The Air Traffic Controller Who Made 5,000 Decisions a Day

Stephen Abraham likes to say he used to make 5,000 decisions a day, and they all had to be right.

For nearly 25 years, Abraham worked as an air traffic controller at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, directing 1,400 flights per day on taxis, takeoffs and landings.

“Somebody told me something when I was training in Oklahoma City many years ago. Controllers make mistakes, but if you never make the same mistake twice in your career, you'll be excellent,” he said.

Affectionately known as “Kennedy Steve,” Abraham became a YouTube sensation later in his career, bringing New York sarcasm and light-heartedness over the radio frequency to a job typically associated with sternness and command.

“JFK has a reputation," he said. "Controllers are very Type A, and I think the New York control had the biggest set of peacock feathers."

Best of 7 spoke to Abraham about the two qualities that make an effective air traffic controller, managing confrontation with pilots, and keys to commanding respect.

Steve, what appealed to you about air traffic control?

I worked for Sherwin-Williams in my first job out of school. Then I moved back to New York and eventually ended up working for a brokerage house called Kidder, Peabody. I didn’t really like my job and had a midlife crisis early. I always had an interest in aviation as a kid but was too old to fly for a living. I thought I’d try to be an air traffic controller and if it didn’t work out, I could always go back to Wall Street.

What did a typical shift look like?

At JFK, we worked what’s affectionately been called the “Rattler Schedule.” So, if my days off were Saturday and Sunday — which they never were because they were based on seniority — you would work 4 p.m. – 12 on Monday, 3 – 11 on Tuesday, 1 – 9 on Wednesday, 6 a.m. – 2 p.m. on Thursday, then 11 p.m. on an overnight shift Thursday to Friday morning.

By the time you came in for the overnight shift, were you tired? Yeah, but the shift was dead. There was not a lot going on to have the same level of processing that you needed on your first day at 4 p.m.

What are the skills that make a good air traffic controller?

A 60-second memory and the ability to process lots of information and make very quick decisions. I say a 60-second memory because the plot changes every 60 seconds, and you can’t retain that information. You have to dispose of it because you only have so much bandwidth. You need to absorb data off a radar display and make an informed decision quickly.

The challenge of working at Kennedy is it’s a 360-degree environment, so you train people that you never give a clearance that you have to watch. It’s always, “Airplane A, follow Airplane B.” Now, pilots would still screw it up, but you could say it and focus your attention on something else. Anything you had to (monitor) would focus your attention in one place, and you can’t do that.

You mention a 60-second memory. How did you immediately move onto whatever came next and not dwell after you might’ve made a mistake?

A controller’s view of perfection is kind of like playing golf — you’re never perfect, and you can always look back and say, “If I had done that differently, it would have been better.” You beat yourself up when you make a mistake — but a mistake is like missing a departure gap. A mistake is like sequencing airplanes the wrong way so you waste a mile on departure. A mistake is letting airplanes get 2.5 miles apart when they’re supposed to be 2.7.

But you understand that they’re going to happen, and the term “mistake” is probably a misnomer. Everybody thinks about an air traffic mistake as cataclysmic, but you’re your own worst critic.

I’m assuming you worked on occasion with pilots who spoke limited English. What was the key to effective communication in that scenario?

You learn that adjectives are useless — the term “clearing somebody for immediate takeoff.” Some people don’t understand what “immediate” means.

But I think you need to have some situational awareness. If an airplane wants to go right because they believe turning right is the fastest way to get them to where they're going, and you want them to turn left, you need to tell them, “Turn left! I know you want to go the other way, but you need to turn left.” Otherwise, they're going to think, “What is this guy talking about? I want to go that way.”

I’d imagine there’s also an element of conflict in air traffic control because there are competing interests so to speak.

The pilot’s interest is his passengers. Your interest is every airplane. But there needs to be an understanding that you’re in control. When it’s really busy and there’s a sense of lack of control, misunderstanding of what’s going on, or confusion, they become ruthless. “He’s confused? I can beat the system.”

I’m not trying to yell at anybody, but I am trying to get a point across. Sometimes, you just have to be direct.

What did commanding respect come down to?

Ground is really fluid, and there’s a lot going on. It can be very dynamic and very out of control. When you can manage that effectively and everybody keeps moving — not as fast as they want to go, but they’re moving — and there’s not a lot of “Stand by. I’ll call you back,” there’s always a control instruction...

If you do your job well, you command respect.

What I learned…

It sounded slightly contradictory initially when Abraham said every decision he made had to be right — but that he was rarely going to be perfect.

It became clear, though, that there’s a difference between a “mistake” (airplanes coming 2.5 miles apart as opposed to 2.7) and a “Mistake” (planes coming close to contact during a taxi).

The ability to quickly move on after an error has been a consistent theme among those I’ve interviewed, including boxer Ed Latimore, hitting coach Anthony Iapoce and performance psychologist Dr. Bhrett McCabe.

“You can’t fix what you just did because it’s done,” Abraham said. “There’s no revisionist history in air traffic control.”

The other interesting aspect was the policies the FAA mandates for sound decision-making.

Air traffic controllers are required to take breaks every two hours on a shift, and their mandatory retirement age is 56.

“Throughout my career, I thought that was the stupidest thing in the world — until I turned 55-and-a-half,” Abraham said.

“Your processing speed slows down. Work was harder for me the last six months than it was for the first 27-and-a-half years. I had to think harder to do what used to be rote and easy.”