Take This Job and Love It

How stressful is air-traffic control? Very, but it’s not unique

“We were making love and it was O.K., you know? And suddenly he stops and that’s it, he can’t go on. And I say, ‘What’s wrong?’ And he tells me that he heard a plane flying over our house.” That lament, from the wife of an air-traffic controller, sounds like a case for Sigmund Freud. But it is typical, says Clinical Psychologist Barry Beder of Detroit, of the emotional problems and other job-related disorders he has uncovered in counseling more than 300 controllers. He calls them “the most stressed group” he has treated—more than auto executives in mid-recession, more than nurses or teachers or police, more than airline pilots. Beder, who has been a paid consultant to the controllers’ striking union, PATCO, eagerly endorses what has become a key union bargaining claim: that the job imposes unique psychological pressure because, as he puts it, “one five-second error can lead to the loss of hundreds of lives.”

But federal officials last week were suggesting that computerization and other technological advances have made many controllers’ jobs only somewhat more demanding than a spirited game of Space Invaders. Said Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis: “There’s no more stress on this job than on a number of others. Firemen, policemen, just to name a few. I think maybe we’ve seen too many movies of pilots being brought in when someone has a heart attack.”

Just how stressful is a controller’s job? The short answer: very, but by no means uniquely. The long answer: stress may be what makes the job, and perhaps the people who hold it, a bit more interesting than most.

Medical researchers have been studying air controllers intensively since at least the 1960s, but findings are contradictory. In one sampling, the percentage of controllers with high blood pressure was only a third of the national average. In another, the percentage was more than double the norm. One researcher found frequent ulcers and other stomach disorders. Another found heartbeat irregularities among controllers at twice the rate for other men their age. Still other research found that resentment of management was the greatest source of controller dissatisfaction, while “stress” was, in fact, the negative aspect of work that the controllers cited least. In addition, rates of alcohol abuse and divorce appear no higher for air controllers than for other Americans. The March 1979 issue of Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine characterized recent research: “In general the stress of ATC work is no greater than could be expected for ‘normal’ populations.”

One major problem in measuring the job’s demands is that there is not just one kind of controller but at least five. The most familiar, the chief in the tower at an airport, gives each pilot formal permission to land or take off. A “scheduler” writes flight plans. A “ground controller” directs the aircraft along taxiways. An “approach controller” guides pilots through the congested airspace immediately around the airport. When airplanes get outside the vicinity of an airport they are directed by a series of “en route controllers” at 20 regional centers across the U.S. Pressures can differ considerably among the tasks, and also between overworked fields like Chicago’s O’Hare, where during rush hour there is a takeoff or landing twice a minute, and such sleepy aerodromes as Alton, Ill., Hobbs, N. Mex., and Hagerstown, Md., which were among 66 recommended in June for closure or cutbacks in a report by the General Accounting Office. Even in harried postings, controllers work no more than two straight hours monitoring air traffic. At other times they train new controllers, read technical manuals or perform other low-stress duties.

At its worst, controlling can be a hectic job of six-day weeks, and controllers say things can get unexpectedly exciting—or perilous—two or three times a day.

Many controllers work nights and weekends (for extra pay), and their shift hours can change from week to week, sometimes from day to day. Overtime is not common—on the average, only about 100 hours a year in Chicago and 150 hours a year in New York.

Computerized equipment, which was expected to reduce stress, did not appear to help and may have increased the pressure, according to some studies. Since computerization, the controllers have been expected to handle more planes, and a boom in air travel, particularly in unscheduled general aviation, has cluttered the skies. Even controllers concede that computers have made the job somewhat easier, but complain that the machines fail frequently and unpredictably. At least some of the rise in reports of stress may not have reflected the rigors of controlling as much as a controversial “second career” program, phased out two years ago because of alleged abuses. It allowed “disabled” controllers to receive partial pay for two years while training for another job. During the program, disability retirements jumped sharply.

Controllers say that from 1975 through 1979, 89% of their colleagues who retired did so for medical reasons. The FAA concedes that the average controller stays 14 years, while the normal minimum for nonmedical retirement is 20 years. But since the tightening of the disability rules, says the FAA, things have changed. During the year ending in June, 2.8% of fully qualified controllers retired, and less than half, or 1.1%, retired on disability. That was the same percentage as in the federal civil service as a whole. Those statistics are somewhat misleading, however. Controllers tend to be younger and healthier (they must pass a rigorous annual physical) than other civil servants, so they would be expected to have fewer than average medical problems.

Some controllers—like some policemen, ambulance drivers, commodities traders, advertising executives and journalists—seem to thrive on stress. Medical researchers have found that for many people, stress in either work or recreation—and the hormonal response it produces—can be the equivalent of an addictive drug. Says Striker Joe Gannon, 39, an eleven-year veteran based at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center in Nashua, N.H.: “The job is extremely rewarding. When I’m sitting at that radar screen and I’m working 15 aircraft, I make the decisions and I see the end product immediately—the safe exit of the aircraft. Every day is a challenge.”

Medically, psychologically and actuarially, controlling seems to be significantly more debilitating than most jobs, but less stressful than controllers claim. Yet it is clear that there are some occupational terrors that simply cannot be quantified. Chief among them, researchers concede, is the daily unremitting fear of causing what controllers, in their black-humor bravado, call “an aluminum shower.”

—By William A. Henry III. Reported by Jerry Hannifin/Washington, with other U.S. bureaus