Description: In Vectors to Spare, author Milovan Brenlove sets out to describe what it's really like to be an air traffic controller. He should know. His on-again, off-again relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration spanned a tumultuous fifteen-year period that included rapid growth in air travel and the 1981 nationwide strike of air traffic controllers. Brenlove chronicles the rising tensions and increasing militancy that preceded the strike and the rocky "recovery" that followed. He analyzes the causes and lingering effects of systemic problems in the FAA, assigning shared responsibility to incompetent management and to power-hungry union leadership as well as to himself and fellow controllers. This thoughtful, inside look at a defining moment in FAA history is woven into Brenlove's frequently entertaining account of his own career, from his earliest days as a developmental controller to his self-imposed retirement. Readers learn what it's like to scan the skies for traffic from the glass-enclosed tower, to time landings and runway crossings to the second, and to guide enroute pilots and passengers in safety from the dark inner sanctum of the radar room. Finally, though, it is Brenlove's "you shoulda seen what happened" stories that fascinate most. A few are agonizing, like the account of the cargo pilot who lost an engine and spent his last moments describing exactly what was happening as his heavily loaded plane dropped into the trees. Many are comic: the pilot who lost oil pressure, landed his crippled airplane on the Ohio turnpike, and joined the westbound traffic to the next off-ramp; the pilot who wouldn't declare an emergency but wanted controller approval to land in the snowalongside the runway because his plane had no wheels; and the confused car driver who lost his way while leaving the passenger terminal, meandered along the airport's taxiways, and finally confronted a DC-9 coming in for a landing. Vectors to Spare is an absorbing narrative about "those times, those people, those memories" that make up Brenlove's experience as an air traffic controller. It will be of interest to pilots, controllers, air travelers, and anyone with even an armchair interest in aviation.

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