Controller ASLEEP at the wheel

[chefnoel]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080929/od_nm/us_flights_oversleep;_ylt=AicK4xMZApsSZF5rH4vglOwuQE4F

[cessna157]

I don't think she was sleeping on the job.  The article makes it sound as if she was late to work due to sleeping in.  Nevertheless, still funny.


When I was a competitor on my college's flght team, we would wake up very early, preflight our airplanes, and all would taxi out to the runway, and be ready to go the moment the tower opened up at 7am.  One morning, as the 5 or 6 of us sat at the runway ready to go, there wasn't an opening annoucement at 7:00.  So we waited for a couple mins, and took off anyway and started with our practice.  At about 7:15, the opening controller (and a good friend of mine) got on the freq, quite out of breath from running up the 5 flights of stairs to the tower cab, finally announced the opening of class D and told all the flight teammers who were in the pattern to fly continuous right traffic with no calls needed  (they're used to our routine, so they always had a custom tailored clearance for us, I can give more details of the special clearance if you guys are interested).  I asked "Well, did you sleep in or something?"  Tower's reply was "Uhhh, no.....bad traffic on the interstate, yeah, thats what it was".

No harm, no foul.

[goowe]

...I can give more details of the special clearance if you guys are interested)...

I'd be curious to know what the special clearance was and which airport it was at, if you have time.

[cessna157]

Well, let's just say its the 4th busiest airport in the STATE of OHIO, and the busiest class D in the state.

We (the team) had a great relationship with the control tower at our airport.  And weekday mornings at 7am, and pretty much all Saturday morning, we had half of the airport reserved just for our use.  We would all taxi out as a flight of 5 (or 4 or sometimes 6 if we had an extra flyer) as opposed to individual aircraft (hopefully you understand the difference between and aircraft and a "flight").

When we were ready to go, we'd call the tower and report "BYE50 flight ready at 27R for NIFA landings."  Tower would say "BYE50 flight, you're cleared for continuous right traffic runway 27R, report when finished."  Basically, the clearance gave us continual use of the traffic pattern for the runway.  Only the lead airplane would talk to tower before we took off, and once again when we all landed.  Nobody else had to make any calls at any time (we used hand signals on the ground).  I assume this was all organized through a LOA with the tower at some point, but I never saw it.  We were just trained on how to do it.  The tower guys were always awesome when it came to us taking over half of the airport once a week on Saturdays.

[goowe]

Very neat! I bet you had a great time

Thank you!

[cessna157]

The NIFA Flight Team and Alpha Eta Rho were my two bestest memories of college.  I made so many friends there and learned so much about the industry.

[NAplaya16-ATC]

cessna,  is that don scott airport you are referring to?

[cessna157]

Heh heh, yup, you figured me out.

[rpd]

What the heck is the "airports secondary control service"?

[cessna157]

I'm guessing here, but I'd say it is the facility that covers the airspace when the radar controlling facility is closed.  For example, if <insert smaller city> approach closes at midnight and reopens at 6am, <insert ARTCC> center controls their airspace.

[air727]

If I were to guess I would say it's the Ohio state university airport

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