Jerome, Go Around
This is a short story based on the near-hit that occurred at KAUS on February 4, 2023.
In aviation, there is almost never a single cause for accidents such as this one. All the holes of the Swiss cheese have to line up, and when they do and tragedy befalls us, it becomes so easy to be swept up into the media frenzy and blame a single person or company.
The tower controller at KAUS that day was unfairly identified by the press and scrutinized publicly. This short story, a work of fiction, is dedicated to him.
The foot was still in the brown leather shoe, and it belonged to the passenger who was still strapped to his seat about a hundred yards away. His body was burned beyond all recognition, charred from the heat of the explosion so fiercely hot that it melted the aluminum airframe of United flight 255.
Black, acrid smoke filled the air around the crash site, choking the few disoriented survivors who were crying in agony. The luggage of all 168 passengers and crew aboard had been ripped open, and their contents were strewn about a half-mile radius around the airport, dotting the runway and the grassy fields , transforming it into a war torn shanty town.
A woman with white hair limped away from the horrific accident until she could no longer feel the heat from the fires, and splashed her face clean with a bottle of water she had kept in her fanny pack. There was a metal shard sticking out of her leg, and she was bleeding out. The woman looked down and touched the shrapnel, wincing in pain.
"Why did you let this happen?" she asked. "This is all your fault!"
They warned Jerome at the start of his career about the dreams this job would give him. He shrugged it off at first, but when his nightmares kept waking him up on some nights before the 12-hour shifts at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport control tower, he thought his coworkers had transferred some curse to him. It was a terrible, bloody vision that was in the back of his mind while he sat at his terminal, directing commercial airline traffic carrying tens of thousands of souls every day in fast-moving tin tubes. A solemn reminder that demanded him not to fuck it up.
In the four years Jerome was assigned to the Austin control tower, he got in hot water with his supervisor only three times, but almost nothing that caused harm or serious operational delays. In the first week after his probationary period had ended, he directed a Delta plane to a taxiway that was closed off for repairs, stranding the Airbus 220 for more than an hour with no forward way out. It had to be towed out backwards to the next open taxiway using a specialized vehicle, which happened to get a flat tire on the way to rescue the Delta plane.
Last year, towards the end of a particularly stressful day caused by snowstorms in the northeast, Jerome mixed up two very similar sounding call signs on the radio: eight-three-niner-whiskey and eight-three-niner-whiskey-papa, both Piper Cherokees, a single-engine training aircraft, who just happened to be inbound to the airport at the same time. When Jerome instructed niner-whiskey to turn left heading 270 degrees, he had actually intended to give those instructions to niner-whiskey-papa, a verbal slip up that would have put a student pilot and his instructor on a collision course with a private business jet. Fortunately the instructor immediately recognized the hazardous situation that heading would have put them in and broadcasted “They’re trying to kill us here in Austin!” on the approach radio frequency.
Mistakes like these happened at every airport in America more regularly than the general public was made aware of, and most of them were never reported on. But every so often, a seriously grave error in judgment by either a pilot or controller, or both, put lives in danger and made the headlines.
On a February morning around 6:45, early into his shift, Jerome did something and knew that he had screwed the pooch, but it was not until he was dismissed and sent home early for the day, plopped on the sofa, and saw footage of the near collision that he caused posted on TikTok, that he realized he had utterly and most unequivocally fucked it up.
Jerome had cleared a large FedEx cargo aircraft, a Boeing 767, to land on the same runway that a passenger airliner was taking off from, and the two aircraft came within 100 feet of each other before the captain of the FedEx flight executed a go-around.
“What happened?” he asked himself. “What the hell did I just do?!”
About 140 Texans were boarding Southwest flight 708 to escape the brief, frigid winter season that seems to last only a few weeks, and set off on their way to Cabo San Lucas. The weather made a turn for the better overnight: warm, moist Gulf air moved through and thawed the icy remnants of a winter storm, but condensed into a thick fog that blanketed the entire city.
“Southwest 708, cleared for takeoff without delay, runway 1-8 left” Jerome said robotically. “There’s a 767, five mile final, landing same runway.”
The observation deck from the control tower was only 90 feet high, just barely poking above a thick layer of ground fog. Clear blue skies were visible above, but the entire airport was in the soup. Pilots would have to progressively taxi from point to point, reporting their positions along the way as the controllers were unable to see what was happening on the ground beneath them.
“Austin tower, this is FedEx 1432. Are we still cleared to land? Where’s that departing traffic?” Moments later, the FedEx captain called out in a panic, “Southwest, abort take off! FedEx is going around!”
The sound of genuine fear in his voice replayed again and again on the nightly news, while the pundits speculated on what happened and placed blame on everything from overworked ATC personnel to Jerome’s character and whether or not he was fit to be working in a control tower in the first place. It was his nightmare coming alive to be shared on every television and mobile phone in America for the next forty-eight hours.
After a couple of weeks since Jerome was sent home for clearing a cargo jet to land atop a commercial airliner, he was able to enroll in remedial training to maintain the currency of his ATC license and was eventually reassigned to clearance control at the airport, which was the first controller a pilot would speak to while on the ground, usually to file a flight plan. Although a lot of his colleagues saw this as an obvious demotion, Jerome was given the easiest and least stressful position while he put the pieces of his life back together and the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board conducted their investigation of the incident.
Several months after returning to work as a clearance controller, Jerome was scheduled to talk with a few representatives from the NTSB. The agency had already conducted a preliminary analysis of the weather, the events of that morning, and the circumstances that lead to two large jets coming within 100 feet of each other.
The interview was scheduled to take place at the Office of Aviation, which was a small, one story building next to the cell phone lot at the Austin Bergstrom airport. The parking lot to the office was nearly empty, except for one other car. Jerome parked next to it and walked inside.
There was a single conference room in the building, and it was easy for him to find. There was only one person waiting for him inside the room. Sandra Hugo was a Human Performance Specialist at the NTSB. She investigated aviation accidents and specialized in determining whether human psychophysiogical factors were a contributing cause. She had short, blond hair that was in very tight curls. She seemed so small while she sat at the long, empty table and wrote in her notebook. Jerome walked in. She removed the bifocals that were resting on her nose, and they hung around her neck.
She looked up and said, "You're in the right place. Come in and have a seat."
Jerome walked over to shake hands with Sandra. She was a short woman and the top of her head came up to Jerome's neck.
"This is it?" Jerome asked. "I thought there would be more people today."
"This is it. Only us and the tape recorder."
Jerome took a seat across the table and felt immediately at ease. He was expecting at least four or five guys from the agencies, the type of men with thick mustaches and beer bellies, who might crack a joke about Jerome's time in the Navy and then follow it up with a quick non-apology, like "Oh, we're just messing with you, squid. At least you're not Army."
"I was expecting more of you guys today, but this works, too."
"Expecting more of us? How come?" Sandra asked.
"I know what I did back in February, and a good ol' government ass-chewing is usually a group activity."
"That's not what today is about." Sandra reassured him. "Let's just start the darn thing, and get this interview over with. How about that?"
"Whatever you want to do."
Sandra stood up to reach across the table and start the recorder. "OK, today's June the third, 2023. I'm Sandra Hugo with the NTSB," she started. "I'm here to discuss the incident that occurred on February the fourth with an air traffic tower controller at Austin Bergstrom. Could you please state your name and spell it for me?"
"Yes, I'm..." Jerome started. "My name. My name?" He looked up at Sandra, puzzled, unsure of how to answer the question.
Sandra stopped the recorder. “Everything OK? Do you need some water?”
"I'm so sorry, but can you tell me my name?" At this point, Jerome was starting to become upset with himself. Forgetting his name at the start of an interview with an aviation specialist who had been investigating his cognitive and physical fitness was not a good start at all. His assuredness that this interview was just a checkbox that needed to be done completely vanquished, and he was worried about what was around the corner.
"This is so weird," Jerome admitted. "But can you help me out? I can't remember my name."
"I know you can't remember it. Because I took your name away from you. Just for a short time."
A wave of confusion washed over Jerome. "You took my name away from me?"
"I did," Sandra confessed, "but I promise to give it back to you. I know you must be freaked out right now. One minute, you're part of a national news story about air traffic safety, sitting in a room talking to a federal investigator. The next minute, you can't even remember your own name, and this woman you've never met before is telling you that 'she just took it away', as if I’m asking you to borrow a pen or something like that."
Jerome squirmed in his seat, still unsure what to make of what Sandra was telling him.
She continued explaining, "You're probably freaked out right now that I have your name. As if a part of you is missing. Like how the clouds move in front of the Sun, and your shadow doesn't completely go away, but gets fainter and lighter. Does that make sense?"
"It doesn't, and I am freaked out. This is the most interesting experience I've ever had, ever."
Sandra chuckled loudly. "Interesting? I’m telling you that I took your name, and you call that interesting! You don't really have a knack for words, but that's OK. Let's get to the point of why I'm here."
"That'd be nice."
"I'm here to help you remember what happened three months ago, on the morning when FedEx almost landed on top of a Southwest. I'm very good at helping people remember things, and forgetting, too. The name thing was just to show you what I can do, and I promise to give your name back when we're finished today. Sound good?"
"This is pretty far from good, lady, but let's get the show on the road."
Sandra started the recording again. "I want to talk about the seventy-two hours prior to the incident. How have you been sleeping the past few days?"
"Pretty good, I guess."
"How much sleep would you say you need to feel rested?"
"About 6 hours."
"And how much sleep do you usually get?"
"About 6 to 8 hours," Jerome answered honestly.
"And the night before the incident, how much sleep did you get?"
Jerome thought about the question for a moment and then answered, "I don't recall. It happened a few months ago."
"How much sleep the night before?"
Like a gentle wind across a meadow, the memory of the night before slowly came back to Jerome.
"I went to bed around midnight that night and woke around 5:30 in the morning," Jerome answered. "But I wasn't tired at work or nothing like that. Once I'm up, I'm up."
"You're a Navy veteran, aren't you? When did you serve?"
"First time was 2002 to 2005, and then again from 2007 to 2009."
"Wow, so you went back for seconds?"
"Like a dummy."
"And that's why you really don't need 6 hours to sleep, right? The Navy did that to you?"
"When you're out to sea for long stretches like we were, you never really get a chance to be comfortable. Just passed out from exhaustion, up and at it again a few hours later."
Jerome, still unsure what his name was and if Sandra was really an investigator from the NTSB, kept answering her questions for the next hour or so. Sandra wanted to know everything about his health history, medications he was taking, as well as any extenuating circumstances that might have distracted him the morning of the incident. She asked Jerome if he needed to stop and take a break, and he shook his head yes.
"One more question before we stop for a break: you ran control out of Chicago, and then Atlanta before coming down to Texas. Why Austin?"
"I got divorced a few years back. She moved to Houston, and I wanted to be closer to the kids. I put in a bid to come here, and the closest I could get to them was Austin."
"When was the last time you saw them?"
Jerome shook his head and chuckled in disbelief as the memories came back to him. "I saw them last year during Christmas, but I was actually supposed to see the oldest at a poetry slam I was performing at."
"Poetry slam? So you do have a knack for words then."
"Not really. Not really that good. But yeah, my oldest can drive now, and I wanted her to come up to the slam." Jerome stopped to consider this. "But something last minute happened and she couldn't make it down here. Probably her mother getting in the way, getting jealous, blah, blah, blah."
He paused and continued, "It took me a while to fall asleep that night because I was upset. But that wasn’t the cause of the accident. You’re just asking about my kids and stuff, so that’s why I’m talking about them."
"What would you say was the cause?"
"Two things: first thing was an expectation bias that us tower guys have about Southwest pilots. When we clear them to take off, they turn around the corner and go. Always. Southwest never wastes a second. American, usually not. Allegiant Airlines, not a chance in hell with those guys."
Sandra laughed and appreciated the deprecating sense of humor that aviators and veterans always laid out against each other. "What was the other reason? You said there were two."
"Lack of ground radar at Austin. Like I told you and everyone else about this whole thing. It was foggy as hell that morning. So unusual for Austin any time of year really. But if we had any type of ground radar on the field, I would've known if Southwest was on the move or not."
He stopped to consider and went on. "But hindsight's twenty-twenty. I shouldn't have cleared that Southwest jet when FedEx was so close to the airport. I shouldn't have tried to squeeze that departure out."
Sandra was writing a note in her book, finished, and then put her pen down.
"Well, I think those are all the questions that I have now. And I almost forgot! I never got you to say your name at the beginning when I started the recording. Could you please state your name?"
"Jerome Lays. Jerome with a 'J', and Lays like the chips." A wave of relief washed over his face, realizing that his name was never really lost, and that Sandra kept up her end of the promise, returning it to him.
Sandra smiled, leaned across the table to stop the recording, and thanked Jerome for coming and being forthright with her from the beginning. She wished him the best of luck for the future, and told him that her colleagues from the FAA or NTSB might be in touch to conduct follow up interviews.
In fact, another such request by a new group of aviation experts came up later in the week, and when he drove over to the same Office of Aviation to meet with them, he told them about his initial interview with Ms. Sandra Hugo. But nobody recognized that name or had even heard of a Human Performance expert at any of the field offices. Jerome wondered if the woman with short, curly hair that he met had taken away his memory of their time together, or perhaps had swapped that memory with someone else. But rather press the issue with the new group of investigators, he just chocked it up to the stress of the incident taking a toll on his memory, and he apologized for having misremembered.
"That's OK, man," said the FAA investigator. "I know you've been going through a lot, but let's get started with it OK? Can you please state your name clearly into the recorder, and spell it for us please?"
The incident happened three years ago, and Jerome had been staying out of hot water since then. He had to take several more months of remedial training to get out of clearance control, and his physician ordered that he start sleeping with a CPAP machine to help improve the quality of sleep at night. He was able to be reassigned to Houston TRACON, which meant he was closer to his children and had a less stressful job than working in a tower. Jerome still had to stay on his toes for the control center, but unlike the tower job he had in Austin, he simply routed air traffic that was already flying, and there were advanced radar systems that made it easy to keep his eyes on all the flights going through his assigned segment of airspace.
He had not thought about his days at the Austin control tower for a very long time, or Sandra Hugo for that matter, until an unusual interaction he had over the radio with a pilot checking in. It sounded like a young woman, who was flying a Cirrus SR-22 to the west at 10,500 feet, who was undergoing some sort of stressful situation.
"Houston Center, Cirrus two-juliet-delta, with a question."
"Two-juliet-delta, Houston Center. Go ahead."
"I'm really embarrassed to admit this, but I forgot where I'm going."
"Two-juliet-delta, your flight plan has you direct to KMRF, that's Marfa, Texas. Do you need assistance? Are you experiencing hypoxia right now?"
"Negative hypoxia. I don't know what happened, but I just totally forgot where I was going."
"Do you require assistance?" Jerome asked the disoriented pilot.
"Negative, I think I'm all set now. Thanks for the help, two-juliet-delta."
"Roger, frequency change to Albuquerque Center, 135.87. Have a safe one."
Jerome handed off the pilot to the controller in the next segment of airspace she was about to enter. Not completely convinced that her forgetfulness was something other than Sandra’s spell, though it could have just been dehydration from flying in an unpressurized aircraft for several hours, Jerome called up the center in Albuquerque and explained his interaction with the Cirrus pilot. It turned out that she landed safely in Marfa, on time and without incident. Jerome hung up and felt relaxed because it really did seem like she was going to be OK and eventually found the place she wanted to be.
If only one could be so lucky.