that I had to go ahead and be successful.

So that constant bombardment of having to succeed,

wanting to succeed.

That is where I think the Type A personality really

got ingrained into me.

And then in the work environment, obviously,

you tell a pilot to do something.

If he doesn't do something, you're going to plan B.

And you better have plan B and plan C in place

in order to go ahead and prevent something

from a loss of separation or something even worse happening.

Sounds like a Type A dream slash nightmare

all at the same time.

Yeah.

That could be it.

I agree.

So you were part of a team that helped redesign

the national airspace, which is massive and abstract.

Can you walk us through maybe a moment where

the stakes were really high?

Or you felt really strong resistance?

And maybe an idea on how you overcame that,

how maybe Type A helped you?

A little bit of background.

In 2005, there were 12 of us nationwide

that were asked to go out to MITRE Corp.

in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, which

is just outside Washington, DC.

It's on the Outer Beltway.

12 of us, we have no idea why we're going.

We've never met before.

We're going out to MITRE Corporation.

We show up.

We are ushered into this room.

Back then, video technology was just

coming in a bowl where you're having conferences

and that kind of stuff online.

So it really wasn't prevalent at the time.

But the 12 of us are sitting around.

We're sitting at the table.

And we introduce ourselves, where we're from,

and what have you.

But it's pretty quiet.

And all these individuals are coming in.

Later, we find out their master's degree,

doctorate degree, engineering degrees.

And they're not sitting at the table with us.

They're sitting around the perimeter of the room,

sitting on the floor, standing next to the wall.

And then the two directors come in,

and their names escape me.

I picture them.

This is Thursday.

We all became good friends.

But they sit down.

They sit at the end of the table.

And they basically say, we want to show you something.

And again, we have no idea what they're going to show us.

And what it was was it was called PATM, Performance Air

Traffic Management.

And it was a concept that MITRE was designing

for the future air traffic control system

to be in place by 2025.

And they show up to us just like.

I don't want to happen.

Did it happen?

Most of it.

Most of it has.

OK.

Yeah.

Most of it has.

So they show this video to us, about 40 minutes worth.

And it gets done.

And it's quiet.

And the lights come up.

And the lady says, well, what do you think?

Think we can make this happen?

And nobody speaks up.

And I normally speak up.

Especially in a fun environment, I

don't have an issue speaking my voice.

So I went ahead and I says, damn right, we can.

Let's get started today.

And everybody else just started laughing.

And they were, yeah, this is something we can do.

This is amazing.

Because it was very futuristic.

There were some things that were in place

that needed to evolve in the air traffic control system,

the software foundation, and the platform.

But that was in its process.

GPS.

Back then, GPS wasn't being widely used.

That was one thing we had to have.

There's other things called ADS-B, Automatic Surveillance

Detection Broadcast.

I think it is.

And those are all things that are in place now

and being used widely.

But those are things that we needed

to have for the foundation.

So when you ask, was there anything

during that development that really stood out?

Well, there was several items.

But there is one that, and I laugh

because I'm type A. It's a defense mechanism

that when somebody suffers, I seem to smile and laugh at it.

So we're in an environment in doing testing.

And what they did is they took all this futuristic stuff.

And we had been learning it and training on it.

We're probably about a year and a half into it now,

a year and 10 months into it.

And we're getting into actually running scenarios

with that technologies, the future technologies.

And what they would do instead of in an environment at work

nowadays, you could be working 10, 15 airplanes,

and that's a norm.

You can get up to 20, 30 airplanes,

It's not normal, but it happens, and you can still function.

But what they were doing is they were getting up to, like, 80 and 90 airplanes in the same amount of airspace that was designed currently that they're using in moving these airplanes.

Well, the thing with air traffic controllers is that – and we were supervisors at the time.

Every one of us was a supervisor.

I was an operational manager, which is second-level management.

But you still have that foundation.

You never fail.

Even in a simulated environment, even though you know it's simulated, you do not fail.

And so they're pumping these airplanes at us, and there's a bunch of us that are working it.

We're trying to keep the airplanes separated and putting things in place that we were creating in our own environment to move the aircraft safely through the airspace.

That was against what Whiter wanted to see.

What they wanted to see was all those airplanes coming up and getting involved in that airspace.

But that's not what we do.

We keep the environment safe.

Anyways, it goes on for 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and it is just how – you're just getting constantly – your mind is going in so many different ways, and you're looking at so much data.

They've got, like, 30 cameras around you, and they're monitoring your eye movement, your hand movements, your shoulder movements, everything that you move.

For the psychologist and the doctors to go ahead and analyze, why did they do that?

Why did they think that way?

Why did they go ahead and manipulate that particular aircraft to go ahead and prevent that collision?

Why are they doing this?

So all this is being – it's happening so fast.

At the end of that 50 minutes, there were two people.

One quit.

He was out of Boston Center.

And the other one out of Seattle, Scott was his name.

He was a very, very sharp, very sharp controller.

You're just watching him when he worked.

He knew the job very, very well.

But he – at lunch, we could look.

We could look down over the cafeteria out into the courtyard.

And he was in the courtyard in front of this monolith that they have with water coming down, just kind of like a calming thing.

And he's just down there.

And he's sitting down and he's just walking back and forth.

And he's like, Scott, what's up?

We have a debrief afterwards after lunch.

Scott, what's up?

And he used a four-letter word that starts with an F.

He basically looked at the staff from MITRE and said, if you ever do that to me again, I will be out of here.

Because it was just so stressful.

But the foundation was set.

We are not moving 80 airplanes at a time through airspace.

Because there was like a communications where technology is – and it's getting there.

Like I mentioned earlier, the ABSP, where if Diana and Nate are flying in airspace 100 miles ahead of me, and our airplanes would be talking to each other.

Right.

So if Nate runs into turbulence, his airplane would be telling me, hey, 100 miles ahead of you, Nate's airplane has turbulence.

I'm going to move so I don't have my passengers go into turbulence.

Or if Nate is going out of – and we do this today.

FedEx and UPS does this.

So FedEx is going into Memphis this afternoon at 4 p.m. and at 4.35 p.m. there's aircraft that depart out of San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego.

Well, the San Diego guy gets off first.

But his packages need to get there after the other two airplanes.

So what the system will do is we'll talk to those three airplanes, and the other two will speed up.

That one out of San Diego will slow down.

So when they get to Memphis, they land in sequence to where the Memphis people can go ahead and actually take the packages in a more efficient way of doing business out of the aircraft.

Now, we have technologies that –

if airplanes are getting too close, they will alarm each other and go ahead and separate themselves, tell the pilot to separate themselves.

So technology has come a long, long way.

But we are not at the point where we're able to move 80 airplanes through an amount of airspace.

The rules just don't exist for it yet.

That was probably one of the biggest scares that we had in the development.

Sounds like a complete overhaul.

Just out of curiosity, either from your peers or others, was there any resistance as you guys were going through some of this development?

Not from those that were involved in it, the 12 of us that were involved in it.

We were very high up in it.

We created comedy routines.

We might have actually made a video because iPads and iPods were coming into vogue at the time.

They made it called iPad.

They did all kinds of funny stuff, mimic their commercials.

But for us, we all enjoyed it.

We had an outcome that we knew we'd be able to reach.

Now, within the FAA, there's supervisors, have the Federal Aviation Administration's Managers Association.

You have NACA, which is the NACA's – they're the Air Traffic Controllers Union.

You have PASS, which is the Technical Operations, like the maintenance people.

They're one of their unions.

And there's others, too.

Those are the two big ones, NACA and PASS.

And they didn't –

They don't oppose it.

They don't oppose it.

They just want to be involved in it and ensure that it moves forward in a safe environment instead of just going 120 percent.

And I can tell you that if it wasn't for their involvement, a lot of the technologies would not have come to PASS.

And a lot of the things that are used now in order to move airplanes, ensure that the system is efficient and safe, would not have –

well, it would have happened, but it would have happened at a different rate.

Yeah, than with NACA.

And having their involvement, because they're the subject matter experts.

They deal with it every day.

And so they're very good at what they do.

So as far as a complete resistance, I would say no.

But having a little bit to ensure that the environment is safe and efficient, yes.

And it's not a bad – it was not a bad thing.

Is there a moment in your career that gave you goosebumps?

Something – it could be high stakes, heartbreaking, something just, like, unforgettable?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe an air traffic controller would understand.

When bad things happen, that is – that's pretty impactful.

So we were involved – I was working the day that the DC-10 crashed at Iowa City, or at Sioux City.

I was there the day – and I was the manager in charge the day that Payne Stewart died.

His airplane crashed.

I was there.

I was there.

I wasn't in the facility, but I was involved with 9-11 extensively because we were at a meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana at the time.

And there's several other, you know, smaller incidences of crashes or environments where a lot of airplanes are involved and safety might be – needs to be paramount and needed to have a focus.

And I can say that –

And again, not all air traffic controllers are type A, but when you're in a facility and managing it, you're managing 80 people at a time, and you're going to have personalities.

You're going to have people who resist things and people who want to do things their way.

They want to be sure that they challenge you in every decision that you make in every aspect.

And, you know, that's just part of, you know, that environment.

But when something is about to hit the fan?

It is amazing how everyone's role is focused on what they're supposed to be doing.

Now, like the Sioux City crash, the DC-10 where a lot of people died.

It's – there was a handful of us that were actually involved in talking to the airplane and doing other things to ensure that there was, like, the interstate being closed in case you had to land on the interstate.

Communication with law enforcement and safety.

And emergency services on the ground.

But the actual controllers were very few.

I think there was maybe five total that actually talked to the airplane.

But everybody in the facility knows this is not good.

And the environment is so quiet.

It's peaceful.

There's not a lot of talking.

People are just doing their job and focused on what is at hand.

And they know that there's going to be something bad that's going to happen.

And the environment just changes so dramatically.

Yeah.

Goosebumps just from you saying that.

Yeah.

And one of my last ones that I had was not an aircraft incident, but it was an evening in the United States when thunderstorms form.

They form around Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma City, and they start to move – they move north.

The northern end moves north as the day goes on.

So the thunderstorms push up into Nebraska.

And as they move in toward – it gets closer and closer to the northern hemisphere, it's later at night, the storms don't build as high, and often that is the only way airplanes from the east and west coast can get to the east and west coast.

So airplanes that are coming out of Memphis, out of Atlanta, because of the thunderstorm that's right in the middle of the country, they can't fly over it, it's dangerous to go through it, so they fly around it.

So they fly all the way to the east and west coast.

They fly all the way up into Minneapolis's airspace, and this happens every year, but one of the last ones that I was there for, I was running the facility, and we had two areas that were just inundated with airplanes.

And I would tell you that these – this is times where the – they had 30, 35 airplanes in that airspace, and the weather was just pinching the avenue to get through it, was just being pinched off, and the controllers are just – they're going nuts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They really are.

They're turning around to me, and they're saying, yeah, this is not safe.

I says, well, continue to push on, and you should have seen what it would have been like 10 minutes ago, because there's other things that they don't see that we're doing.

We're moving airplanes, we're holding airplanes, we're keeping them away from them, but there were so many airplanes that day, that evening, and we all got through it all fine.

There was no errors, there was no loss of separation, probably a lot of egos were – were probably upset a little bit, but –

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what you do, you know, and you go – you know what, though?

They go on break, and they're coming back a half hour later, they're doing it all over again, because that's – that's the mindset of that Type A personality.

You don't give up, you just keep on plugging along, you love your job, and that's the thing.

Most air traffic controllers love their job.

Most supervisors love their job.

So, yeah.

That would probably be the last big thing for me.

I think in all of that, you mentioned several aspects of your career with the FAA, you know.

Crash sites, redeveloping the airspace, etc., training.

Is there an aspect that you feel, like, impacted you or changed you the most as a person?

No, I don't think I turned into a Type A personality overnight.

It was – I always wanted to be an air traffic controller ever since I was a little kid, man.

You know, 12, 13 years old, watching airplanes flying overhead.

My dad was big into aviation.

He built RCs, remote control aircraft.

And so that was, you know – airplanes – air – yeah.

know air had some type of had a little bit of aviation background but i always wanted to be

an air traffic controller and uh when i went to college and they you know at the time in the

seven late 70s you know colleges had no idea what an air traffic controller was or how to become one

and so um when i ran out of money and going to college i joined the air force and uh right from

right there and i guess that's probably where my type a came out because i went to uh the marines

how long is your basic training 18 weeks navy how long is your basic training 14 weeks air force how

long is your basic training six weeks okay i'm in but but here's the deal i want to go and guarantee

because i knew you can go in with on a guaranteed job and i told them i wanted to be an air traffic

controller and i had to guarantee that i wasn't going in and they tried to get me and go in a

little bit earlier for they can meet their numbers or whatever it was but i just i declined and i

said nope not going in unless unless i got the air traffic control job so um you know

if if there was anything that of my career uh i was that i was steadfast and doing what i wanted

to do um and even back in you know i was 20 years old um that's what i wanted to do and i i stuck to

it and then you know getting into you know the environment you know i think just as anybody as

you guys stated earlier you want to progress you want to make yourself better than you are you want

not only for yourself but for your family or for your loved ones or you know and so that's what

that was what

i was engaged all the time was taking that next step to become better than who i was even in the

air force promotions came really faster we came really quick for me um and then when i was i was

turned down for officer training school because i did not need a non-commissioned officers um

correspondence course i was still doing it they wanted me to finish it first

and it made no sense to finish a non-commissioned non-commissioned officers training course

when i'm applying to be an officer of a pilot and

they say a pilot and you can

continue to be in that course and i was doing it the second step

i had a couple congressional i had a four-star general endorsements

i had a couple congressional i had a four-star general endorsements

but when they said no we want you to finish that course that's when i decided no

again itself i'm it's all for me now i'm doing what i what i want to do

and so got three college degrees um on their Yum! fire training

I was asked by a quality assurance manager to help and assist with accident investigation early on.

So I have no complaints about my career.

I do it all exactly the same again.

So you retired officially from the FAA several years back.

How did you bridge that gap, taking your experience in the government sector to the private sector during your consulting time?

My last position in the FAA, there was three of us nationwide that were working on the National Airspace Redesign Group.

And the team that they had put together originally started with 21 air traffic controllers.

They called them facility training representatives.

They were subject matter experts.

And they had 20 supervisors.

Well, that dwindled down to 10, to 5, down to 3.

And being the three, the amount of projects that were being managed by the 20 never changed.

In fact, there were more.

And so the three is trying to assist subject matter experts in a way for them to progress and be successful in changing the airspace and redesigning it.

And there were so many things that we had to be focused on, we couldn't be proficient on any of it.

Because it's just, there's 30 different projects where the subject matter experts were focused on two or three, where we were focused on 30.

So we weren't very, my terms is that we were probably at awareness, but we're not proficient at any of any of those 30 things.

So did we actually provide them with a lot of help?

No.

Now transitioning into the corporate environment as a consultant.

They asked me to.

I was more than welcome, more than happy to do it because I was only focused on one thing, training.

So that wasn't a very difficult choice for me to make.

Because you want me to stop doing the 30.

And so I retired in December of 18.

And 30, 89 days later, they asked me to come back as a consultant to assist with their training.

And so I did.

I was more than welcome, more than happy to do it because I was only focused on one thing now instead of having to, and I could be good at it, versus being average on 30 other things.

So that transition was satisfying and it happened very, very quickly for me.

That screams type A vibes to me.

Yep.

Do one thing really well versus a million.

Yeah.

Mediocre.

Yeah.

Don't feel this.

And I hated that.

I hated that environment.

It was stressful.

I hated not knowing in depth what I needed to know.

Because.

And even though these guys, these subject matter experts, you know, they control the airplanes every day and I wasn't doing that anymore.

They.

Yeah.

I still wanted to be able to help them and assist them in a way to make the product better.

Yep.

I'm just out of curiosity.

Are there any like misconceptions about the FAA or air traffic control that you wish you could clear up for everyone?

Well,

I suppose I can only think of one that is repetitively said when you, you know, what was your career, what do you, what do you do?

I'm an air traffic controller and Nate, what would you say if I told you I was an air traffic controller?

I would be amazed, but I don't know much, I guess I don't know much about the job duties.

I'm not, I'm not entirely sure.

A lot of people say, well, wow, that's a stressful job.

Well, that, that is literally, I would tell you 95% of people say, wasn't that a stressful job?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Isn't that a stressful job or isn't that, isn't that job stressful?

And I would say, yes, it is.

However, that stress exists, maybe 5% of the time out of the other 95% of almost, you know, routine boredom, because you can, you know, you go through an entire day, you know, week, you know, of, of, uh, you know, just doing the normal.

And then it only takes one thing to happen where somebody loses pressurization and everything has to descend, which happens every day.

People freak out when they hear about turbulence.

It's happening.

Oh, it happens every day.

And to a point of where emergencies happen.

And, you know, in, in Minneapolis, I could tell you there's probably three to four emergencies that happen every day, but they're so it's commonplace.

The trade, the pilots are trained.

You know, to deal with those issues and the controllers are trained to go ahead and get the airplane safely on the ground.

And, but those things happen every day.

So if some of the common.

This.

Concept.

is that it's a stressful job all the time i know but when the stress does happen it's it's much

more than what other people would feel as stress i've got one more for you if you could leave one

piece of advice for the next generation of air traffic pros or just fellow type a's in general

what would it be

i would say

this is this is something i've only realized probably in the last three to four years um

so it's out of the environment with all that stress even though i got i have stress now

because of the you know it's a different type of stress meeting meeting deadlines but um

i would say that i wish i would have known my type a personality had effect on family friends

um my day-to-day um just being um health-wise how it's affected me

uh because of the stress um and having that type a personality i would say start to

identify that you're that type a personality and then don't hesitate to go ahead and try to

learn about it and ways to not combat it because that's who you are

but how to manage it better in order to ensure that your existence in life is not to a point of

i wish i would have done something differently because that's where i am at now i wish i would

do something differently than to be a state person and have other people

be a state person but it's very easy to talk about these things and things that i need to

be grateful for and just have that sort of a change of mind i can't say you know what

she's done to me every single day i think many times in my life with my family has been

um i've always been like i know i'm doing this and so on because i've been doing things for a long time

to stop acting that way you have to stop reacting to things in in a in a black and white manner

because that's not what rest of the world sees things um it's uh i think step one is being aware

of it though right 100 yep yeah being aware of it and trying to trying to go ahead and manage it

better to where it doesn't affect your your health and your family um and what does it look like

you know sometimes you know i don't react to things as quickly as i i used to um and people

feel that um well because why aren't you saying anything why aren't you doing it well sometimes

being quiet is often the better choice before you go ahead and formalize whatever result you

want to get out of the conversation um and just in that statement right there saying the result

that i want from the conversation which is a type a personality versus what is it it shouldn't be

what i want out of the conversation it should be what those that are actually conversing want to

have the end result yeah yeah so it's yeah i wish i would i wish i would have done things differently

when my type a personality was was identified and how it affected you know people around me in me

i think that's great advice and i think that hits home for me for as long as i can remember

to some degree that's been a focus of mine whether it's oh let's wait two minutes before

we hit send on that email thread maybe maybe i'll calm down a tiny bit or let somebody else in the

room maybe get to my conclusion that i've already gotten to in my head and and we'll get a little

but again i think it's that type a drive just to be like nope like this is this is how it should

probably be done and i'm pretty certain and yeah i can definitely relate well and then in our

environment you saw you solve that problem in your head you solved it and now you you you're

thinking i need to stand down stand by let somebody else have some input see if that

would be have a different outcome or may sway my my opinion or my my decision versus

in our environment and your traffic control right you have the next thing you have to go to

you you don't you're you can't wait for a pilot to come back well i really don't want to do that

i don't have a choice john you know i got other things i got to be worried about you know

um so yeah you you're constantly moving to the next the new task immediately and so and and so

when you you know that's ingrained in you for so long you know 30 years of doing the job whether it

be as an air traffic controller or as an air traffic controller or as an air traffic controller

manager you know accident investigation once you you solve a part of the puzzle you need to go

right to that you have to go to that next time you can't wait for it to happen 20 minutes later

or a half hour later that's done yeah makes sense okay i think we need to end with a lighter note a

funny one nate do you want to pick one or should i i'll go for it okay uh if air traffic control

had a reality tv show what would it be

called

oh my i reality tv show what would it be called um

control chaos

control chaos yeah

and uh pulling off of the control air traffic control too and and i'm taking that from my you

know when people think about air traffic control too they think of the people that work up in the

control tower there's there's so many more air traffic controllers that don't work in control

towers um and that are involved with moving so many more airplanes than what's just happening

immediately on an airport um but yeah control control chaos would be good yeah i would go with

that

sub headline of above the noise i feel like controlled chaos above the noise yeah yeah

i love that yeah when you're when you're talking noise mate you're talking about the

the things that are happening on the ground or the things that are happening on the scope or

something yeah yeah okay yeah that's good yeah i see it it's a netflix series we just created it

i'd watch it let's hope we get renewed yeah

get the rights to it we better pitch that quick

all right i wonder if there's something out there like that they probably could do that

but you know it's it's interesting i'm sure you know like a lot of the things even like

like below deck is one that comes to mind for me is that a lot of the things that happen on

the show are fabricated you know for the enjoyment of the of the viewer where that's the thing is i

don't think that your traffic controllers would want to fabricate anything to make

enjoyable to watch they're just going to give you this is the way it is you know that but yeah

95 of the filming would go in the in the can and five percent would actually get aired that

stressful five have to record for five years to get one season episodes yeah

great well thanks for joining us today yep thanks for the invite truly appreciate it it was fun

yeah it was it was nice getting to know you a little bit better yep thank you nate appreciate

it well there you have it everyone we've just heard from an faa retiree who has done it all

anywhere from crash investigations to literally redefining the modern world's airspace we hope

you had as much fun as we did as we continue to explore the wonderful world of being type a

until next time stay type a and a little unhinged