John Breen knew he wanted to control air traffic when he was only eight
years old.
"I was very fortunate in living on a flight path to a large military base....
So, when I was a little guy, I could sit on my front doorstep and watch airplanes
go by all day long," he says.
At the time, he could only dream of one day working with the planes that
flew by each day. He remembers, "My dad was part of the military organization.
So, he could take me to the base and we could see the airplanes close up and
go crawling around inside them."
In 2002, Breen became an air traffic controller. Today, he is a safety
and service design specialist for the same company, but he remembers clearly
what it was like in the towers.
"It's a different set of circumstances every day. You don't take your work
home with you in a physical sense. You don't pack a briefcase full of homework
to do," he says.
However, air traffic controllers do pack a bit of mental homework. According
to Breen, you just learn how to deal with the stress.
One stormy day on the coast, Breen got his first real taste of what stress
is all about in the field. "I was the only person with whom a disabled airplane
could communicate and I managed to help the aircraft get back on the ground.
One engine on the airplane had failed. The other one failed just as the airplane
landed and, yeah -- it was an interesting time," says Breen.
Emergency or not, says Breen, communication is the most important part
of the job. "Keep communication open, arrange for all the emergency response
services that the aircraft might need. Give them whatever information and
support you can possibly do to help the situation to a successful completion,"
he explains.
For Ruth Marlin, air traffic control came naturally. One lucky Saturday,
she entered the initial testing center on a lark and came out with a 92 percent
score.
"I tell you, things worked out good that day!" she says. "It's a great
job. It's exciting, it's interesting -- you get to be creative and you have
complete autonomy over your actions at any given time. I have to tell you,
I truly love my career and I'm very fortunate to have gotten into it."
However, Marlin also recognizes its downsides. She mainly dislikes the
fact that airplanes never stop flying and her schedule is unusual.
"Say you want to go to the movies on Tuesday -- you can't go. Your family
wants you to go home for Christmas -- you can't go....Things that people think
are fairly routine and normal, you can't do.
"For a lot of people, it's been very difficult in relationships. If you
are dating or are married to somebody that works a normal 9-to-5 job, you
may never see them. My husband's a controller, so we work the same shifts
and we get to see each other all the time," says Marlin.
She met her husband at the airport.
Like Breen, Marlin has endured stressful moments in the field that stick
out in her mind. Every controller, she says, will definitely have to deal
with them.
"Your exciting moments are [generally] when there's an emergency, when
an aircraft is in distress and you have to take immediate and rapid action.
Any controller works several of those over their career," she says.
She remembers one of her most frightening emergency situations in the tower:
"I had a G5 that broke a windshield at 45,000 feet and we had to get that
aircraft from 45,000 feet down to where it could land in very short order.
We did it in just a few miles, but there's a lot of coordination. You have
to coordinate with every controller underneath you, and they have to move
every airplane that might be underneath."
Many people in the field move on to work in related airport industry positions.
When the time comes for a change, Marlin wants to try something new.
"I'm eligible to retire when I'm 48. That's an awful lot of life left not
to be working. So, I think about that periodically -- what's going to be my
next job after I get finished with this one? It'll probably be something completely
different. I will miss this one, though," she says.