On Killing the Pope

It is frowned upon by management to endanger either the Pope, or the President of the United States. Sure, there are other dignitaries we're not supposde to kill either, but since I'll mostly talk about these two, here's the rules I was taught to play by.

Our usual separation standards are five miles or a thousnad feet. That means that we can't get two planes within five miles laterally, or a thousand feet vertically of each other. Ever.

With the Pope and the President we used to have to add additional miles and feet because they were such important men.

On this specific day, a friend of mine RB was working the Pope's plane. He'd been told not to let anyone get within twenty miles or two thousand feet of the Pope. So the Pope departs the Detroit Metro area and RB is climbing him to sixteen thousand feet because there's opposite direction traffic that he's not talking to that's climbing to flight level two-three-zero.

He hears his D-side coordinate with the sector that is working the traffic aircraft and hear's his D-side say "You're going to stop yours under him then."

So he issues flight level two-three-zero to the Pope. Then turns his attention to getting the rest of the Detroit Metro departures up and running.

The next time he scans his scope, he sees that the Pope's aircraft is out of nineteen-five, twelve miles and closing with the traffic aircraft who's only out of twenty.

Twelve miles and five hundred feet.
Another miscommunication between RB and the other controller has seconds passing where the aircraft are still coming together. RB realizes the other controller is not going to solve the situation so he takes action.

"Shepherd One, turn forty degrees left immediately, maintain flight level two-one-zero." See the plane kept climbing during the interim, and is out of flight level two-zero-zero. His traffic is just leaving flight level two-zero four.

Eight miles and four hundred feet.

The conflict alert, a computer program that determines if aircraft are going to lose standard separation, starts "flashing" (blinking) the two data blocks, the Popes, and his traffic.

By now the supervisor is hovering behind RB, and everyone is holding their breath. Seconds tick by, the track of the Pope's aircraft slowly showing his turn. The track of the conflict aircraft slowly showing he's also turning away.

Time crawls by, RB keeps issuing clearances to his other aircraft, but keeps an eye on the Pope. Finally the two airplanes are past each other. RB clears the Pope on course, and gives him higher once again.

Everybody breathes.

Closest distance? Six miles and four hundred feet.

RB's operating initials were changed that day to PK.
Pope Killer.