'Lost Radar Contact': Former Air Traffic Controller Recounts Time He Had a Shockingly Bad Day at Work - Losing Five Planes in Giant Thunderstorm Over Arizona

The memory comes from former air traffic controller Robin A. Smith. He recounts the drama in Life With A View – Memoir of an Air Traffic Controller READ MORE: Airline Introduces NO CHILDREN'S ZONE

By Ted Thornhill, Editor of Mailonline travels

Updated: 1:38 PM BST, 3 September 2023

'Radar contact lost.'

Former air traffic controller Robin A. Smith reveals in his memoir that he once had to say that dreaded phrase – a phrase no one professions in always wants to say.

He recounts in this captivating book the sequence of events that led him to say that. And how, for a brief moment, he believed disaster involving an airliner and four military aircraft was imminent.

The story emphasizes that when an air traffic controller has a bad day at work, it can be really scary.

The 'lost radar contact' drama unfolded in August 1992 in Tucson Arizona, when Smith worked in Tucson Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon), which was housed at the city's Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and oversaw aircraft movements for the base and international airport four and a half miles to the southwest.

< p class="mol-para-with-font">The day in question started out positively, Smith recalls – he drove to his 6am-3pm shift under cobalt blue skies.

But worrying signs indicating the approach of a big storm appeared around 10 am. Puffy clouds were forming and I...