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I'm responsible for the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic in the national air space system. In one shift, I communicate with 300-400 airplanes. We talk to the pilots and the cockpits, and communicate about what is happening on the ground and in the air. Everyone has to know generally what everyone else is doing, and we work in unison to coordinate verbally and operate under procedures that allow us to make everything function together. Everything depends on what the winds are doing—they designate what runways we're using, because you generally want to land and take off into the wind as much as possible. I have to separate aircrafts and move them efficiently, safely and quickly. We have to get them in and out of the airport gates and keep everything going so the air travelers can get to their destinations in a timely matter.

I am certified to work in any position in our tower. In any typical tower, there are people working in flight data clearance delivery, and they are responsible for making sure that clearances are correctly issued to the aircrafts, their routings [destinations] are valid, and they have the appropriate altitudes and frequencies for while they're in the air. They also make sure each craft has a transponder code, which is what the computer uses to identify each aircraft on the radarscope.

Most of the bigger airports have ground metering, which ensures that each aircraft that's ready to depart and taxi out to the runways has all the appropriate departure information it needs to fly. Ground metering will then send the paper strip with all the aircraft's identifying information on it to the ground controller. We also have local controllers, and they talk to the planes while they're in the air and clear them to land and take off. They also talk to helicopters and other aircraft in the vicinity, and keep everybody separated. We also have coordinators, local assistants, and monitors who help out with another set of eyes when things get busy.

I had a flight that took off from San Francisco going nonstop to Paris, and it lost an engine on take off. So, the pilot couldn't climb, and he was heading for another airport and their arrival runway. We immediately called the other control tower so they could see it. A lot of times, we don't have a lot of say in what's going to happen because we're not the ones flying the airplane. In emergency situations, we have to rely on what the pilot says he or she needs, and then we work around that. So, I turned him right and had him head for San Francisco Bay. That placed the aircraft over water so the pilot could dump fuel and not hurt anybody. I had him fly at a constant altitude and informed the appropriate people at the other tower of the situation, then handed it over to them once he got there.

After high school, I went to Southern Illinois University and earned a Bachelor's degree in business. I incorporated computer science material with business material. Then I took an air traffic control evaluation, which is an aptitude test for people who want to be air traffic controllers. People who scored the highest showed the most aptitude for becoming an air traffic controller. They would basically hire people off the street to do this job. After I took the test, I went to get training at an FAA (the Federal Aviation Administration under the Department of Transportation) Academy in Oklahoma City. There, they cram about three or four years of a college education into a three-month long program. Part of the screening process is this training program, because it's how they see if you can handle stress. That was the hardest part of becoming an air traffic controller.

Today, most people getting hired come from the military, the Department of Defense, or colleges who offer degrees in air traffic control, although the FAA is supposedly going to allow the open testing again. Generally these colleges have a three or four-year program, and you end up with a bachelor's degree. Usually the colleges are located somewhere where they have an association with an airport. Or, they would hire people from the military—people who'd been trained as air traffic controllers and then transferred into the FAA and became civilian air traffic controllers.

My first job was in Chicago's ARTCC (Air Route Traffic Control Center), which we generally call a center, and I worked and trained there for 2.5 years. The center is a little different than the control tower, because it is more responsible for making sure airplanes don't collide while they're in fight, between destinations. At that time, centers really needed people, so almost everyone was hired there first. After that, I went to work in Carbondale, Illinois and I got certified (done with all the training specific to that facility) there. After a vacation in California, I decided to transfer, and I worked in San Francisco and Oakland in several different settings for a total of 11 years. My dad got sick, and so I decided to get back to Chicago and started working at O'Hare in the control tower.

I couldn't find a job in my chosen field. It's sad to say, but I did this just because I needed a good paying job. And at the time, the starting salary was pretty good and as you continue to train and learn new things, you get pretty significant raises and salaries. I stayed in the field, and I found I really loved it. When I started this, I told myself that I had found what I was really meant to do. It's corny, but it's true. I don't feel like I'm going to work. My brother, who is also a controller, says they pay us to play an elaborate video game. That's basically what it is. You have to get planes from here to here, while keeping them so far apart. It's such a feeling of satisfaction when you launch an airplane. Everything's going and moving so quickly. It's instant gratification, because you are seeing the fruits of your effort. And it's fun. I've been very, very fortunate; I've found something I thoroughly enjoy, I'm decent at it, and they pay me well. It doesn't get any better than that.

The main pressure you have is that everything is always moving. You don't really have an opportunity to ask for a "time out." You can't stop if you have a problem or if things aren't going well. You have to deal with a pilot turning the wrong way, for example. You have to fix the problem while at the same time keeping up with everything else that's going on. So, that's the kind of situation where you really have to prioritize what you're doing so that everything keeps moving. If the phone rings, you can't stop to answer the phone. In my job, you have to keep doing what you're doing while you're answering the phone. You have to multi-task. When unusual things happen, that's when you feel the most stress. When everything's just routine, it's much easier. There are days you dread plugging in your headset because it seems like every time you plug in, things fall apart. There are days you get off work and your head is still spinning, and days when thunderstorms come through and wreak havoc.

I get to the airport, go up to the 17th floor and drop off my stuff, and then I go up two more flights to the 19th floor where the tower is. After I get there, I sign in to work my eight-hour shift. The shift varies day by day. I check the "read and initial," which shows any new information we may need to know before we start working. This might include something like new airlines, a new procedure, or construction, or anything that might affect the work you're doing, whether temporary or permanent.

Then, I get my headset and the supervisor assigns me a position to work. I'm certified in every position in the tower, so it really just depends on what the supervisor assigns to me. I might end up training someone, as well. Next, I plug in my headset and get a briefing from the person who was working that position before me about what was going on before I got there. And then I just take over from there, and I work until it's time for a break. I'll work for an hour to two hours and then get a break for about 45 minutes to an hour. Then I come back and get assigned to another position—we work about four positions a night, and get about three breaks. We use the breaks to eat, go to the restroom, go to meetings, do paperwork, play computer games, or even exercise and to relax for a while, because it can get very hectic in the tower and you just need a rest from all that activity.

Every month, we have a meeting to get information for that month, and we're responsible for learning it. In the spring, we start talking about thunderstorms and rain. In the fall, we start talking about snow and ice. Once a year, we have to do a refresher on emergency weather procedures; that way we're still familiar with things we don't use on a regular basis. Every year, we also have to review the code of ethics for federal employees.

I interact with other controllers the most at work, because we have to coordinate with each other. I also talk to controllers at other facilities when necessary. You have to check with the other controllers to ensure that if and when you have to change the way you're doing things, that it won't interfere with what they're doing. When we have planes that need to go somewhere different, we have to communicate with each other to get the information to give to the pilots.

Well, the positive is that I get paid very well, so I can live well. I have the ability to take nice vacations. A negative would be the schedule. We're working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You don't necessarily get weekends off. You work mornings, evenings, and midnight shifts—there is no regular routine. It's hard to have a social life, because our schedule varies from day to day and week to week. I work a lot of overtime; we get called in to work on our days off out of the blue. So if you had plans, you're out of luck. People who have families want to have Friday, Saturday, or Sunday off, but those are the hardest to get.

The problem we have today is that all the people that got hired between 1981 and 1986 all have between 20 and 25 years in the FAA. If you're 50 at your 20th year, you can retire. With 25 years experience, you can retire no matter how old you are. The projected retirements are much lower than the actual retirements over the last several years. The problem they're having today is that almost all the controllers are becoming eligible to retire, so there are a lot of open positions. There are more positions being generated almost daily. So, the openings fluctuate.

I'm eligible to retire this year. I've put in 23 years of work, and I turn 50 this year, so I'm at retirement age. I could work for another six years, but we have forced retirement at 56. For me, retirement works like this: I get 37% of my base salary for the first 20 years I worked and in addition to that, I get an additional 1% for every year after the first 20. So if I were to retire this year, I would get 37% of my base salary, which would be about $50-60,000 a year.

Also, part of my retirement plan is Social Security. However, I'm not eligible to collect social security until I'm 62 years old. So, when I retire the FAA will pay me what I would earn for Social Security (that depends on how much you've worked and in what capacity) until I do turn 62, on top of the 37% I mentioned earlier. We also continue with our benefits once we retire. And we have a version of a 401(k) that's called a "thrift savings plan." The FAA matches up to 5% of what I put into my retirement account.

Most people start at $20-22,000 a year when they get hired. Your salary from there will depend on where and how long you've worked. People who work at lower level facilities get paid less than people who work at high-level facilities like O'Hare. Generally, the high level places top at about $120,000-$150,000 a year. People like me who have worked for over 25 years are earning about $150,000, while people who were hired 15 years ago are earning around $130-140,000 a year. The newer people are probably earning about $120,000 a year. At O'Hare, a supervisor makes about $20,000 more a year than the controllers working in the tower. And in addition to that, we get paid extra for working overtime, Sundays, the holidays, or for training someone else. Generally, you can count on about another 15% of your salary a year.

In 1981, President Reagan fired a huge amount of air traffic controllers after struggling with the Union and labor strikes. The old Union organized a strike and the President ordered them all to go back to work. The ones that refused got fired, and that was most of them. I got hired in 1984, when they were still trying to recover from that mass firing. So, between 1981 and 1987, there was a mass hiring, and more people like me came off the street to work for the FAA. Now, those of us hired during that time are reaching retirement age, so for the next five years there's going to be a lot of hiring going on in the FAA. There's going to be almost 100% turnover by then. They are expecting flights to increase and air travel to increase, so they'll probably need even more people.

I like working with the airplanes because that's what it's all about. That's why you get into this job. It's the gratification you get from moving as many airplanes as quickly, as efficiently, and as safely as you can. It's just fun.

When I was working in San Francisco, I had a helicopter crash and somebody got killed. That's probably the most traumatic thing I've been through. Until an investigation exonerates you, there's always that nagging doubt in the back of your mind. Until they tell you that you did everything right, you always wonder. But this helicopter crashed because of equipment failure; the tail rotor actually came off the helicopter. So it had nothing to do with what we were doing. I haven't had anything like that happen at O'Hare.

I also don't enjoy the paperwork and the briefing. It's just tedious and boring. I want to go in and do my job; I don't want to have to deal with filling out papers. It's not that it's horrible, but it's my least favorite thing to do. When you've been doing this for over 20 years, the yearly refreshers about emergency weather procedures get old. I can almost read it verbatim without even looking at it.

We get a lot of computer-based instruction now. We get a lot of training and briefing items on CDs. We also have a lot more computer equipment in the tower, and everything's getting more "high tech." That's changed a lot. In fact, that's one of the things t driving older controllers away. They don't want to have to deal with learning new ways to do things. For example, the FAA wants everyone to use electronic strips to identify information about a certain plane instead of paper strips. They haven't found a way to do this efficiently yet, but they keep saying it's going to happen. Some people don't see any way that it's going to be effective. It's going to be more complicated. We have a system that works, that's easy and simple. They'd be taking our eyes away from the air space and we'd have to push 15 buttons on the machine to accomplish what we could do with one pen mark on a piece of paper. It's just not making our jobs easier—all it does it make it electronic.

What goes on with the airlines directly affects what will happen in this career field—the two are intertwined. So far, we haven't really seen large negative affects because of the economy. Our numbers are going back up, even though the price of tickets and fuel is up. People are still flying, so it doesn't seem to have had any effect at this point.

Be patient. There are so many trainees that it's going to be an above average time to get through training programs. Unfortunately, in the centers they have pretty long wait times just to be able to get into the classrooms to start the training. If you really want to get into the job, try to be patient, because there are so many trainees that it's just not going to go as quickly as you hope it might.

If you're just starting in the tower, don't push the envelope. Know where your comfort zone is. We push trainees, but once they're certified, we tell them to find their comfort zone and stay there. Work within your abilities. You've proven you can do the job—that's why you're certified. That's the best advice I could give.

When I got through the FAA Academy training in Oklahoma City, I was told to be proud of what I'd accomplished. Out of every 1,000 people who apply to do this job, one person makes it into the Academy. If you can do that, don't forget it. You've accomplished something very special. I've always felt very blessed.

You have to be decisive. You have to make a decision, stick with it, and make it work. If for some reason it doesn't work, you have to be able to instantly come up with another idea. You've got to be quick on your feet and quick to analyze. When you make a decision, you've got see it through to make sure it's going to work. Anything can happen in a split second, and you have to be able to instantly react. You don't have time to blank out. Problem-solving and being able to see things in three dimensions are good skills to have. Understanding math and reasoning doesn't hurt, because you have to consider so many factors like time, speed, distance, etc. You have to take in all the information and think about what's going to happen in the future, minute to minute.

In the emergency situation I mentioned earlier, I was at an advantage because I'm a pilot. Because I'm a pilot, I know the aerodynamics of what goes on while flying. Some of the colleges require you to get a private pilot's license. It allows you to understand what the person in the cockpit is going through. It's a little additional information that could help. I had a supervisor at one time who told me that he didn't think that getting your pilot's license was absolutely necessary, but he did think every single air traffic controller should take lessons at least to the point that they can fly solo. That way they have "hands on" knowledge of what it's like in the cockpit of an airplane. That's valuable in this job.