Most members of the earlier eight-hour watch in air traffic control had ended their shift at midnight and gone wearily home. Newcomers on duty had taken their place. A few controllers, because of staff shortage and illness of others, had been assigned a spreadover shift which would end at 2A .M. They included the tower watch chief; Wayne Tevis, the radar supervisor; and Keith Bakersfeld.
Since the emotion-charged session with his brother, which ended abruptly and abortively an hour and a half ago, Keith had sought relief of mind by concentrating intensely on the radar screen in front of him. If he could maintain his concentration, he thought, the remaining time — the last he would ever have to fill — would pass quickly. Keith had continued handling east arrivals, working with a young assistant — a radar handoff man — seated on his left. Wayne Tevis was still supervising, riding his castor-equipped stool around the control room, propelled by his Texan boots, though less energetically, as Tevis’s own duty shift neared an end.
In one sense, Keith had succeeded in his concentration; yet in a strange way he had not. It seemed almost as if his mind had split into two levels, like a duplex, and he was able to be in both at once. On one level he was directing east arrivals traffic — at the moment, without problems. On the other, his thoughts were personal and introspective. It was not a condition which could last, but perhaps, Keith thought, his mind was like a lightbulb about to fail and, for its last few minutes, burning brightest.
The personal side of his thoughts was dispassionate now, and calmer than before; perhaps the session with Mel had achieved that, if nothing more. All things seemed ordained and settled. Keith’s duty shift would end; he would leave this place; soon after, all waiting and all anguish would be over. He had the conviction that his own life and others’ were already severed; he no longer belonged to Natalie or Mel, or Brian and Theo … or they to him. He belonged to the already dead — to the Redferns who had died together in the wreck of their Beech Bonanza; to little Valerie … her family.
All the while, on the other mental level, and with traces of his old flair, he coped with east arrivals.
Awareness of the crisis with Trans America Flight Two came to Keith gradually.
Lincoln air traffic control had been advised of Flight Two’s intention to return there — almost an hour ago, and seconds after Captain Anson Harris’s decision was made known. Word had come by “hot line” telephone directly from Chicago Center supervisor to the tower watch chief, after similar notification through Cleveland and Toronto centers. Initially there had been little to do at Lincoln beyond advising the airport management, through the Snow Desk, of the flight’s request for runway three zero.
Later, when Flight Two had been taken over from Cleveland, by Chicago Center, more specific preparations were begun.
Wayne Tevis, the radar supervisor, was alerted by the tower chief, who went personally to the radar room to inform Tevis of Flight Two’s condition, its estimated arrival time, and the doubt about which runway — two five or three zero — was to be used for landing.
At the same time, ground control was notifying airport emergency services to stand by and, shortly after, to move with their vehicles onto the airfield.
A ground controller talked by radio telephone with Joe Patroni to check that Patroni had been advised of the urgent need for runway three zero. He had.
Contact was then established, on a reserve radio frequency, between the control tower and the flight deck of the Aereo-Mexican jet which blocked the runway. The setup was to ensure that when Patroni was at the aircraft’s controls, there could be instant two-way communication, if needed.
In the radar room, when he had listened to the tower chief’s news, Wayne Tevis’s initial reaction was to glance at Keith. Unless duties were changed around, it would be Keith, in charge of east arrivals, who would accept Flight Two from Chicago Center, and monitor the flight in.
Tevis asked the tower chief quietly, “Should we take Keith off; put someone else on?”
The older man hesitated. He remembered the earlier emergency tonight involving the Air Force KC-135. He had removed Keith from duty then, on a pretext, and afterward wondered if he had been too hasty. When a man was teeter-tottering between self-assurance and the loss of it, it was easy to send the scales the wrong way without intending to. The tower chief had an uneasy feeling, too, of having blundered into something private between Keith and Mel Bakersfeld when the two of them were talking earlier in the corridor outside. He could have left them alone for a few minutes longer, but hadn’t.
The tower watch chief was tired himself, not only from the trying shift tonight, but from others which preceded it. He remembered reading somewhere recently that new air traffic systems, being readied for the mid- 1970s, would halve controllers’ workloads, thereby reducing occupational fatigue and nervous breakdowns. The tower chief remained skeptical. He doubted if, in air traffic control, pressures would ever lighten; if they eased in one way, he thought, they would increase in another. It made him sympathize with those who, like Keith — still gaunt, pale, strained — had proved victims of the system.
Still in an undertone, Wayne Tevis repeated, “Do I take him off, or not?”
The tower chief shook his head. Low-voiced, he answered, “Let’s not push it. Keep Keith on, but stay close.”
It was then that Keith, observing the two with heads together, guessed that something critical was coming up. He was, after all, an old hand, familiar with signals of impending trouble.
Instinct told him, too, that the supervisors’ conversation was, in part, about himself. He could understand why. Keith had no doubt he would be relieved from duty in a few minutes from now, or shifted to a less vital radar position. He found himself not caring.
It was a surprise when Tevis — without shuffling duties — began warning all watch positions of the expected arrival of Trans America Two, in distress, and its priority handling.
Departure control was cautioned: Route all departures well clear of the flight’s anticipated route in.
To Keith, Tevis expounded the runway problem — the uncertainty of which runway was to be used, and the need to postpone a decision until the last possible moment.
“You work out your own plan, buddy boy,” Tevis instructed in his nasal Texas drawl. “And after the handover, stay with it. We’ll take everything else off your hands.”
At first, Keith nodded agreement, no more perturbed than he had been before. Automatically; he began to calculate the flight pattern he would use. Such plans were always worked out mentally. There was never time to commit them to paper; besides, the need for improvisation usually turned up.
As soon as he received the flight from Chicago Center, Keith reasoned, he would head it generally toward runway three zero, but with sufficient leeway to swing the aircraft left — though without drastic turns at low altitude — if runway two five was forced on them as the final choice.
He calculated: He would have the aircraft under approach control for approximately ten minutes. Tevis had already advised him that not until the last five, probably, would they know for sure about the runway. It was slicing things fine, and there would be sweating in the radar room, as well as in the air. But it could be managed — just. Once more, in his mind, Keith went over the planned flight path and compass headings.
By then, more definite reports had begun to filter, unofficially, through the tower. Controllers passed information to each other as work gaps permitted … The flight had had a midair explosion. It was limping in with structural damage and injured people … Control of the airplane was in doubt. The pilots needed the longest runway — which might or might not be available … Captain Demerest’s warning was repeated: …
Even among the controllers, to whom tension was as commonplace as traffic, there was now a shared nervous anxiety.
Keith’s radar handoff man, seated alongside, passed on the news which came to him in snatches. As he did, Keith’s awareness and apprehension grew.
