The other day at work, one of my flights was heading toward Salt Lake City, which was fogged in. Due to a combination of runway issues and poor visibility, I wasn’t sure whether my flight would get to land at Salt Lake. I became curious about which runway the airport was using for arrivals. My friend Josh suggested an iPhone app called LiveATC.

As you might expect, LiveATC allows you to listen to live air traffic control frequencies for hundreds of airports throughout the country. In other words, you can use your iPhone to listen to the controllers and pilots talking to each other. This might sound about as exciting as watching snow melt, but in certain situations it can be quite useful. I learned which SLC runway was active and what the current visibility readings were, which helped me gauge whether my flight would get in (it did). The ingenuity of mankind continues to amaze me.

For those of you who enjoy hearing about my job, here’s a little story from Friday night:

I had two flights going from Vegas to Reno. Due to snow and low visibility, the afternoon dispatcher had planned them with some extra fuel plus Boise as an alternate, which seemed reasonable to me when I arrived on duty.

If we’re going to divert, we never plan to burn all of our extra fuel, keeping some in the tanks in case unexpected problems come up. Generally, we plan to land at our alternate with a standard amount of 5000 lbs. From there, the math is pretty simple; we add the fuel burn from the intended destination to the alternate and use that amount as our decision point for diverting.

In this case, if the fuel burn to Boise is 3800 pounds, the captain and I might agree to divert once we get down to 8800 pounds of fuel to make sure we arrive in Boise with about 5000. For my two Reno flights, they could hold for 10-15 minutes before having to leave for Boise. If the weather cooperated as forecast, that should have been no problem.

Unfortunately, about the time both flights pushed back from the gate in Vegas, Reno’s visibility dropped to 3/4 mile as the snowfall increased. For us to land in Reno, the visibility needs to be at least 1/2 mile. I immediately wished that both flights had more fuel onboard, but I didn’t want to take a delay to bring them back to the gate.

They took off. The visibility dropped to 1/2 mile. My heartrate rose a bit. The visibility could drop further, or the airport might need to close the active runway to clear the snow, either of which would stop us from landing on schedule.

Now I had to look at my options. With Boise as my alternate, the probability was much greater that both flights would divert, creating problems for all involved and costing thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, 737s don’t have in-flight refueling capability like some military jets, so I was stuck with the fuel on board.

My solution? Change the alternate to San Jose, which is about 1200 pounds closer. San Jose would allow us to hold for about 15 minutes longer, increasing the chances that the conditions would improve enough to land safely. We call this shortening up. I sent this new plan to both captains through our cockpit text messaging system, and both agreed. I also called our people in San Jose and asked them to stay late in case we needed to divert there. Normally, they go home when their last flight lands, but we can ask them to stay if necessary.

Sure enough, by the time they drew near Reno, the airport was temporarily closed while the snowplows struggled to clear off the runways. The snow was falling faster than the plows could clear it. Both flights went into holding and told me via text message. I worked out diversion plans with both of them: if we can’t get cleared in to land by 7700 pounds of fuel, we’ll divert to the new alternate of San Jose.

We waited. And waited. I watched them spin on my radar. I kept checking their fuel electronically. They sent me brief updates from the Reno control tower: “Plows can’t keep up.” “10 more minutes.” Our decision fuel approached, and I started wishing I had given one flight Oakland as an alternate instead. That way I could have split the diversions between two airports instead of overwhelming one airport as they’re trying to close. My deodorant started to kick in. I checked the latest braking action report that tell me how slippery the runway is. It had gotten more slippery since the last report, so I notified both crews. Each flight had maybe 10 minutes left and would have already diverted had we not shortened up to a closer alternate.

Finally, both flights landed safely, and I could relax. The best part of a situation like this is getting the message that the flight has touched down. By avoiding two diversions, we saved the company perhaps $4000 or more, avoided a potential problem involving a crew’s maximum time on duty, and delivered the passengers where they wanted to go on the first try. What I did wasn’t anything special; nearly all of my coworkers would have handled the situation in a similar or better fashion. But I was happy to contribute and help solve the problem.

I work the midnight shift, normally 11pm to 7am, sometimes 10pm-6am or 9pm to 5am. Most people are confused and sympathetic when they first learn this, assuming I am the junior guy in the office who got stuck with the worst possible shift. In truth, I love the midnight shift, for three main reasons:

• It allows me to focus on my favorite part of the job, planning the flights. I enjoy trying to predict what the weather will be doing several hours into the future, tinkering with my flight plans, and testing different routes to find the most helpful winds. During a day or afternoon shift, I must divide my time between planning, monitoring, and dealing with phone and radio calls.
• Although I do sleep during the morning and early afternoon, I’m available every afternoon and evening to hang out with my family and friends. On occasion, I can wake up early to have lunch with them as well. The day and afternoon shifts give me less flexibility.
• The midnight shift is the easiest shift in terms of workload. Sure, it has its problems just like any other shift, especially if flights are running really late and the weather is terrible. Overall, though, it’s not bad at all. When I arrive, I take over responsibility for monitoring several flights until they land, which occurs anytime between 10:00pm and 2:00 or 3:00am unless it’s a really bad night. I start planning my morning flights around 1:00pm. Then I usually have some downtime to relax, eat, work on trades, or whatever else I need to do.

To make extra money, though, I sign up for day and afternoon shifts on many of my days off. The extra money is very helpful, but when I get one of those shifts, they are also a stretch assignment for me. I might get a phone call at any time from a captain wanting a weather brief, not just in the first hour of my shift. I might have to reroute a flight enroute to avoid weather or turbulence and check to see whether the aircraft has enough fuel onboard. These shifts jerk me out of my comfort zone and remind me of the old days when I was in training and then a reserve with a hodgepodge schedule. They keep my skills sharp. They make me do things I normally get to avoid, like talking on the radio. They remind me of what the day and afternoon folks have to deal with, which tunes me into their needs when I’m planning flights to hand over to them. Afterward, when I return to the midnight shift, I return stronger.

It’s helpful and important to give yourself stretch assignments. Sure, sitting in a comfy chair doing the same old thing the same old way is safe and doesn’t give you butterflies, but it doesn’t make you a better you, either. Push yourself. Challenge yourself to learn something new, to run a bit farther or faster. Find out where your limits are and try to increase them.

What are some ways you challenge yourself?

I got to work again this afternoon, this time on the Assistant desk working on some support tasks rather than dispatching flights. This desk on this day gave me a prime seat to watch but not endure one of the worst possible weather situations: a line of thunderstorms moving through the Northeast. One of my worst days ever came on a day just like this. We deal with thunderstorms all spring and summer in various parts of the country, but the Northeast is special.

1. It’s the busiest airspace in the world. It is the launch point for hundreds of flights each day to all parts of the US plus many to Canada, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America.
2. It’s a fairly narrow strip of land bordered by a huge ocean on one side, with a limited number of routes available, and Canada on the other with its own air traffic control system.
3. Because it’s so busy, it has four different air traffic control “centers”, which manage traffic above a certain altitude, plus a huge number of other ATC facilities that manage traffic landing at or departing the many airports and metropolitan areas. People at all these different facilities have to work together to feed each other traffic.

Until we switch to a satellite-based ATC/navigation system, we must continue to fly generally from point to point using ground-based radio beacons that form “highways in the sky” called airways. For busy airports like many in the Northeast, ATC, the FAA, and the airport work together to design set pathways in and out. These pathways help the controllers to ensure that aircraft maintain a safe distance from each other. When a line of thunderstorms moves through an area like the Northeast, it shuts off these pathways, forcing inbound flights to hold and departing flights to sit and wait until the storms move far enough away from the pathways to make them safe to fly again. Where able, ATC moves flights from one pathway to another as the storms move through. It’s like a wreck that occurs on LBJ and shuts down a line or even the whole freeway until emergency crews can get it cleared out. Maybe there’s an alternate route, but maybe you’re stuck. It all depends.

The pilots, dispatchers, and ground personnel for an airline are trying to react to the weather and ATC’s instructions and also to predict them. Since weather is so fluid, and ATC is made of people who have their own experiences and perspectives, accurately predicting the actions of either factor is challenging.

Today, for example, the line of storms first hit Baltimore, one of our biggest airports, causing several diversions that had to sit and wait for a while at their diversion airports until the weather passed and the three Washington, D.C.-area airports got their airborne traffic cleaned up. But by then the line had moved to the northeast, hitting Philadelphia and cutting off New England from the rest of the country. The diversions finally got to land in Baltimore, but any flight trying to reach New England from Baltimore was stopped by ATC because there weren’t enough open airways to handle all the traffic. Imagine shutting down LBJ, I-30, and I-35 simultaneously. The whole area ground to a halt, and the phones started ringing more and more – pilots frustrated because ATC won’t let them launch, ground personnel who had more planes to handle than places to park them, not to mention lots of unhappy passengers.

Since we couldn’t launch many of our flights from Baltimore, we had to start holding our flights on the ground in other cities that were headed toward Baltimore because we didn’t have any available gates. Situations like this are often difficult for passengers to understand because they don’t have the big picture – the weather is great in Nashville and Baltimore, so why are we delayed for two hours?!? My hat is off to the customer service agents, pilots, and flight attendants who have to explain situations like these to our passengers.

Further complicating matters, the various ATC facilities are negotiating among themselves regarding when to open and close the available airspace as the weather moves. For example, Boston Center might tell New York TRACON that they can accept traffic spaced 15 miles apart on just one airway, but New York TRACON might only be willing to space the traffic 20 miles apart (more wiggle room around the storms) and might want to switch traffic to a different airway in 30 minutes because they think the weather will move by then. As they make decisions, the updated plans slowly feed down to the pilots and dispatchers, who then have to decide how to react. Do we need more fuel for the new route? Do we concur that it’s safe? Often the dispatcher what seems like a good route, but ATC won’t accept it because of factors that he/she cannot see. Situations like this are very complicated and frustrating all around because there is no perfect solution. We just do the best we can with the circumstances we’re given, just like you do.

I hope this post gives you some insight into both my job and your own flying experience if you ever deal with weather-related delays. I assure you that we never WANT your flight to be delayed, but for any number of reasons, it’s sometimes necessary. If the weather were always perfect, and every aircraft always worked perfectly, and the airlines collectively scheduled their flights to match the capacity of each airport, every airline could run close to 100 percent. But until those beautiful events work out, we’ll sometimes have to deal with days like today.

UPDATE: An insightful letter to SWA’s pilots from SWAPA President Carl Kuwitzky. This letter includes lots of behind-the-scenes details, much of which I didn’t realize. Again, I have no opinions to offer publicly, but this is worth reading.

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I nearly blew a gasket when I saw the news:

For a few hours I seethed, complained, planned angry email, and developed a stress knot in my neck. I wanted to wring someone’s neck, and I knew exactly which neck I wanted to wring. Jenny tried to reason with me, and I wouldn’t have it. The bid and its failure resonates with some of my deepest and strongest beliefs, making these events a recipe for levels of emotion I don’t normally feel.

I finally prayed, read a bunch on the topic, and gained some perspective. While I still think the failure of our bid is a travesty and blame all sorts of people for it, I finally realized that life truly does go on. I never wrote my angry email. I can think about things other than Frontier. Everyone involved in the bid probably learned some things, and so did I.