Pushin' Tin

They'd had weather all night. No one had been able to get off the ground at Detroit and they had a bunch of loaded planes waiting to launch. Me, PK, and GR came on for the mid shift and relieved the last of the afternoon shift guys.

Detroit calls, and I happen to be working the only sector that's just opening up from the weather. Wants to know if we can't do something to get these guys airborne.

I take a look at the strips. There's easily eighty-ninety aircraft waiting to go. Enough for a normal push that usually involves four sectors and ten corridors.

I tell Detroit to put all the north departures over my north gate DUNKS, to put all the east and south departures over my south gate HARWL. Ten in trail, jet to jet, prop to prop. Ask them to wait until the revised flight plans showed up.

GR and PK start amending flight plans, getting them to the first fix in Chicago Center's airspace, then back to one of their original fixes, on course. I call Chicago and make sure this is going to work for them. We're set.

For the next two hours Detroit pumps aircraft at me. I'd honestly never seen that many departures before, at one time. I knew the watch supervisor had joined us at one point and was standing behind me, watching.

I was in the zone though, just pushin' the tin. A phrase, by the way, that we don't actually use. But that's what I was doing, and I was feeling high. Everything worked like clockwork, I caught every aircraft that was coming out over the south gate that made a freaky turn towards the north line of traffic, made every handoff, made every pointout.

It was sweet.

Then it was over. All the planes that had been stuck on the ground at Detroit were airborne and on their way.

I thought, but would never say aloud "Fuck that was a lot of planes." Instead I turned to PK and said "I'm going for a smoke."

I don't know what the watch supervisor thought, he just turned and walked away.