My Dad The Air Traffic Controller

My father has been an Air Traffic Controller at the Philadelphia International Airport since 1985 when I was four years old. This may explain all of the beatings I received from him while I was growing up, given that it’s the second most stressful job in the world. After all those years of therapy I finally came to a point where I was ready to sit down and pick his brain about crashes, drugs and his early years as a controller. I hope he still loves me..

Vice: So Old Man, why did you choose one of, if not the most, stressful professions a man in his twenties can have?

John Sharkey Jr.:

Well, I wanted to become a pilot in the military but when I joined the US Air Force they told me I was too old so I looked into doing this instead. After my service I took the Civil Service Exam in 1980 and then I went to Oklahoma City to train when you were two years old.

You were hired around the time that Ronald Reagan fired all of the Air Traffic Controllers for striking. What was the political climate in your field like at that time and did that make it easier for you to get the job?

All the Controllers went on strike because there were problems with over-work and salaries. Reagan had promised them a ten thousand dollar raise and never saw to it so everyone split. Reagan actually gave them seventy-two hours to come back to their jobs before firing them but a lot of people thought he was bluffing. I guess he wasn’t because fifteen thousand men walked and twelve thousand got sacked. Kind of like that scene in jaws when Quint is talking about the USS Indianapolis. “Eleven hundred men go into the water, three hundred men come out of the water, sharks took the rest”. But it definitely opened up the field for me to walk right in.

When you started your training in the Air Force, did anyone of your instructors go into the fact that you might one day crash a plane and kill hundreds of people?

No, they never went into that sort of thing. You can’t really think that way when you’re sitting in front of the scope and you have twenty to thirty planes on your radar. I can’t think about that when I’m working because I’ve probably worked enough planes in my time to have had over a million peoples’ lives in my hands. The numbers are staggering. If you think like that you’d probably lose your nerve and really screw something up.

Have you or anyone you know ever caused a plane accident while on the job?

In my 26 years at Philly International we’ve only had a few bad situations; a plane once fell out of the sky onto the runway but somehow nobody was severely hurt. A couple of planes have gone off the runway instead of taking off and a small plane once landed with its landing gear up so it had no wheels to fall onto. We’ve only had a few fatalities at PHL since I’ve been there. The first situation was when a plane had wing turbulence while it was landing and flipped over. That killed a guy or two. My buddy was working that plane and it was hard for him but he pulled through like a champ. You have to; it’s the nature of the animal. The other time didn’t even have anything to do with planes. A construction worker on a midnight shift got run over with a dump truck buy his own crew. He croaked. That’s all really.

How do you feel about Travis Barker and DJ AM’s private Lear Jet crashing last week?

Yeah, I heard about that dude’s plane. You can’t avoid shit like that once it starts. Rock stars should learn how to walk. Those little planes are pretty unsafe once a tiny interference happens.

Do you like their music?

Your little sister does.

You were working on September 11th, 2001. How was that for a controller to handle?

It was pretty insane. At first we just thought it was an accident when the plane slammed into the Pentagon but when they started taking out the World Trade Center we knew shit was hitting the fan. We were instructed to take every plane out of the sky. Within a matter of three hours the country pulled over six thousand planes out of the sky. We couldn’t have any planes flying for at least three days.

Ok, enough death, have you seen the movie Pushing Tin and was it a realistic portrayal of an Air Traffic Controller lifestyle?

Yeah, I saw that flick and it was all right. I mean we don’t have guys, like Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, who are just fucking with each other the entire shift. The bar and the party scenes are pretty accurate because we do go out as groups and stick together, but we aren’t trying to screw each other’s wives.

So what about drugs? I know you work hellacious hours, something like 11PM to 7AM. Have you or any of your workers gotten into drugs to stay awake.

Nah, I’ve never touched the stuff. I drink coffee like a man. It’s not that common for people to dope up on the job because they do random drug testing and if they catch you once, you’re canned. I’m sure there are guys who do it. A buddy of mine who recently passed away was fired for drinking on the job. That could’ve been ugly. There are some rough and tumble guys on the job but most can keep it cool and under control.

Have you ever seen a UFO?

Yeah, the day you were born!

Thanks, Dad.

No problem, shithead.