Janice Williams Loves Austin

Writing about flying traffic in Dallas has brought back a lot of memories.

The plane was not air-conditioned. As a general rule, it was 10 degrees cooler at 1500 feet above the ground than it was at ground level. So on those hot 100-degree Dallas days, I was in an enclosed space at 90 degrees for three hours. I took two showers a day, after each flight. I came home from one afternoon flight and kissed Mark a nice long kiss. He stopped, looked me in the eye, and said, “That was like a really nice kiss from a homeless person.” Most summer afternoons I took ice in a bandanna to put around my neck and let it melt and evaporate. That helped . . . a little.

On the opposite end of the spectrum were the cold winter mornings. I can’t complain since the poor pilot was the one that had to be up there early and make sure the plane was warmed up and the windows scraped. We did have a heater in the plane, but it still seemed incredibly cold at 6 a.m. and I always had my big mug of coffee and lots of layers.

When I first started, there was a girl working with us that no one liked much. We did our best to torture her. She was of the opinion that she was always right. ALWAYS. As I was learning to do traffic, she would go ballistic if I reported something to the base without her permission (like I needed her permission). I would report a slow down on a highway and she would radio in just behind me with “disregard, there is no slowdown.” Everyone knew what she was like, so they were sympathetic to my plight of sitting in the backseat in that small plane behind her for three hours morning and night. The base operator would plan schemes. He would inform all of the reporters that he was going to make a false report at a certain time. At 5:20 p.m. he would come on and say, “Report of a 2-car accident blocking the center lane of southbound Central.” Well, we all knew there was no center lane on southbound Central. It was a two-lane road. So, of course, as soon as he would give it, she would scream at the base “There is no center lane!” and he would calmly reply, “That’s the report.” She would just get infuriated that no one would say, “Oh, of course you’re right!” She knew she was right (and, in this instance she was!). It was funny to see her get irritated.

I can’t remember what was the occasion that she truly went ballistic over something. She pulled off her headphones and threw them at me (or maybe threw them down, depending on your interpretation of the event). These aren’t headphones like you wear with your iPod… airplane headphones are big, heavy, and could cause a concussion. With that, Lovejack called Jim Ribble and reported the incident. He said he felt that he had to as the pilot of the plane for the safety of his passengers. I really don’t remember if she got fired for that or if she knew her days were numbered. Whatever it was, she was gone soon and I was very happy.

I still think that there could be a great TV drama along the lines of Hill Street Blues or ER, but telling the story of traffic reporters. You’d have those that were in the planes and the helicopters and then those at the base station. We had a soap opera going among our crew most of the time. Some were dating each other and then breaking up, causing great conflict. One of our reporters had an ex husband who was stalking her and she was in fear that he was going to kidnap her young son so she was constantly vigilant about her exposure on the streets. One of the guys met a girl that none of us particularly liked. Next thing we knew, she was pregnant and they ended up getting married. Turns out though, she wasn’t really pregnant. And it turns out that the ex husband that she said was dead and had been a police officer was nothing of the kind and was still alive. Then she DID get pregnant. Then they won the lottery! Yes, that’s what she claimed and she suddenly had lots of money. But then the arrest warrant came. She had only been writing hot checks to produce this windfall. So she went to jail. And had twins while she was in jail. They divorced (thank goodness) and he raised those kids on his own. He really did a great job, too. So, see? Can you imagine all the story lines along with the things we saw on the ground.

After the Dallas Cowboy Superbowl Victory, I witnessed the rioting in the downtown streets of Dallas from the air. That was really an experience and the streets were crammed and people were running wild. I also saw flooding and the results of a tornado that hit Wylie and destroyed homes and boats and a marina. I saw car chases with the police. One even ended as I witnessed it and they pulled a man dressed in a purple dress and red shoes out of the car.
I never saw carnage from the height I was at, thank goodness. Frequently the reporters in the helicopter saw things they would never be able to forget. When I was back on the radio and highways would be shut down with a fatality, I would have no patience for the callers that were irritated that traffic was at a standstill. Sure, I knew where they were coming from, but I also knew they were they lucky one that was safely getting somewhere eventually.

This serialization of my blog is the way to go! I was thinking, “What to write?” but I had it all built in by teasing you yesterday.

Back in my traffic flying days, I met Mark and we got married. Mark was never happy with me being in the plane every day and I was sure to call him and let him know I was safely on the ground when we landed. I guess he had good reason to worry.

In September of 1993 we had been married about five months. My pilot Matt and I went up for a flight on a beautiful clear morning. Matt had been the counter attendant at the Red Bird airport in South Dallas and had been certified as a pilot and eventually landed the job as my pilot. He was 24 and so sweet you could “sop him up with a biscuit.” I learned that expression from him. I always teased Matt because in June of 1992 I had asked him one morning if he could go with me to Shakespeare in the Park. He was terribly disappointed he had to say no (I’m guessing), but he had to work. The next night I met Mark, fell madly in love and never looked back. I teased Matt a lot about it later saying how our whole lives might have changed if he had said yes. He was my pilot while Mark and I were dating so he got to hear about our growing romance and was at our wedding. While he and I were flying together, he met cute Roni at a volleyball game and I got to hear all about their romance and engagement and I went to their wedding, too.

But in September, we took off as usual to fly to Fort Worth. When a pilot is flying in a city’s airspace, he notifies the tower where he is and the tower lets him know if there is anything he needs to look out for. But when you are not in a city’s airspace, you are on your own. When we flew traffic, there was another traffic service that also had a plane and a helicopter in the air at the same time. Our pilots would frequently communicate with one another and give their locations. Usually when we got over to Fort Worth we would radio the other traffic plane or they would radio us. That morning we were not in the airspace of a control tower, so there was no one “watching over us” on a radar screen. We were flying west on the south side of Fort Worth over I-20. What we didn’t know was the the other traffic plane, which was painted a bright school bus yellow, was flying south over I-35, at the same elevation on a perpendicular course.
Matt and I were talking and doing our usual dull morning routine. I think I was maybe looking down at the lack of traffic problems on the highway. Suddenly, Matt is turning the plane drastically to the right and we are going down, too. I look up and the complete front window is bright yellow. I could not see a “plane,” I only saw the color yellow. I looked back as we dropped and could see the other traffic plane continuing south. They had never seen us at all as we were slightly below them.

Matt, the calmest 24-year-old you’ve ever seen, was sweating a little. I was asking for some sort of explanation. He told me that he had turned and dropped slightly, but was careful not to turn too much because we were so close that he was afraid our wing would have hit them if it went up too sharply. I asked what would have happened if he had done nothing. He said that he thought our propeller would have hit their wheels. I’m contemplating this and looking down at the ground and imagining what that emergency landing (if we had been so lucky as to even be able to attempt an emergency landing) would have been like. I’m beginning to freak out a little at that point. I’m thinking of my newlywed husband asleep at home and what his day would have been like if Matt had not responded so competently.

At that point, my helicopter cohorts radioed me to ask some silly question. I just keyed the mic and said, “I can’t talk right now.” A moment later their pilot radioed Matt and asked what was up, why could I not talk right then. Matt radioed back and said we had had a close call with the other plane. Their pilot asked, “How close?” Matt calmly, said, “Ten or twenty feet.” Their pilot had a smile in his voice and radioed back, “No, seriously.” Matt again said, “Ten or twenty feet.” There was a lot of silence on the radios at that point.

It was probably 30 minutes or so for us to come back for our break at Red Bird Airport. We continued, really, as if nothing had happened, although I’m sure I wasn’t doing much of a job as a reporter, though I was doing my usual on-air reports. We flew back to Red Bird, took a VERY long break, and then pretty much just flew up and landed at Love Field without any more traffic watch. Usually by the time we landed at 9 a.m., my helicopter friends were all gone, since they landed at 8:30. This morning, they were all there waiting for me, ready to hug me, and I knew from their faces they knew that this had been deadly serious.

I went on home and told Mark about the morning. My boss called somewhere in there and asked how I felt and if I wanted to fly that afternoon. I don’t remember expressing an opinion, but he suggested I just do my reports from the car on the ground and we could talk later. That night we talked again and I said I wanted to do my reports from the ground again in the morning.

As time went on, the experience became more real instead of less and I realized how lucky I was and how fortunate I was to have the good pilots that I had. There were a lot of questions that week about whether Matt had done the right thing and how he had reacted, but I was 100% sure that he had done everything he could have done. It is incredibly hard to see other planes in the sky. You’d be surprised how they blend in. On highways and land, other vehicles are always on the same level you are. In the sky, it is almost MORE than three dimensional.

Jim Ribble, my boss back then and a very nice guy,  took me to lunch. Mark and I had discussed it a lot before I went to see him. I think if I had been single and carefree I probably would have continued flying traffic. It really didn’t scare me so much that I didn’t trust flying. But Mark had always hated the fact that I flew and was scared for me and obviously this wasn’t going to ease any of those fears. We decided that this would be a good time to ask not to fly. I knew Jim wasn’t going to fire me for not flying at this point. So my job was rearranged and someone else took over the flying and I began doing my reports from the top of Reunion arena’s 50-story tower.

I had a lot of fun reporting from the tower. We had some very cool people working there and we were all fast friends. Somewhere in there I could see, though, that traffic didn’t have much of a future for me and I started hunting around for a new job. I only worked “on the ground” (in the tower) for another 3 months before I moved on and became a full-time disc jockey again.

While Mother was here, we went through lots of old letters. There were lots of letters from me to my parents in the days before email. Many letters describing the new job I got in 1992: Traffic reporting. Anybody in radio acknowledges that traffic reporting is the lowest rung on the ladder. Apologies to my friends that are traffic reporters, but they will say it, too. But, in 1992 I had been unemployed for about 18 months (Thank you President Bush — the first one) when I was offered a job reporting traffic full-time. Hooray. Despite the salary of about half of what I had been making at my previous job, I grabbed it.

My job was a split shift. I went to Love Field in Dallas every morning to fly in a Cessna 152 from 6 to 9 a.m. and then I came back in the afternoon and flew from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. I worked for Metro Traffic and we had a helicopter (like everyone thinks all sky reports are from) and we had the airplane. I never moved up to the helicopter (which was fine with me, they are much more dangerous) but I did get to fly in it one time when my plane couldn’t make it back to Love Field and I needed a ride.

When I first started, I shared the plane with the pilot and another reporter, but before long she moved on (and we were ALL so happy! but that is another story) and it was just me and the pilot. In the morning at the beginning I had an Australian pilot named Jim in the morning who was very nice and had a wonderful accent and in the afternoon I had a lovable older man that had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam named Jack, but we called him Lovejack. Believe me, when you spend 3 hours cooped up with someone, you get to know them pretty well and they became dear friends.

In the morning I would usually drag myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and barely throw on clothes and drive to Love Field just in time to fill up my big insulated cup with airport coffee and get out to the plane. Sometimes the pilot was already out there waiting for me, others I was actually a minute or two early and we would have some conversation with the airport desk people. This was all at the place where private planes come and go so it was easy to park right in front and there was no security or anything.

Up we would go an