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Spinning at the boundary: The making of an air traffic controller
Air Traffic Control is one of the most misunderstood occupations in the world, and yet it effects anyone that has ever...or will ever fly in an aircraft. This book tells all. You may never fly again.
292 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 11, 2015
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16 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 18, 2018
I don’t usually write book reports, but I knew I had to write one from early in this read. There was more to love and hate about this book than any I’ve read lately.
The good:
The stories were excellent, and that’s really why I bought this book. Some are hilarious, some are terrifying, some are even underwhelming, but almost all of them were at least entertaining. I felt like I got my money’s worth.
I also enjoyed the diverse perspective that this author brought to the topic. He spent an entire career in air traffic control. He started when many towers didn’t have radar and progressed through the internet era and GPS; he worked in towers and radar rooms; he worked at small airports and in the largest facilities in the country, and everywhere in between; he worked as a union controller and as a manager.
The bad:
Self-promotion is rampant. Many chapters are dedicated to telling the reader what a badass the author is at vectoring traffic at high-speed, close intervals. There was also a healthy dose of braggadocio about the driven, aggressive personality of air traffic controllers in general. The author doesn’t quite compare controllers to war heroes or fighter pilots, but he does explain that he was responsible for more human lives in an hour than most surgeons in a whole year. I am willing to forgive most of that because some of it is true, and most of the rest is to be expected when anyone writes their memoirs (nobody writes about their boring job), but there was more than I cared for.
There was no proofreading. There are spelling errors and disjointed chapters throughout the book, but it became particularly distracting towards the end. I presume the author got bored with this project over time, and decided to throw the latter half of the book together without any care. He evidently sent it to the printer without so much as asking a friend to give it a read with a red pen. But I’ll forgive that, too. Writing isn’t the author’s trade, and I didn’t buy the book because it was a literary masterpiece. But be prepared: some errors are so glaring that you have to interrupt your flow to try and understand what you just read.
There aren’t any visual aids. If you don’t know what a VOR is, or how ILS works, or what they do in a TRACON, you’ll be a little behind the curve. The author tries to spell out how some of this stuff works, but it would have been easier to throw in some diagrams, photos, or maps. I am very familiar with the Miami TRACON airspace, and many of the stories in that area really came alive for me. If you’re not as familiar, your experience probably won’t be as good as mine.
The only thing that really got under my skin was the bitching. It’s not constant, but it is frequent enough (and obvious enough from the first page of a chapter) that I rolled my eyes sometimes and groaned a little bit. In one persona, the author manages to: bitch about management from the perspective of a union worker, bitch about union subordinates as a manager, bitch about colleagues as a colleague, bitch about the FAA as a member of the aviation industry, bitch about government as a citizen, and the list goes on. Again, I’ll forgive most of this because it’s natural to expect someone to air some grievances in their memoirs, and some of the bitching is justified. But it was very sanctimonious. In every occasion where a complaint is lodged, the author is correct and competent, and the “other guy” – a colleague, a pilot, a manager, a subordinate, or whoever—is the stupidest, profanity-riddled-something-something in the whole hemisphere. At the start of the book, I liked the author. At the end, by the ending I was convinced that maybe there was something to the long list of characters who think he’s an asshole.
Anyway, it was a fun read and a good perspective on a world that most people don’t see or even think about. I felt like I got my money’s worth, and I gave it three stars.
The good:
The stories were excellent, and that’s really why I bought this book. Some are hilarious, some are terrifying, some are even underwhelming, but almost all of them were at least entertaining. I felt like I got my money’s worth.
I also enjoyed the diverse perspective that this author brought to the topic. He spent an entire career in air traffic control. He started when many towers didn’t have radar and progressed through the internet era and GPS; he worked in towers and radar rooms; he worked at small airports and in the largest facilities in the country, and everywhere in between; he worked as a union controller and as a manager.
The bad:
Self-promotion is rampant. Many chapters are dedicated to telling the reader what a badass the author is at vectoring traffic at high-speed, close intervals. There was also a healthy dose of braggadocio about the driven, aggressive personality of air traffic controllers in general. The author doesn’t quite compare controllers to war heroes or fighter pilots, but he does explain that he was responsible for more human lives in an hour than most surgeons in a whole year. I am willing to forgive most of that because some of it is true, and most of the rest is to be expected when anyone writes their memoirs (nobody writes about their boring job), but there was more than I cared for.
There was no proofreading. There are spelling errors and disjointed chapters throughout the book, but it became particularly distracting towards the end. I presume the author got bored with this project over time, and decided to throw the latter half of the book together without any care. He evidently sent it to the printer without so much as asking a friend to give it a read with a red pen. But I’ll forgive that, too. Writing isn’t the author’s trade, and I didn’t buy the book because it was a literary masterpiece. But be prepared: some errors are so glaring that you have to interrupt your flow to try and understand what you just read.
There aren’t any visual aids. If you don’t know what a VOR is, or how ILS works, or what they do in a TRACON, you’ll be a little behind the curve. The author tries to spell out how some of this stuff works, but it would have been easier to throw in some diagrams, photos, or maps. I am very familiar with the Miami TRACON airspace, and many of the stories in that area really came alive for me. If you’re not as familiar, your experience probably won’t be as good as mine.
The only thing that really got under my skin was the bitching. It’s not constant, but it is frequent enough (and obvious enough from the first page of a chapter) that I rolled my eyes sometimes and groaned a little bit. In one persona, the author manages to: bitch about management from the perspective of a union worker, bitch about union subordinates as a manager, bitch about colleagues as a colleague, bitch about the FAA as a member of the aviation industry, bitch about government as a citizen, and the list goes on. Again, I’ll forgive most of this because it’s natural to expect someone to air some grievances in their memoirs, and some of the bitching is justified. But it was very sanctimonious. In every occasion where a complaint is lodged, the author is correct and competent, and the “other guy” – a colleague, a pilot, a manager, a subordinate, or whoever—is the stupidest, profanity-riddled-something-something in the whole hemisphere. At the start of the book, I liked the author. At the end, by the ending I was convinced that maybe there was something to the long list of characters who think he’s an asshole.
Anyway, it was a fun read and a good perspective on a world that most people don’t see or even think about. I felt like I got my money’s worth, and I gave it three stars.
January 5, 2022
I enjoyed this book.
It goes into a lot of detail about air traffic control starting from about 1974 (in the Navy for a few years then the FAA), up until fairly recently. It is funny, completely irreverent, and the author tells it like he sees it. It does sometimes devolve into a bit of a rant against inept management and policies, but is certainly entertaining.
The language is very adult. There are numerous expletives and genital references. Definitely not the book to inspire your kids to be air traffic controllers.
The only reason I knocked it down a star is the horrible grammar. There was clearly no editor involved. There were misspellings and mis-punctuation in virtually every paragraph. There were many of the typical "there/they're/their" type of errors, and plenty of misspelled words (like "distain" was used several times, spelled that way each time). If you can get past this (I know some can't), it was very entertaining.
It goes into a lot of detail about air traffic control starting from about 1974 (in the Navy for a few years then the FAA), up until fairly recently. It is funny, completely irreverent, and the author tells it like he sees it. It does sometimes devolve into a bit of a rant against inept management and policies, but is certainly entertaining.
The language is very adult. There are numerous expletives and genital references. Definitely not the book to inspire your kids to be air traffic controllers.
The only reason I knocked it down a star is the horrible grammar. There was clearly no editor involved. There were misspellings and mis-punctuation in virtually every paragraph. There were many of the typical "there/they're/their" type of errors, and plenty of misspelled words (like "distain" was used several times, spelled that way each time). If you can get past this (I know some can't), it was very entertaining.
January 29, 2018
As a Ground worker of 30 years of a major Airline I have a scanner and tune in a lot to listen to all the frequency’s, although a good Biography of his career I was looking for more “heavy” action from the BIG airports. But these guys are AMAZING, I love listening to ground control at work, these guys sound like auctioneers! I like how at the end he explains the shortage or lack of experienced controllers, the flying public needs to know about this,
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2021
Horrible grammar
I’m not that big into grammar but this author’s grammar had me banging my head against the wall. He constantly used the wrong there/their/they’re, lose/loose, accept/except and every other word choice screw up there is and he definitely used ‘creative spelling((in other words, he can’t spell.)
I’m not that big into grammar but this author’s grammar had me banging my head against the wall. He constantly used the wrong there/their/they’re, lose/loose, accept/except and every other word choice screw up there is and he definitely used ‘creative spelling((in other words, he can’t spell.)
July 13, 2018
Interesting reading giving insights in daily work of air traffic controller. Funny and vulgar also. Author seems to be arrogant smart-ass, who always knows best and considers 90% of other people completely dumb. This is the only reason for not giving 5 stars though.
November 10, 2018
Good read. Written with humor and style. If your interested in what makes a controller tick, this book is for you.
May 23, 2015
I couldn't finish it. In fact, I couldn't get past the third chapter. As a controller, this book was painful to read. Way too basic and detailed to be interesting. For the layperson, there couldn't possible be enough detail to be interesting. The writing isn't terrible and might have earned the author 3 stars if there weren't so many spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. Seriously, every page is peppered with them. I'm pretty sure no one proofread it...
Don't waste your time or money.
Don't waste your time or money.
September 20, 2016
Very entertaining, if a little polemic.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews