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Tower of power At Medford airport, controllers have bird's-eye view By MELISSA MARTIN Roger Brown has seen a plane crash into an oak tree near a runway, the pilot bailing out just before the aircraft burst into flames. He's seen a prop jet run out of fuel 300 feet from a runway, roll through a Toys R Us parking lot and stop inches away from a gas station pump. And he listened to the cries over the radio of a man trapped in a burning fuel truck that rolled and crashed on an airport tarmac right in front of his eyes. But none of these accidents were at the Medford airport, where Brown is one of five air traffic controllers who keep the Rogue Valley skies safe for aviation. A 34-year veteran of air traffic controlling, Brown has spent the past four years without incident watching the calm skies over Medford. The most recent and most serious aviation accident locally was in 1985, when a Mercy Flights plane inbound from Brookings and piloted by the ambulance service's founder, George Milligan, crashed a mile north of Medford's runway, killing all four aboard. From his perch in a tower 65 feet above the airport, Brown skillfully guides pilots while passengers pick up luggage, greet relatives or call business associates in the busy terminal below. "If you talk to controllers, 99 percent of them say they'd work for free," Brown said. "Where else do you get to play a giant Nintendo game?" Nintendo would be easy compared to Brown's job. Over a five-minute period, Brown gives a pilot the OK to land, picks up a phone to tell Horizon Air about a late jet, and rips a flight plan from the printer and reads it to a pilot, his eyes hardly leaving the radar screen. He remains calm and smiling during the frenzy of activity, not flinching even when a "conflict alert" beeps to let him know two airplanes are approaching the runway at the same time. He's not nervous because he's already asked the Cessna freight hauler if he can see the executive jet circling nearby. "The best thing you can do is point the planes out to each other so they can see each other," Brown says. "It's our responsibility once they are in this circle to keep them from running into each other," he says, pointing to a radar screen that looks like a television set, but in 3-D. The airplanes show up as a number and an altitude when they get about 10 miles from the Medford airport. Any further away and the control tower in Eugene keeps track of them. And at night, when the Medford tower closes, Seattle traffic controllers bring in United Air Lines's 10:30 p.m. 737 flight. On this particular morning, Brown watches a local Cessna make touch-and-go landings with a student pilot. He finds a flight plan for a pilot wanting to go to Port Angeles, and gives directions to an Astro jet carrying important-looking passengers from Newport. But the job of flight controller hasn't always been so streamlined. When the Medford tower was built in 1955, radar was unsophisticated and air traffic controllers had to keep their eyes on the skies at all times. "Everything you did was with your eyes. You had to focus on watching," Brown says. Flight controllers in the future may have the luxury of a new radar system called STARS, in which airplanes and altitudes show up in different colors. But until then, Brown will keep watching the black and white numbers on the radar screen. Many of them are "box haulers," the Cessnas and Beeches carrying packages for Federal Express, United Parcel Service and other carriers. "At Christmas, this place is nuts," Brown says. "There are a zillion box haulers and armies of UPS trucks." But on this late summer day, he settles for the Medford airport's average of 250 to 300 airplanes coming and going daily. Brown has managed much busier airports, including Oakland, where air traffic is 200 airplanes an hour, and Portland, where the stress level is so high that controllers are required to take a break every hour. Brown was trained in the Air Force, guiding fighter jets to a safe landing at Keisler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. He also directed 707s carrying Europe-bound passengers into a Canadian Air Base at Newfoundland. It takes a low-key personality to survive the tower, Brown says. Controllers he knows elsewhere have suffered heart attacks or divorces because of the stress. The slower pace of Medford is a welcome change for Brown, retired from the Federal Aviation Administration after 30 years. He's now an independent controller hired by Tennessee-based Serco Management Services Inc., a contractor that has operated the Medford control tower since 1999. Contract employees make about one-fourth of what their union counterparts make at high-traffic airports such as Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Yet Medford has a waiting list. "A lot of people are trying to transfer here because it's a great place to work and the cost of living is good in this valley," Brown said. "When they call, we tell them to check the obituaries because none of us plan to leave." Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.