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In case you haven't heard quite enough about the King Air landing....
By
... you have come to the right place. For completeness' sake, three more very informative links, the first two of them from immediately after the flight last week:
1) From the federal government's FocusFAA site, interviews with and pictures of the Ft. Myers controllers whose voices you hear on the tapes of the final minutes of the flight.
2) Also from Focus FAA, an interview with the passenger-pilot himself, Doug White.
3) From the unauthorized FAA Follies site, this very informative post by controller Paul Cox. Worth reading for several reasons -- among them the controller mood revealed in the comments; Cox's arguments about how the FAA needs to change under Obama; and his explanation of the mentality with which controllers should face this kind of life-or-death emergency. Cox uses an analogy to sports, saying that as a kid he was only a so-so baseball player:
1) From the federal government's FocusFAA site, interviews with and pictures of the Ft. Myers controllers whose voices you hear on the tapes of the final minutes of the flight.
2) Also from Focus FAA, an interview with the passenger-pilot himself, Doug White.
3) From the unauthorized FAA Follies site, this very informative post by controller Paul Cox. Worth reading for several reasons -- among them the controller mood revealed in the comments; Cox's arguments about how the FAA needs to change under Obama; and his explanation of the mentality with which controllers should face this kind of life-or-death emergency. Cox uses an analogy to sports, saying that as a kid he was only a so-so baseball player:
One thing I didn't really understand was how the coach used to say that you had to be out there WANTING the ball to be hit towards you, because in the infield, I didn't....As far as I am concerned, there is such a thing as Enough about this case, and it's now been reached. (But thanks to John Dowd for these links.)
One dirty little secret about controllers is that for the vast majority of us, when we hear someone say "emergency", we WANT to be the one plugged in and working that sector or position. We WANT to have someone call with a wing on fire or an engine out or lost or stuck on top of clouds, so we get something interesting and captivating to do while we're plugged in.
Yeah, we consider a "save" to be just part of the job, just another day's work, and it is... but every truly good controller I know WANTS to be in that chair when that call comes in. (And as a side note, to the weak sticks and trainees out there... if you don't want those emergency calls, well, that's a good sign that ATC is probably not the job for you. For the sake of the flying public, go do something else, okay?)
Until I became a controller, and had that almost-jealous feeling watching someone work an emergency, I didn't really get what the coach meant when he said you gotta WANT the tough situation placed in your hands. Now I know just what that feels like.
