Longtime air traffic controller continues fascination with airplanes

by Brad W. Gary<br>Herald Staff Writer
| August 7, 2006 9:00 PM

MOSES LAKE — Margaret Skowronski got bit by the aviation bug early on.

Ever since the age of 12, when she visited her first airport on a school trip, Skowronski became riveted by how airplanes fly. It led her to get her private pilot's license in 1980, and later to apply for a job as an air traffic controller at Grant County International Airport. She's been at the airport 21 years and is now one of two supervisors within the airport's tower.

"I'm fascinated with airplanes; I like being around them, I like watching them fly," she said.

From high atop the tower, 110 feet high and complete with one of the area's few elevators, Skowronski can see for miles. To get to her workplace within Grant County's tallest building, she must drive a half-mile section of runway from the airport's terminal. The section is one which has also been traversed by countless airplanes in the years since this port served as the Larson Air Force Base.

The Grant County tower employs 14 controllers, two supervisors and a manager controlling all aircraft within its airspace. Between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. airplanes are constantly in the air, many circling the airport area as part of their training, and talking via radio to one of the air traffic controllers.

The facility looms large on a first visit, with a radar room and tower, bringing planes in via radios on their headsets. Planes fly over Grant County Airport (MWH on the radar screen) to Spokane International (GEG) and other airports throughout the country. The radar brings planes into the tower's environment, within a 5-mile radius of the airport, and the tower controller helps those planes to land.

"We can see 60 miles from this airport on our radar scope," she said. "We can see down to Pasco, see to Wenatchee, (we're) within 15 miles of seeing to Spokane."

Grant County has more aircraft continually in the skies than most because of the nature of its training status. On any given day, planes from Big Bend Community College or Japan Airlines can be seen traversing the skies. The military occasionally flies its C17 aircraft, and Boeing planes also occasionally make an appearance to train pilots or test equipment.

"There's a sense of accomplishment in helping them learn," Skowronski said. For many of the students, the communication she has with them is their first-ever with any air traffic controller from the cockpit. But drawing on her own training as a private pilot, she said, has helped her in working as an air traffic controller.

"You just learn in talking with them," she said. "You learn their level and you adjust accordingly."

The variety of people, from college students to international airline pilots, requires a certain phraseology for air traffic controllers and pilots to understand each other. Whatever the training needs of the pilot, Skowronski said the tower tries to accommodate them.

They talk to Big Sky Airlines workers who fly in and out of the airport each day, who Skowronski admits are different than the trainers. The commercial air crafts arrive and depart quickly, but Skowronski said the training planes are always flying.

"That is the aircraft that comes and lands and then departs again, instead of the aircraft that goes around and around again," she said of the difference between commercial air liners and their training counterparts.

She learned how to fly at the Ephrata airport, and still remembers having 35 hours of flight time, getting her license just before Mount St. Helens blew its top in 1980. Skowronski admits she hasn't flown in a long time. "I like this end of the microphone a little better," she said.

She first started working in the control tower at Grant County 21 years ago, after an extensive, 18-month training session in Oklahoma City.

"Then I had what's called a trainer, who worked with me," she said. "And they work with you till you're able to do the job by yourself."

Skowronski is now a supervisor of the air traffic controllers, and in her 21 years she has seen all sorts of technological improvements. The controller's radio communications used to blare out into the radar room with controllers using hand held microphones, similar to a CB radio, to speak. In 1990 they moved to a radar system with headsets which Skowronski admits were quite a change. Today's communications systems also include touch screen panels, recently added to the system.

They also used, and continue to use, binoculars to spot planes from the tower. They can see Mount Rainier, 125 miles away, on a clear day. But now they also have scopes and other technology to aid in their tracking.

"I just enjoy what I do, working with pilots and working with people," she said.

The tower's administrative secretary Sandi Millican has worked with Skowronski for the last nine and a half years, and Millican said Skowronski is constantly thinking as she works.

"She cares so much that it's done right," Millican said. "She doesn't take breaks she just keeps on going."