I Am An Air Traffic Controller 4 Mods |link| Online

Mod One: Separation. My left hand rested on the trackball. The rule was three miles horizontal, one thousand feet vertical. Tonight, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream G5 had decided they wanted to occupy the same patch of cold Atlantic air. My voice, flat as a stone, cut through the frequency. “Delta 231, descend and maintain one-one thousand.” A pause. “Gulfstream 4EC, turn left heading two-two-zero.” The blips diverged. No one on board knew they had been three seconds from a scream of metal. I did not smile. Mod One was satisfied.

The other three mods hated Mod Four. They saw it as a bug. But I knew the truth. Without Mod Four, I was just a machine playing a video game. Mod Four was the reason I double-checked a heading. Mod Four was the reason I said “good evening” instead of “descend and maintain.” Mod Four was the part of me that, after a perfect shift, walked to the parking lot, sat in my idling Honda, and wept for no reason at all. i am an air traffic controller 4 mods

The screen hummed a low, ancient hymn. Forty-two blips of light, each a capsule of human panic and hope, drifted across the green cathode-ray glow. I was the god of this tiny, flickering universe. Mod One: Separation

Tonight, the screen is clear. The last blip lands. I unplug my headset. The four mods fold themselves back into the dark corners of my skull. Tonight, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream G5

Mod Two: Sequence. The New York TRACON is a pressure cooker. Planes stack up like angry commuters. I had an Airbus from Paris, an Embraer from Cleveland, and a regional turboprop from Bangor all converging on Runway 22L at Kennedy. The computer’s suggested sequence was chaos. I overrode it. I slipped the turboprop behind the Airbus, slowed the Embraer with a 210-knot restriction, and painted a perfect diagonal string of lights in my mind. The tower controller later keyed up: “Nice flow, buddy.” Mod Two purred.