It's not always about pilots
We were taxiing to the active runway when the ground controller asked if we would be ready at the end. "Yessir," I quickly answered, hoping the conviction in my voice was evident. This is a very busy Miami-area airport at which a flight school is training international students. Most days there's an endless supply of training aircraft taxiing, taking off, landing, and doing instrument approaches. The last thing I wanted was to be shuffled off to the holding pen while we waited for a break in a long conga line of aircraft. Yes, we definitely would be ready to go at the end.
As I stopped just short of the hold line at the active runway, I switched to the tower frequency. My headphones immediately filled with nonstop chatter between students and the tower. The instant one pilot finished another popped up on the frequency, or the tower controller broke in to issue an instruction. My finger was poised over the push-to-talk button, awaiting the slightest break in the chatter.
At the first pause, I went for it in a big way: "TowerAztecEightSixOnereadytogoNinerleft." No wasted milliseconds between words, just one quickly uttered 39-letter shout-out to the tower that I was confident would be heard, understood, and acted upon. I was wrong.
Instead of acknowledging my check-in, the tower controller carried on a conversation with the pilot of an approaching aircraft who had failed to heed an instruction. Now the guilty party was creating a conflict with other landing traffic, and the controller was not happy.
"Cessna Six-Two-Alpha, I told you to extend your downwind. Do you see the Cessna ahead of you about to turn final?"
"Uh, uh, no, I don't-wait, yes!" the heavily accented, excited voice said. "I see the Cessna. Six-Two-Alpha has the traffic in sight."
"TowerAztecEightSixOnereadytogoNinerleft," I interjected. I was growing impatient. The controller was ignoring us while he dealt with an errant student, and most likely we'd have to wait while it was all sorted out and two or more slow-moving trainers completed their approaches and landings.
My second check-in call had the same result as the first-it was ignored. The controller continued his discourse with the arriving aircraft.
A few moments later I made a third attempt, this time replacing conviction with an air of acidic annoyance. And, just to make the point, I slowed down the pace of my delivery.
"Tower, do you hear Aztec Eight-Six-One?"
The response was immediate and agitated to the point that punctuation marks were evident in the controller's response. "Eight-Six-One, I am trying to get your release from Miami Departure!" (We were on an IFR flight plan). "As soon as I get it I'll give you a call!"
"Harrumph," I blustered over the voice-activated intercom in an ill-disguised attempt to save face with my passengers. "At least he could have acknowledged my check-in call. Highly unprofessional."
My right-seater chuckled. "Now we'll be here for a long while," he said, and I knew he could be right. I'd raised the controller's dander, and since he had all the power he could punish my insubordination by stonewalling. Yeah, we could be sitting here awhile. I felt sheepish.
Less than a minute later the controller called me back and issued a takeoff clearance. He sounded professional, with no hint of anger or annoyance in his voice. I acknowledged the takeoff clearance, and a moment later we were airborne. The controller handed me off to Miami Departure and added-sincerely, I thought-"Thanks for your patience."
Props to him, I thought, and shame on me.
I had succumbed to irrational impatience because I had failed to acknowledge a fundamental truth of the pilot-controller relationship: Pilots have a narrow perspective-when we're flying, it's all about us. Air traffic control, on the other hand, has many customers, all of whom demand and deserve equal treatment. Meaning every pilot can't always get their way right away.
Air traffic controllers do what they do for very specific reasons, which mostly have to do with keeping aircraft from inhabiting the same airspace at the same time. Here's how the FAA articulates ATC's job: "The primary purpose of the ATC system is to prevent a collision between aircraft operating in the system and to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide support for National Security and Homeland Defense." (That last part is a fairly recent addition, obviously.)
I had assumed the tower controller was simply too preoccupied with student traffic and was ignoring me. In fact, he was working the landing traffic while at the same time attempting to get a takeoff release for me from Miami Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon). Yes, maybe he could have acknowledged my check-in calls, but he was already juggling a lot of balls.
That's not the first time I've lost patience with ATC. Whether it was being denied a direct-to clearance; instructed to descend or change course for other traffic; vectored around on arrival when all I wanted to do was fly straight to the airport; told "Unable, too busy" when requesting practice instrument approaches; or being forgotten while the controller dealt with more pressing airline customers-I've had my share of impatience-inducing episodes.
So what is ATC's responsibility when it comes to accommodating a pilot's every request? Here's the FAA's take on the question: "In addition to its primary function, the ATC system has the capability to provide (with certain limitations) additional services. The ability to provide additional services is limited by many factors, such as the volume of traffic, frequency congestion, quality of radar, controller workload, higher priority duties, and the pure physical inability to scan and detect those situations that fall in this category."
Truth be told, the only time my righteous indignation toward ATC was justified was when I was truly forgotten and had to remind the controller of my existence.
Flying around in a small aluminum cocoon with no other airplanes in sight, it's easy to think that ATC should be able to accommodate our every desire. The problem with that is such a narrow perspective can contribute to an incomplete understanding of what's going on and why we are not being treated according to our lofty expectations.
A confined perspective is not all bad. Pilots have to be narrowly focused when flying. After all, we are ultimately responsible for managing the safety of our passengers and ourselves. But if we want to avoid becoming impatient with aviation's traffic cops and suffering the consequences, we have to keep in mind that someone has to maintain the big-picture perspective, and that someone is ATC.
Mark Twombly is a writer and editor who has been flying since 1968. He is a commercial pilot with instrument and multiengine ratings and flies a Piper Aztec.
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