Eyes on the Skies : Trainees Learn Air Control at Tower

From the makeshift tower at Camarillo Airport, controller Tony Megowan points to a speck on the horizon invisible to the untrained eye.

The approaching plane does not show up on a radar screen, because there is no radar monitor. The human eye is the guidance system for Ventura County’s busiest airport, hence Megowan’s advice to a trainee: “In time, that’s how far out you’ll pick them up from.”

Control operations are anything but high-tech at the one-runway airport. The same is true at nearby Oxnard Airport, which is equipped with a radar relay from a Point Mugu military station, but its monitor is so old that blips appear more like shadowy blotches.

It is at airports such as these that the Federal Aviation Administration trains controllers for assignment to airports nationwide.

The FAA’s air-traffic system, which employs about 17,000 controllers nationwide, is once again under scrutiny in the wake of a crash, which may have been caused by a negligent controller, that killed 34 people last week at Los Angeles International Airport.

Several controllers at the two county airports resented the renewed scrutiny earlier this week. Every major plane crash, they said, gives rise to claims that the system has not recovered since President Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s air traffic controllers for an illegal strike. As they noted, that was nearly a decade ago.

“We have to demonstrate an ability to walk on water, and once we’ve done that, they check to see how wet our shoes are,” said Brian Moore, manager of the Camarillo tower. Moore and other controllers said statistics on accidents and near collisions don’t suggest that the system has worsened in the past decade.

While Ventura County would hardly seem an aviation hub, about 600,000 airplanes take off and land each year at the county’s two airports and the nearby Point Mugu military airfield, all of which lie within six miles of one another.

The Camarillo tower handles about 600 private flights a day, and the tower at Oxnard Airport directs 500 planes daily, officials said. Although it handles less traffic, Oxnard Airport is better known because it handles larger planes and about 18 commercial flights daily.

Don Hollingsworth of Camarillo, a retired Air Force pilot and member of the California Aviation Council’s board of directors, said the Ventura County controllers do a respectable job with equipment far less sophisticated than at LAX, where some radar systems still employ World War II technology.

“These people are overburdened. I don’t know how they do it,” said Hollingsworth, 60, a former United Airlines pilot. “They do a marvelous job.”

Elly Brekke, an FAA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said there have been no reported controller errors at either airport in the past year. But the FAA was unable to give detailed information Wednesday on accidents and incidents at the two airports, which controllers staff from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

The FAA decided to install a control tower at Camarillo Airport two years ago because of increased traffic. The former military airfield opened to general aviation in 1977 as an uncontrolled airstrip, where pilots communicated takeoff and landing plans to one another over a set radio frequency.

Air traffic control operations began in July, 1989, directed from a temporary 30-foot tower that consists of a house trailer atop two metal containers. A new $2-million, 60-foot tower, modeled on one in Scottsdale, Ariz., is under construction and will have a radar link with Point Mugu, said Moore, the tower manager.

Milan Yaklich, 27, is one of three trainees at the Camarillo tower, which has a staff that includes a supervisor and five fully certified controllers.

Yaklich, a Milwaukee native who served four years in the Marine Corps and earned a finance degree from the University of Wisconsin, said he decided to pursue a controller career for the satisfaction of “making everything click.”

“Pilots will come and thank you when they know you’ve helped them out,” Yaklich said. “But do one wrong thing, and you’re nailed to the wall.”

The Oxnard Airport tower is staffed by seven controllers and a trainee. Rich Gutterud, the Oxnard tower’s supervisor and acting manager, said controllers earn $24,000 to $70,000 a year, depending on their experience and assignment, with most Ventura County controllers making about $35,000 annually.

Mark Paralitici, a controller at military and civilian airports for 13 years, said Tuesday that the Oxnard tower is understaffed, making it difficult to take a sick day for an illness that might affect a controller’s attention span.

“We’re used to working under stressful situations, so we make it work,” said Paralitici, a shop steward for the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., the union that replaced the one Reagan broke.

Gutterud said that he frequently asks controllers to work overtime, but he could not justify requesting another position.

Megowan, a controller for nine years, said the public underestimates controllers’ competency. “People don’t understand what we do, so it’s easy to blame a controller or pilot for an accident,” said Megowan, 32, of Oxnard. “You have to be able to think on your feet, make a decision and stick with it, but still be flexible if it doesn’t work.”

“If you love your job,” he said, “the stress level isn’t nearly as high as if you don’t like it.”