VISIT TO THE JFK FLIGHT CONTROL TOWER

World Air Traffic Over 24 Hours - Video Did you ever think that there were this many airplanes in the sky at one time? This video shows a 24 hour period. www.metacafe.com/watch/2235978/world_air_traffic... - I love how you can see all of the transatlantic flights leave the US in the evening, and then see them return in early day
> from Europe. Also, note how the USA and Europe are solid at different > times. Very interesting! This would be a great thing to show people > who are afraid of flying...........as it shows just how many flights > are operating day and night everywhere, and when one goes down with > 200 people ...it is really a minuscule blip on this huge radar when > you consider how few go down over a period of years.

Dori is 63 years old; and my wife's first cousin. He lives in Queens and swims a miles very day in the local Y with the result that his upper body is like a barrel that tapers quickly down his body.

He swims no doubt to keep his body and mind free if the stress that builds up from doing his job.

Dori is flight controller. Not just your run-of-the-mill flight controller, but a seasoned steely-minded flight controller who has guided millions of flights across the skies of our nation.

What's special about Dori is that the he's retiring in three days after working for 32 years in the world's largest flight control tower in Ronkonkoma, Long Island.

The control tower at Ronkonkoma handles all the incoming and departing flights in a thirty-five thousand foot high bowl of air space that spans an area of 300 miles around and extending to the entire planet if need be.

Dori has been "Pushing Tin" for a lot of years and as a result he has developed nerves of steel that belie his un-extraordinary countenance. But he is the equivalent of black belt or PhD in his field of expertise.

After being "fired" by Ronald Regan in 1981 he spent 8 years driving a limousine. He's got that down-to-earth way of speaking that let's you know not to argue with him b/c he's telling it like it is...no bull shit.

After he got rehired back into federal service as an officer in the immigration naturalization service he served as one those officers who looks through your baggage when you pass through customs at JFK airport.

As a result of his experience he has many stories to tell. Indeed his stories have stories and he loves to keep me in suspense knowing how I hang on every word when he begins telling one of them.

Over the years he's become like a hero to me. And from the first time I learned that he was flight control tower expert I plied my hero with question after question whenever my wife and I got together with him.

If I told you I asked him if I could visit the control tower 100 times over the years I knew him it would not be an exaggeration.

So last year when he began talking about retiring I tugged at his pants and reminded him how much I wanted to see the place where he worked.

Two months ago when his retirement was congealing into reality I began to feel anxious that my dream of going to an airport control tower might be slipping in to the past so I said to Fran “I'm never going to speak to your cousin Dori again if blows me off on his promise”.

God and Fran knew how much I wanted it to happen. Fran even told Dori that it would be somewhat of a tragedy if my dreams went up in smoke.

Just seven days before Dori's retirement, when I had already resigned myself to never seeing the control tower, Dori called me to let me know that he was taking me to visit the flight control tower and that we were going either Friday or Saturday night.

Jubilant, I told him that Friday, which was the following day, was fine with me. No way was I going to risk a day passing with fate intervening and the possibility that an unforeseen happenstance would cause the cancellation of my dream of 20 years floating down the neuronal caves of my brain.

"Take the E or the F to 72nd and Continental Ave. and I'll meet at the Midway Theater at 7:00," he emailed me on Friday. "It will take about 35-40 minutes.

On the street outside the subway I suddenly had a sinking feeling. It was a beehive of cars and people and stores and I thought I'm never going to find him.

But when I heard his voice ring out in from the crowd "Teddy" I knew the story was going to have a good ending.

Only later did I learn that it was the first time he had ever gone to the tower at JFK.

We rode up 4 floors of the parking garage near the Control Tower and I got out to quietly enjoy the night air while Dori was making a few calls to get the clearance needed to go up to the tower.

While I waited impatiently for him to finish I looked up and there-the-hell it was. Towering 32 stories in to the warm night air was the control tower that I was going to visit at the end of 20 years and 15 minutes

Silhouetted against the early evening night sky I examined the imposing structure with awe. Its near phallic shape confirmed that it was indeed an edifice of extreme importance.

We walked in to a somewhat obscure area above the food mall and Dori showed his ID badge to the security guard who bade us sign the registry book and then led us to an even more obscure area where we where admitted thru a door that finally led to an elevator.

Gary greeted us at the foot of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the inner sanctum.

After five-minutes of chatting he knew and welcomed Dori as a member of the family of flight controllers with an illustrious history and you could see the respect in his eyes for this retiring guest who came from the Ronkonkoma center to pay them a visit.

As Dori's guest "my cousin Dr. Ted" I could feel the welcome spread sweetly on to me as well. I told Gary how I cam to be here and I knew he could sense my extreme delight in being there.

Gary escorted up the steps and we entered the womb of the entire airport the sine qua non of the airport's existence.

Above us, on the roof, the radar was rotating once every second, and with each sweep it would sense and report every moving object in the local skies and on the ground and update the monitors located in the control room of which there were at least ten showing brightly on the semi-dim light of the control room.

The control room looks and feels looks like what you might imagine seeing in flying saucer.

360 degrees of 8-feet- high glass provided an unobstructed panoramic view of the airport grounds and 5 miles or more of city now lit by all the night lights the get lit when the sun descends over New York.

The control room is large enough to comfortably sit about 6 tables of 4 diners each. It is lit in a way that permits the seven traffic directors who staff it dispatch and land the 1300 or more planes that depart or arrive each day carrying away or returning their precious packages of humanity during each shift at the tower. [See Airport Data].

Flight control is achieved both visually and by monitors whose information is updated every second via the radar rotating above them.

Do the math and you will see the tower staff is responsible for the safe passage of about 200K folks each day. Dori’s facility in Ronkonkoma oversees 10,000 fights a day.

Each of the seven controller wears that were controlling the night I was visiting was wearing a head phone/mic set with a mic wire swinging from the ear piece to just an inch in front of their mouths.

They work as precisely as a choreographed acrobatic swim-team to shepherd planes out of the sky on to the tarmac and then to their parking spot at their home terminal, and simultaneously direct the outbound planes to their take-off position and then into the air.

They are responsible for tracking all the inbound and outbound planes in a bowl about 3000 feet high and 15 miles out in all directions.

Their monitors show the air traffic on the screen which is delineated by circles showing the traffic in each of the two-mile wide circular bands showing on the screen.

The first monitor I looked was the one showing every plane in the air on some pre-scheduled flight path in the air space bowl around the airport to about 15 miles out and 3000 feet high.

The inbound planes are first tracked at Ronkonkoma about 80 miles west of Brooklyn, and are monitored/ organized by control-tower personnel to so as to seamlessly accomplish a fly-through/over path or a path that directs them to JFK or LaGuardia in Queens or Newark airport in New Jersey (10,000 each day).

Planes fly as high as 35,000 feet and are separated vertically in to lanes that are 2000 feet apart vertically and 5 miles apart horizontally.

Given that a plane is flying at 200 miles an hour within a 20 mile radius of the airport inter-plane events can occur in a heartbeat at those speeds.

These highly-trained individuals so almost blasé’ in the performance of their duties which are performed with virtually no diversion of their attention from the monotony that settles in when they are working and all is going well.

Keep watching and you will see that every two hours they rotate in to the next work position as FAA regulations demand since mental fatigue can take its toll on the best of them.

On the 19-inch monitors that show the flights location you can begin to see that all is not chaos. Indeed there is an organization, albeit seemingly chaotic looking, as to their position on the screen indicating their location in the 360 degree bowl of space above the airport.

Each plane is represented by a small icon on the monitor screen that looks like a plane moving in small jerks across the screen as the ever present rotating radar just above them relocates each plane with every new revolution.

Flight controllers are familiar with the size/weight of all airplanes and know much space between each of them is needed to safely maneuver them in the sky when lined up in a stream of planes of varying size descending into the airport.

I counted 87 planes on the screen of the principle monitor when I first arrived.

Upon touching one of “moving” icons on the screen it immediately identifies the plane's airline and identity number, the height at which the planes is presently flying and the heading (direction it is flying at) along with a few other vital pieces of information.

When Ronkonkoma sorts the planes as to "passing thru" or landing at a local airport such as JFK’s it sends JFK an electronic notice that alerts JFK to the arriving/inbound flight. Indeed, in the control tower a machine that dispenses a constant floe of 1" by 6" labels that provide all pertinent information regarding each flight descending in to JFK.

A staff member gather the labels every few minutes and slips them on to plastic holders for easy handling and passes them to the main dispatcher controller who continually stacks them in files and rows after reading the identifying information they contain.

I will never forget meeting and talking with the dispatcher that night. He reminded me of Willie Nelson the Country music singer. He was about 5’5’’ with salt and pepper hair free- falling down to his neck accompanied by a full beard nicely trimmed. He wore a beautiful all-white beach shirt and white beach pants. He spoke with the ease and sincerity of a man who was totally comfortable with his job.

Dori told me that many of these controllers speak with the swagger experienced professionals. It takes about three years of study to become a G-5 level controller.

The night I was there was one lady about 30 years-old in control of flights that had touched ground and she was shepherding each flight in the correct direction. Her job was done in great part simply by her being able to see the all the runways through the glass windows.

As the dispatcher reviews each new flight label he contacts the pilots and briefly alerts them to stand by until they are contacted by the next agent who directs them how to further descend safely in to the airport.

He gives the label to the person who is going to take over their supervision once the plane has touched terra firma. I would call that person the “ground controller” or GC.

The GC has a 19" monitor showing the schematic of all the airport's runways. Indeed you can see on that monitor a steady stream of lights jerking along the "runway" in line one after the other representing each plane that has landed.

The GC is giving them instructions regarding which runway and turn-off path to follow. The GC is the traffic cop. She is watching the events unfold directly thru the glass windows and giving instructions to each pilot in their respective planes to reach their airline's gate.

As the plane pulls off the runway and turns in to its final gate it disappears off the screen and the next plane's icon jerks forward into it’s new position.

Upon arriving at the map of all the airports in the USA click 4 times on the “zoom-in” button. At each click move the map to keep the “New York” area in view on the screen.

At the 4^th click you will see the icon for JFK just below where it shows “New York” on the map.

Choose “Zoom to see airport” and lo and behold YOU WILL SEE an aerial view of the airport.

Just above the “F” in the label “John F. Kennedy International Airport” you will “see” the control tower.

The control tower appears as a white dot about the size of this O. You can now zoom in 5 more times for a closer view.

If you mouse–over the icon that appears on this map the following clickable menu will appear.

Airport control tower fanatics can listen to their choice of flight tower controllers each of whom is controlling a segment of flights in the “bowl of air” surrounding JFK airport:

NY Approach (JFK Final) is the one to hear flight control information for inbound flights. You can hear the flight controller in dialogue with the pilot/navigator.

You can hear the pilot giving his position to the controller and the controller giving instructions to the pilot in the process of descending to land his plane at JFK.

*The Air Traffic Control Tower, constructed on the ramp-side of Terminal 4, began full FAA operations in October 1994 and is 321 feet tall. An Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE) radar unit sits atop the tower. A gas-fired electric cogeneration plant generates electricity for the airport, with an output of about 90 megawatts. It uses thermal energy from the capture of waste heat to heat and cool all of the passenger terminals and other facilities in the central terminal area.

Ted Rothstein, DDS, PhD
Specialist in Orthodontics for Adults and Children
Specialist in Orthodontic Jaw Wiring
BCAT producer
American Association of Orthodontists
Founder DPOJW
www.drted.com/DPOJW.html
35 Remsen St., Brooklyn, NY 11201

August 1, 2008 (two days before Dori’s last day as flight controller with the FAA).

Ps: I forgot to tell you that I grew up in Far Rockaway, a 25 minute ride to JFK when it was a small local airport called Idlewild