Telling Tales

Regardless of the stories I'm sharing with you here, there is one thing that controllers know for a fact; the skies are safe. They're safe because of us.

That said, I'll tell you about the time I was working the Blue Angels. Now I've worked them more than once in my career, and they're always arrogant bastards, but these guys were the worst.

There was weather and they were inbound to Yipsillanti Michigan for an airshow. In order to get into Detroit Metro's airspace they had to cross this specific arrival fix, Polar, at five thousand feet. I used that fix for the Detroit Metro arrivals and I was running turboprops over it at eleven thousand and jets over it at twelve. So when they checked on with me I told them to descend to eleven thousand. That's the lowest altitude I owned in that area.

Because of who they were, they wanted to stay at altitude (twenty-three thousand feet) for as long as possible. I told them they'd have to cross Polar at five. They didn't want to. They argued with me. I told them their only other option was to fly a two-twenty heading for the satellite arrival fix Sprtn, on the west side of Detroit's airspace.

They didn't want to do that either.

I told them they only had those two options because I had Polar arrivals. (Which I was spacing and descending while I was wasting my time with these guys).

Without a word the entire group of Blue Angels descended to ten thousand feet.

Two problems with that. One, I didn't own ten thousand feet so they'd just busted their way into Saginaw Approaches airspace, and two, I'd just handed-off and arrival to Saginaw Approach who happened to be at ten thousand feet and the Blue Angels were now head on with him.

I called Saginaw real quick and apologized. They descended the arrival so the Angels didn't hit him.

Good going guys.