2021 Archie League Medal of Safety Award Winners

The weather conditions in Alaska are often poor, but they’re highly changeable. This can lead to situations where a pilot can encounter difficulty, especially if they’re not able to fly in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Alaskan Region air traffic controllers are keenly aware of this each time they plug in for a shift.

Kansas City Center (ZKC) member Ingrid “Inga” Owens recently marked her 15th anniversary as an FAA controller and says that she never worked a Yakovlev “Yak” 18T Russian-made aircraft before Sept. 3, 2020, and has not worked one since.

But on that Thursday afternoon in ZKC’s Prairie Area, just six months into the COVID pandemic with the facility staffed with small teams of controllers working their shifts together for safety but still handling busy traffic volumes, Owens was working a Yak 18T that was headed north toward Nebraska from Texas. The pilot encountered two big problems.

First, he was flying this aircraft for the first time, delivering it to its owner. It was burning fuel at a rate exceeding what he was told it would, leaving him with a shortage that led him to declare an emergency. Second, he encountered IFR weather conditions in western Kansas airspace, with 200-foot minimum ceilings.

When he was 20 nautical miles south of Dodge City, Kan. (DDC), the pilot told Owens he needed to land for fuel and was planning DDC as his stop. Owens told him DDC’s weather was 1/4-mile visibility and indefinite ceiling at 200 feet. The pilot asked for an airport with better weather conditions but the closest was about 100 miles away. The aircraft had only 30 minutes of fuel remaining. Owens had fellow ZKC member Taylor Rosenbaum as her D-side controller. Member Brett Rolofson was working as the controller-in-charge.

“I remember at one point saying to Taylor, ‘I feel like this guy’s going to be a problem,’” Owens said. “I was just super relieved that when we asked if he was IFR-qualified, the answer was yes, because my fear was that he wasn’t and then I don’t know what we would have done.”

Owens didn’t know it at the time, but the pilot had more than 20,000 hours of flying experience. She started vectoring him for the ILS runway 14 approach at DDC. Due to his fuel situation, he would have only one chance at an approach into DDC.

“We looked up the weather for Dodge City and it was right at minimums or just below minimums,” said Rosenbaum, who was trained by Rolofson when he started at ZKC over three years ago. “Garden City (45 miles west) was 100 feet better, so we asked him if he could make Garden City and he said ‘no.’”

Then, Owens said, “it just became a situation of giving this guy as good an approach as we possibly could, making sure he had the information about the weather, doing the things we needed to do to accommodate him. I remember he specifically asked for a short approach, which we’re limited in doing because it can’t be in IFR conditions.”

The pilot asked to be turned inside the approach gate. Owens cleared him for the ILS approach. He was below the glideslope and having trouble holding altitude. He was established on the localizer but could not get the glideslope to work. Owens called mileages and relative position to the airport. She lost radar contact at 1.4 miles and radio contact shortly after that.

When the pilot finally landed safely, the controllers got word from a supervisor who was on the phone receiving updates in real time. “That was an enormous relief,” Owens said. “I don’t know that I have felt a wash of relief like that in my life and I hope I don’t need to again, because it was something.”

Each of the three members praised the teamwork involved in this flight assist and were humble about their own efforts.

“You can’t ask for a better CIC than Brett,” Owens said. “He made all the right moves.”

“I felt like I did as much as I could, but I didn’t do much,” Rosenbaum said. “I helped pull up the weather. I helped pull up the approach. But for me, it was a lot of focusing on how good of a job Inga was doing, and also how much everyone else in the area was doing. Brett was running up to the weather unit and trying to find a VFR airport. I saw how much of a team effort it was but then saw how much of a good job Inga was doing.

“When you work with good people consistently, you learn each other’s mannerisms and what everybody is best at. Everything kind of lined up perfectly for us that day.”

Said Rolofson, who will mark his 14th year in the FAA, all at ZKC, in June: “Our area is one of the most difficult in the center. We have nine different frequencies in our low altitude. I think that we all have an understanding of the workload that it takes, especially around lunchtime, 2 o’clock. In that time frame, during COVID, it was very, very busy. So we all understand what it’s like to work regular traffic and then understand that when there is a special need, a high-intensity situation, that everybody knows that it just takes a village to start helping the controller get the resources that they need, so they can focus, zone in, and really do their job.

“I can’t speak highly enough of how Inga handled the whole situation, given the way it transpired, and the intensity of it.”

“It’s a humbling honor,” Owens said of winning the Archie League Award. “The support I had around me that day, the rallying that goes on, it makes you so proud to be a controller and be part of this job. That’s the stuff the public doesn’t see that would be neat if they could see.”

This award marks the second time Rolofson has been honored with the Archie League Medal of Safety Award. He also won in 2016 for a flight assist with fellow ZKC member Liam Keeney.

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

Podcast below: Hear Owens, Rolofson, and Rosenbaum tell their story, in this episode of the NATCA Podcast.

At Kansas City Center (ZKC), air traffic controllers on position have a list available to them of fellow controllers at work who are also pilots. If needed, those controllers can be brought to the area to assist a pilot in distress, including things like reviewing emergency checklists. Flying an instrument approach in a small, single-engine aircraft is a very high workload environment, and controllers who are also pilots understand this best.

By Sept. 15, 2020, six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, air carrier traffic volume was greatly reduced, presenting opportunities for many general aviation pilots – and students, with their instructors – to do takeoffs and landings at major airports. One such flight, a Mooney M20 piloted by a student with an instructor, departed runway 1 right at Washington-Dulles International Airport (IAD).

Just a short time later, as the Mooney was at 4,600 feet, the aircraft suffered a total engine failure. The choice to be near IAD turned out to be a most advantageous decision.

“I think because of that lack of full airline schedules, I think this was a nationwide thing; I think people were taking their GA airplanes to places they dreamed of going and this was a good example,” said Potomac TRACON (PCT) member Joe Mash, who talked with the pilot and worked with fellow PCT members Jason Dunaway and Chris Rhodes to help the flight return safely to IAD. “The instructor and their student took their plane to Dulles for a quick in and out flight. (The emergency) could not have happened at a better time or place, that is for sure. Lucky for them.”

Mash, who has spent his entire 16-year FAA career at PCT, said there were three sectors open at the time, plus a controller in charge. They had skeleton crews due to the pandemic, with just 5-6 controllers running an area that, in normal times, takes at least nine and often 12-13 when it’s busy. On this September 2020 day however, Mash said there was a lot of GA traffic, including busy satellite airports.

Mash had been on position for a half hour, handling IAD departures, when the Mooney came off IAD and headed northbound. Another northbound departure, a United Express Embraer 175L, rolled off runway 30. Mash climbed the aircraft out of 2,300 feet, up to 3,500 feet – 1,000 feet below the Mooney – and turned it north.

Shortly after, the Mooney declared an emergency.

“We had just started running the cruise checklist when we heard a loud bang, and the engine started shaking,” the pilot wrote in a statement provided to NATCA for the nomination materials for this award. “I immediately took the flight controls from my student.”

Mash immediately worked to stop the United Express’s climb and turn it westbound to get it out of the way of the emergency aircraft, which needed a direct shot to return to IAD. He cleared the Mooney pilot to make a left turn, direct Dulles, and land any runway.

“At 4,500 feet, only a couple miles west northwest of the field, I had altitude on my side,” the pilot wrote. “I could likely have made any runway, but I did not want to attempt to go further than my glide would have allowed. I made a quick decision to take 19C. I innately started going through my ABCs of emergency procedures. I quickly realized at that point my objective was not to glide far, but to descend quickly to the runway.”

Meanwhile, Dunaway and Rhodes could overhear – and sense – what was going on and it piqued their attention right away. They cleared the final and coordinated with IAD controllers.

“I had the south feeder sectors and the west feeder, the south and west satellite area, and the finals all combined up,” said Dunaway, a Marine Corps veteran with 30 years of experience, including the last seven at PCT. “So, I had about six or seven frequencies combined up. You catch something, you hear something, but the whole thing lasted less than a minute. I had aircraft all pointed at the airport for different runways, and I just started pushing them around and switching the runways on short notice.

“I had about five or six Dulles arrivals in a base feed configuration to land. Several of them were set up to land 1 center, which was set up to land opposite direction from the Mooney needed to go, so I pushed those guys over to 1 right, got some other traffic out of the way, and held some traffic out until we knew this guy was going to land. It happened quick.”

The Mooney was a few miles northwest of the airport at 4,500 feet, and when the pilot elected to land 19 center, “I figured the pilot knew he was a little too high to come straight in on runway 12,” Mash said, adding that he thought the pilot would also know he had two miles of runway to expel the remaining energy of the aircraft. He was right. Wrote the pilot, “I began a forward slip on final and was aiming for the front of the runway with anticipation of floating over the runway. I was nearing touching down when I saw the 5,000 feet of runway remaining marker. That was when I knew that we made it.”

“Overall, I am proud of the result, and considering the circumstances, it ended in the best possible outcome,” the pilot wrote.

Mash said he is humbled by the award and “definitely honored” to be a part of the recognition but added that he felt this was just “another day on the job.”

“It is a job and we show up every day, and for the one emergency we get recognized for, there’s five or six, or maybe a dozen that we may never get recognized for,” Mash said. “But it means a lot to be nominated and it means a lot to win.”

Dunaway echoed Mash’s sentiments, citing another emergency situation that the group handled involving a helicopter around the same time as this emergency landing as an example of what “routinely happens in this job.”

“Joe’s been doing this a while and I’ve been doing this a long time and these emergencies happen,” Dunaway said. “We’re surrounded by unsung professionals. Every day, people are doing stuff like this around the country and not getting recognized for it. It’s pretty cool to be recognized for something like this. It’s definitely an honor.”

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

PODCAST: Hear Mash and Dunaway discuss this event.

In the late afternoon of June 16, 2020, Matt Wyrick was working in Area 6 of Indianapolis Center (ZID) when the controller-in-charge (CIC), fellow NATCA member Rachel Gilmore, was contacted by another area that they had worked a Cessna 441 Conquest II (N441LS) minutes prior and suspected hypoxia due to the speech rate and intermittent responses from the pilot.

The pilot regularly flies through Wyrick’s airspace to and from their home base in Youngstown, Ohio. Even though he had only been a fully certified controller for a year and a half at ZID before this day, Wyrick recognized the familiar call sign but said this was the first time he has dealt with a case of possible hypoxia. He said he relied on his training. “There have been a few times during lab training in the past, but this was the first time in the live environment,” he said.

Wyrick, who is in the sixth year of his FAA career, all at ZID, grew up immersed in aviation. His father, Allan, was a longtime pilot for NetJets. Wyrick said hypoxia came up in some discussions between them.

“He never actively talked about it, flying with me, but for some reason I remember that he always told me to ask the pilot, if it ever happened, to look at his fingers. He said that if they were purple, that would be a big sign,” Wyrick said. “My trainers went through those situations with me when I was training and said the biggest thing they said to do was descend, and to use basic phraseology to do it; keep things really simple. That helped a lot.”

When Wyrick took control of the aircraft, his area was combined from three sectors to two, a common practice at that time during a period of reduced traffic volume just three months into the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My neighboring controller from Area 3 handed the aircraft off to me,” Wyrick said. “He called me on the landline to let me know that both he and the preceding controller from Area 7 were a little suspicious that he might be hypoxic because he sounded a little slow and had a bit of a slurred speech rate.”

Wyrick decided to get a feel for the situation. He asked the pilot questions about ride conditions and the weather and issued control instructions to keep him engaged. “His response was still a little slow,” Wyrick said. “It wasn’t enough to convince me he was doing OK.”

He knew that the pilot would be landing relatively soon but not soon enough to begin normal descent instructions. However, with the concern rising about the possible worsening hypoxia taking place, Wyrick decided to descend the aircraft two thousand feet, to 27,000 feet. The pilot read it back, slowly, but did not begin a descent. When Matt asked the pilot, he mistakenly reported he was leaving FL 27,900.

The pilot then started a descent but did not respond to Wyrick’s next transmissions for a couple minutes. Transmissions from the pilot sounded slurred at some points, and other points he keyed up and the transmissions were unreadable.

“It took so long for him to respond, and even when he was responding, it didn’t sound good,” Wyrick said. “Finally, I declared an emergency for him.” Wyrick kept descending the aircraft to get him below 10,000 feet. He informed the pilot there was no traffic anywhere of concern and gave him a pilot’s discretion descent. He complied.

Wyrick spoke with the pilot about his hypoxia suspicions and used an emergency checklist and information in the En Route Information Display System (ERIDS) to ask the pilot questions and understand what he was going through. Wyrick asked two separate times iif the pilot had oxygen on board and if it was working. The pilot responded that it did, adding that he didn’t believe he was hypoxic but rather was “really tired,” Wyrick said.

Several pilots who were on the same frequency and listening to the exchanges checked in with the Cessna pilot and told him to check his supplemental oxygen and make sure everything was working. Wyrick cited that along with many fellow controllers at ZID which he said comprised an outstanding team effort of about a dozen people, one of the best he has been a part of, he said, thus far in his young career.

“I had my CIC standing behind me and I had a good D side that was watching the rest of the sector, because in a situation like that, you tend to get tunnel vision,” he said.

Wyrick handed off control of the aircraft to Cleveland Center (ZOB) when it reached 9,000 feet. The pilot landed safely a short time later.

“Matt remained professional throughout the event and communicated well with the pilot,” Gilmore said. “The pilot reported fatigue, and that may be the case, but Matt did an excellent job of making sure he stayed awake and on oxygen. The aircraft landed safely at its destination thanks to Matt’s attitude of the importance of safety.”

Wyrick said he was honored and humbled by the award. “I was just there doing my job that day and I had a bunch of good people around me who were a huge part of the outcome. I really think the award is more a reflection of everybody I work with. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that any one of the controllers in my area could have sat there and achieved the same outcome.”

This flight assist marks the fourth time ZID members have represented the Great Lakes Region in the 17-year history of the Archie League Medal of Safety Awards, all in the last four years. Bob Obma won the award in 2020, Nicholas J. Ferro and Charles Terry won in 2019, and Daniel Rak won in 2018.

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

Listen below as Wyrick recounts the full story on an episode of The NATCA Podcast.

It was late on a Sunday afternoon, Sunday, March 21, 2021, and 15-year veteran Boston Center (ZBW) controller Casey Allan was conducting on-the-job training for fellow ZBW member Nick Schuler. With COVID-19 still gripping the nation and dragging down traffic volume and complexity, the facility took advantage of an opportunity to start training back up.

Schuler began working a Socata TBM-850 single-turboprop aircraft which was a familiar sight in their airspace, flying north-south routes. On this day, the pilot was headed north to Burlington, Vt.

“It was a pretty normal flight, headed northbound, and Nick decided it was time to start descending the aircraft, because there was a departure coming and he wanted to get it below (into Burlington),” said Allan, a native New Englander who grew up in South Berwick, Maine, just over an hour away from his current home in Nashua, N.H. But after approximately one minute, the pilot still had not started his descent. Both Schuler and Allan noticed that the aircraft appeared to be climbing instead.

Allan immediately thought back to when he was a trainee. “My trainer always quizzed me on ceiling altitude and speeds, so the second I saw it climbing at 31,000 feet, I knew the aircraft was already at its service ceiling. We knew right away that something wasn’t right.”

Schuler gave the pilot a descend and maintain instruction. But the response was hard to understand aside from the words “lost my pressure.” Allan immediately took over the sector and Schuler assumed the D side position.

“I believe he got up to 33,000 feet. He climbed pretty rapidly for an aircraft like the TBM, and it started a right-hand turn,” Allan said. “Once we saw the indication of a turn, my first thought was, ‘it’s going to go into a spin.’”

The aircraft was now turned around and headed south. It was only a few miles from the adjacent New York Center (ZNY) sector from where it had flown from, into ZBW airspace. “At that point, I just tried to keep talking to the pilot and tried to get him to stay awake as best I could,” Allan said.

Three separate times, Allan tried to get the aircraft to fly a specific heading and a specific altitude. But the pilot continued to descend lower than he was cleared. A rapid descent was underway and it alarmed Allan.

The pilot stated, “Eight Hotel Romeo is descending, I’ve lost my cabin pressure.”

Allan gave him instructions to descend to 10,000 feet, which would be the safest place to be to allow the pilot to regain enough oxygen to escape hypoxia conditions. It would also get him nearer the base of Allan’s airspace or at least get him to slow down his rate of descent.

At 14,000 feet, the pilot still sounded unintelligible. Allan tried to keep the conversation upbeat and normal. “In my opinion, I don’t even think the pilot knew what was happening on the way down, for the most part,” he said.

When the aircraft descended through 10,000 feet, Allan gave an instruction to descend to 6,000 feet, the base of his ZBW airspace sector. “He read that back and started to sound better,” Allan said. The pilot requested vectors for nearby airports. He was directly over Poughkeepsie (POU) at that point. But Stewart International Airport (SWF) was just 15 miles to the west. With its 12,000-foot runway, that was the preferred option.

The aircraft leveled off at 4,700 feet, in New York TRACON (N90) airspace, and was flying straight and level. Controller-in-charge Scott Elms led the coordination taking place to ensure the safe conclusion to the incident. Allan switched the aircraft over to N90, where controllers were able to guide the pilot to SWF. He landed without incident.

“We all worked really well together. It happened very fast,” said Allan. “It was probably no more than 10 minutes overall. But it felt faster than that.”

Allan said being honored with the Archie League Medal of Safety Award is a “strange, bittersweet feeling.”

“People have told me congratulations, but it’s a strange feeling because I don’t want to be congratulated for having this experience,” he said. “It’s just a strange emotion. Getting the award, I’m glad there’s recognition. It makes me feel proud and happy that I was able to do my job. You don’t want to be in that situation, but at the same time, knowing you can handle it makes me feel glad that I was there because it worked out for everybody.”

Allan is the 11th ZBW member to receive the Archie League Medal of Safety Award, joining Bruce Clough, Stephen Roebuck, John Therrien, and Bill Wood in 2009, Stephen Schmalz in 2007, Chris Henchey and Ryan Workman in 2012, and Jeffrey Aulbach, Neil Cóspito, and Michael Jacobson in 2019.

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

Listen below as Allan recounts the full story on an episode of The NATCA Podcast.

Feb. 20, 2021 had been a routine Saturday winter afternoon in the Denver area, with cold temperatures and all aircraft reporting at least moderate turbulence in the climb and descent over the front range of Colorado.

Denver TRACON (D01) member Chris Keddie (pictured above left) was working the West Departure position when United Airlines Flight 328 (UAL328) checked on. The Boeing 777 was en route from Denver to Honolulu. Keddie climbed the aircraft to flight level 230 and advised the crew of the moderate turbulence. Shortly after, he gave fellow D01 member Kevin Cleavland (pictured above right) a position relief briefing and then stepped aside to provide an overlap.

Cleavland had just started to set up the position with his preferences when the crew of UAL328 declared a MAYDAY and advised that they had just experienced an engine failure. Remaining calm and composed, Cleavland immediately solicited the crew’s desires and gave them a descent clearance and left turn to head back to the airport.

Cleavland stopped all westbound departures and moved aircraft to give UAL328 a clear path. Meanwhile, Keddie and fellow D01 member Adam Schulte continued to assist in the extensive coordination and communication with Denver ATCT (DEN) to determine the best runway to use since they were in the middle of a flow change due to a wind shift.

Cleavland received a call from Broomfield ATCT (BJC) at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, located nine miles northwest of Denver. The BJC controller had received a call that an aircraft had gone down near them, so they asked Cleavland if he knew anything. He confirmed that he had not lost an aircraft but that he was working an emergency aircraft so that may have been what the call was about.

At that point, Cleavland couldn’t have known that his emergency aircraft was the source of the calls from the public. The engine failure resulted in an in-flight engine fire, causing extensive damage to the engine nacelle (the streamlined enclosure for the engine), and minor damage to the fuselage. Parts departing from the engine cowling of the stricken aircraft resulted in a debris field at least one mile long over suburban residential areas of Broomfield, Colo. Debris fell through the roof of a private home and significantly damaged a parked vehicle.

Cleavland continued to work the aircraft and allow the crew to troubleshoot the problem. During instances like this, it is easy to forget that controllers still have other aircraft on frequency for whom they are responsible, and this situation was no different. Cleavland professionally provided services to all aircraft under his control.

Eventually UAL328 was ready to return to the airport and Kevin provided vectors for an ILS to runway 26 and a successful landing. There were no injuries as a result of this incident, an astounding fact given the severity of the emergency. This is due to the training and skill of the flight crew and other true professionals like Cleavland, Keddie, and Schulte.

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Highlights from this save:

At approximately 8:30 p.m. on March 9, 2021, Greensboro ATCT (GSO) member Noah Walker was working the approaches into Greensboro, N.C., from the tower cab, as the positions were combined and the radar position was moved to the tower.

Walker was lining up a Lifeguard aircraft to the final for Runway 14. Just before he instructed the pilot to contact the tower, he noticed lights that appeared to be another aircraft in conflict.

He asked the tower controller if he was talking to an aircraft, but the controller confirmed he was not. Walker determined it was a drone flying near the arrival corridor for runway 14. He recognized that the aircraft and the drone appeared to be on converging courses, so he canceled the approach clearance. The aircraft was given a downwind for another runway in an effort to avoid the drone and still keep traffic moving. 

Other aircraft were taxiing for departure off both southwest runways that pointed their departure course right at the drone, which they estimated to be the size of small light sport aircraft. So, the two controllers coordinated to have the aircraft taxi to the other side of the airport and depart off runways 5L and 5R, away from the drone.

They were able to depart a few aircraft, but the drone then changed its course and flew to the other side of the airport. After a few minutes, it flew changed course once again and flew directly over the tower that is located very near midfield. Since the controllers could not predict the erratic behavior of this very large drone, they had no choice but to suspend operations at GSO until they could be reasonably sure the drone no longer presented a threat.

Multiple arrivals were diverted or put in holding and departures were delayed until there were no sightings for a reasonable period of time to ensure that the safety of flight was no longer compromised. The controllers coordinated with the adjacent centers and a ground stop was put into effect for GSO. One of the aircraft affected was a student pilot from a neighboring airport that had come to do one touch-and-go; they certainly didn’t expect to spend a few hours on the ground there.

The situation presented such a safety hazard that the Domestic Events Network (DEN) and other entities were tracking the events closely which required a lot of coordination. Local law enforcement and fire and rescue personnel were alerted to what was going on and began a search to try and locate the pilot of the drone. Law enforcement was prepared to shoot down the drone if it came within a distance and altitude that they could safely do so, but it never did. The drone stayed in the area for a few hours, occasionally leaving for a few minutes but then reappearing a short time later. After approximately two and a half hours, the drone departed, and the pilot was never located.

Walker’s actions on this night prevented a collision and ensured the safety of the users in the airspace. NATCA is proud to recognize his professionalism and skill to identify the hazard even though it did not appear on radar. It led one pilot to comment on frequency, “Thanks for looking out for us.”

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

PODCAST: Listen to a conversation with Walker below.

When Houston TRACON (I90) member Joe Wright accepts his 2021 Southwest Region (NSW) Archie League Medal of Safety Award from NSW Regional Vice President Nick Daniels on June 17 in New Orleans, it will mark a full circle of sorts, on two levels.

First, Wright, a U.S. Navy veteran who plans to retire later this year after a 26-year career, will be back in the state of Louisiana, where he began his FAA career at Shreveport ATCT (SHV) in 2001. Second, he will be reunited with Daniels, his former co-worker at Fort Worth Center (ZFW). Wright arrived at ZFW in 2004, shortly before Daniels. Wright transferred from ZFW to I90 in 2009, where he experienced quite a bit, including working as one of the 12 employees who stayed at the facility for 76 straight hours during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

“I’ve been able to see the whole gamut of air traffic, from flight planning in the Navy, all the way through to the tower discipline, the approach discipline, and the center discipline,” Wright said. “I feel really satisfied and fortunate for my career and all the experiences I have had.

“I’ve usually been in the right place at the right time.”

Perhaps never was that statement more true than the late afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. Wright was working the Houston Hobby (HOU) final position. The weather was IFR, with ceilings at 800 feet and a storm system moving in from the northwest. HOU was landing on runway 31-left and nearby Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base (EFD) – located seven miles east southeast of HOU – was landing on runway 35-left. The two approach courses intersect at a five-mile final for EFD and an eight-mile final for Hobby. Inbound HOU aircraft stay at 3,100 feet until they cross the intersection, then descend to at or above 2,100 feet a mile and a half later.

“Technique has gotten me through a lot. In this situation, it allowed me to keep things separated a little more clearly than maybe someone who had a different technique,” he said. “You can work the two finals independently of each other, as long as you’re minding your altitudes. You don’t have to blend Ellington with Hobby. You just have to be ready to descend to make their sequence work.”

On this day, a Piper Cherokee was cleared for the ILS to EFD. A Gulfstream G400 was being vectored behind the Cherokee for the ILS into HOU. After giving the Gulfstream a turn towards final, Wright noticed that the Cherokee appeared to be struggling to stay on the localizer.

“This individual I noticed, when flying the pattern, was just not as steady and didn’t seem as confident as other training that’s going on,” he said.

Wright noticed some variations in the pilot’s headings and altitude variations. He advised the pilot of those things and got him on the approach on the first attempt. He seemed to be stable and Wright switched him to EFD tower. He went back to working other traffic but then observed the Cherokee pilot approach the marker in an unstable fashion and determined there was no way he was on the localizer which was used to keep aircraft aligned with the runway.

Wright then noticed the aircraft turn to the right and start climbing. Without hesitation, Wright issued the Gulfstream an immediate left turn and climb away from the Cherokee. While he was doing this, EFD called to inform Wright that the Cherokee had lost his gyroscope. Wright had four HOU arrivals on his frequency, with the first in sequence being taken off the approach on a vector away from the Cherokee, which requested vectors for another try at the ILS although the pilot seemed unable to maintain a consistent altitude. In the background, an emergency was declared and other controllers searched for other airports with better weather conditions.

“He seemed a little rattled and rightfully so,” Wright said of the Cherokee pilot. “I knew, in my 26 years of aviation experience, with no gyro and those weather conditions, if you get disoriented it can go bad very quickly. My intention was to do the very best I could for him control-wise, but also keep him calm. If I got tense, it may have caused him to have a little bit of a problem in concentration.

“I just did the best I could to keep him calm. If he broke air traffic rules, or climbed, or turned, or did something I didn’t tell him, I just advised him of it and gave him as much room as I could.”

The other aircraft in the pattern headed into Hobby heard what was happening. Wright continued to work them as he monitored the Cherokee’s position. “When I had an opportunity to slide one in, I would get them into Hobby,” he said.

The Cherokee pilot got back onto the localizer but soon descended into a tight, steep turn. Wright saw his altitude drop rapidly, starting from 2,400 feet, then to 2,000 feet. “I asked him, ‘are you OK?’ and he said, ‘I don’t think we’re OK,’” Wright said. “That’s when I knew it was a dire situation. That’s when I came to the thought that I was going to offer this man some assistance that he can’t see. I never want to take control of the plane or put them in a position where my actions are going to cause them a problem. But he was clearly in a situation that was not good.”

Wright advised the pilot to roll to the right and pull back. The pilot didn’t acknowledge, so Wright called out to him a couple of times. The pilot then broke out of the cloud ceiling at 700 feet and reported he could see the ground. Wright advised him he was in a safe area, with no obstructions or traffic. The pilot said he could see EFD, so Wright issued him a contact approach. The crisis was over and the pilot soon landed safely. Wright then found himself in a very unfamiliar physical condition.

Wright said a fellow controller took over his position while he took about an hour to collect himself. “That was the most traumatic event of my career, by far,” he said. “I was really shocked at the physical effect it had on me. Once everything was done, it was just an unload of adrenaline that was just incredible.”

I90 FacRep Luke Miller said Wright’s “unflustered demeanor, attention to detail, and professionalism throughout this incident were exemplary. His actions may have saved the lives of both people onboard the aircraft. His ability to continue to expertly work Hobby arrivals was particularly impressive.”

Wright said that while he feels pride at how he performed, it’s harder talking about the event now than it was dealing with it then as far as keeping his composure and staying professional.

“Talking about it now, it’s still a little bit emotional,” he said. “It’s been a wonderful career.”

Wright is the fourth I90 member to win the Archie League Medal of Safety Award, joining Stewart Pearcy (2014), Hugh McFarland (2015), and Michael Schawinsky (2019).

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this event:

PODCAST: Listen to a conversation with Joe Wright about this event.

Around 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2020, the crew of FedEx Flight 1026 (FDX1026), on approach to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), notified LAX member Scott Moll that they needed to conduct a go-around due to an unsafe landing gear indication. As any tower controller can tell you, this isn’t uncommon and usually ends with the pilots taking a little time to work out the issue and then returning for an uneventful landing.

With that in mind, and adhering to normal procedures, FDX1026 was vectored out over the Pacific Ocean to work the problem. At this point, numerous challenges began to present themselves for this flight. The first was relatively small. After some time, the pilots asked for a low approach at 1,000 feet over the runway to get a visual confirmation as to the status of the gear. But the darkness and the height of the aircraft above the tower made it nearly impossible to confirm what Moll and his ground controller, CJ Wilson, thought they saw. The left main landing gear appeared to be retracted.

Moll began to coordinate a second low approach with Southern California TRACON (SCT), this time at 300 feet above the runway. Wilson and Moll coordinated with airport operations to get vehicles on the field, and with another FedEx crew that had just landed, to assist in visually inspecting the landing gear to ensure as many eyes as possible would be on that aircraft as it made a low approach. It was confirmed: the nose and right main gear was down but the left main gear was still up.

Another large challenge appeared at this point. Having exhausted all their options, the crew of FDX1026 determined they would have to attempt an emergency landing. The two controllers knew that the workload in the tower was about to increase exponentially. So, they recalled Jeremy Hroblak back from his break to conduct the immense amount of coordination and communication associated with the controller in charge position.

The crew of FDX1026 requested the longest runway at LAX, runway 25R. But another challenge presented itself because the runway was closed due to the city venting gas from a complex on short final for that runway. None of the three controllers on duty that night had ever seen the city do this venting procedure before, or since. But on that night, it had an impact.

When Hroblak arrived in the tower, he coordinated with the city to halt the venting and make runway 25R available for the stricken Boeing 767.

Yet another issue had been lingering for nearly a week prior to Aug. 19. The crash phone, used to summon the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting crews, was out of service, which complicated the required, and urgent, Alert 2 notification. An Alert 2 indicates that an aircraft is having major difficulties. Jeremy got in contact with the fire captain on his personal cell phone and utilized that means of communication throughout the event.

An immense amount of coordination occurred over the next few tense minutes leading to FDX1026 making an emergency landing on runway 25R, just after 4 a.m. The flight crew abandoned the aircraft on the runway due to the potential for fire, and both survived, though one did suffer a broken leg while using the escape ladder.

Despite the numerous challenges presenting themselves, Moll, Hroblak, and Wilson, through their skill and professionalism, were able to address them all, contributing to the most successful outcome possible.

The captain of FDX1026, Bob Smith, wrote a letter describing the event from his perspective. He concluded the letter by saying, “As we say at FedEx to a team member for a job well done … Bravo Zulu!  Thank you for your professionalism, and for your significant contribution to an aircraft incident that, because of your actions, ended with a safe landing and minimal damage to our aircraft.”

NATCA is happy to report that the crash phone was repaired the very next day.

This is the second Western Pacific Region Archie League Medal of Safety Award-winning event from LAX, joining Michael Darling’s award-winning save in 2007.

Watch the award presentation:

Highlights from this save:

Read FedEx 1026 Captain Bob Smith’s statement about this event here.

PODCAST: Listen to a conversation with these three NATCA members.

CENTRAL REGION

Buel Warden, T75
Dave Bown, T75
Damion Curtis, STL
Annie Wolf, STL
Brett Hansen, ZKC
Brent Scott, ZKC
Ryan James, ZKC

EASTERN REGION

Jeff Simmons, PCT
Chris Rhodes, PCT
Chris Jubeck, PCT
Dallas Dudding, PCT
Matthew Harper, PCT
Dan Fostel, AGC

GREAT LAKES REGION 

Ted Kratochvil, IND
Shawn Hyde, IND
James Lister, IND
Tyler Yensel, IND
Raymond Cooper, ZID
Matthew Demasie, ZID
Sam Schmitt, RST
Dan Carrico, ORD

NEW ENGLAND REGION
Israel Cruz, BTV
John Lombardi, Y90
Joseph Pelton, Y90
Robert Hixon, Y90

NORTHWEST MOUNTAIN REGION
Brian Gosselin, EUG
Caryn Morrison, ZLC
Lindsey Boerman, ZLC
Wayne Withers, BOI
Joe LaPorte, ZLC
Royce Bockelman, ZDV

SOUTHERN REGION 

Kelly Franklin, ZME
Dylan Reisling, ZME
Jamaal Baker, ZME
Jessica Huffman, ZME
Harry Kaufman, JAX
Edwin Brignon-Perez, ZSU
Giovanni Martinez, ZSU
Nate Henkels, ZMA
Brandi Licious, ZMA
John Lennox, ZMA
Daniel Garcia-Barbon, ZMA
David Bayne, GSP
Sam Perkins, GSP
Dion Ferrier, GSP
Chelsea Fleenor, GSP
Anthony Downing, GSP
Martin Rojkes, ZMA
Hugo Alfaro, ZMA

SOUTHWEST REGION 

Brad Benedetto, ZFW
John Grant, ZFW
Wendy Smith, ABQ
Antonio Bermudez, DFW
Brandon Pettit, ZAB
Stephen Barnes, ZAB

WESTERN PACIFIC REGION 

Bryan Caldwell, P50
Kevin Kosterman, P50
Alicia Scott, MYF
Chase McNeil, MYF
Jason Gilsdorf, MYF
Catherine Caloca-Miller, MYF
Dustin Tanaka, MYF