A Top Gun Moment

I recently happened to catch the movie "Top Gun" (1986) on TV. It reminded me of a funny I need to add to this site. I’ve long maintained that, as a group, controllers are some of the funniest people around, especially for quips and one-liners.

Shortly after that movie came out, someone was vectoring an inbound rush at FARMM (NW arrivals to ORD) and getting hammered pretty well. At one point, with the mike not keyed, he shouted out, “we’re too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns!”

I forgot how hilarious we could be.

My phrase above, the mike not keyed reminds me of something else for unsettling your memory. While other permutations may have applied elsewhere, any of the headsets I used (Plantronics MS50 or Starset) were available with two different kind of PTT (push-to-talk) switches in the hand piece—locking or non-locking. At one time or another I have had both, but discovered soon enough that I much preferred the non-locking, as it was impossible to inadvertently lock it in the keyed position.

But what comes to mind in this discussion is occasional remarks I’ve seen on the web of controllers taping their mic button down for a serious session. For non-controllers readin this who might not know, controller communications are almost 100% call and respond. In other words, I issue a clearance and then wait for a reply. In fact, the reply is vitally important in almost all of our communications, and there is no place for an locked on transmitter in them.

Except…during my tour at ORD I got to spend some time in the tower getting familiar with operations in the cab and how they related to the job I was learning down in the TRACON. Same story, call and respond, except Outbound Ground. The procedure was for flight crews to call Clearance Delivery for their airways clearance (route of flight, initial altitude, transponder code) and a request to call Clearance when ready to taxi. Later configurations had the flights contact Pre-Taxi when ready.

When the aircraft was ready to taxi CD would take the strip belonging to the flight and place it on top of the stack the Outbound Ground had in front of him and the flight was advised to “monitor Ground on point 75” (aviation shorthand for 121.75). Not “contact”, but “monitor”. The Ground Controller, with a dozen or more strips in front of him had been issuing taxi instructions for a while, had his mic locked on, and contiuously read the specific taxi instructions for each flight, placing the strip on the appropriate Local Controller’s bay, and then moving on to the next clearance.

There was a lot to know about the airport operation at Outbound Ground, and all the insiders knew that it was the toughest position in the cab. Once you’d checked out on Outbound, you were excused if you felt confident you were going to make it.

The coda to this is that there was no acknowledgement possible by the aircraft and part of their taxi clearance included the instruction to “monitor the tower (Local) frequency when nearing the runway. The Local controller would similarly instruct flights to “follow the tri-jet” or whatever, but since Local is the very definition of call-and-respond, never locked his mic on.

Last updated: 02 September 2018