Ken Ballard leaves the tower
Ken Ballard said his job as an air traffic controller was the perfect job for him.
MOSES LAKE — Ken Ballard’s job was rarely a chore.
“One of those things where you enjoy working,” he said. Ballard, 56, worked his final shift as an air traffic controller at the Grant County International Airport Feb. 28. He had been in the control tower 26 years, he said.
His colleagues surprised him with, among other things, somebody from the newspaper to take a few pictures during the last shift. Ballard said he didn’t know that was coming. “No idea.”
He’s still got a job at the tower, but he’s reached the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers, he said.
Air traffic control is exactly what it sounds like, Ballard said. “The primary goal of air traffic control is to move air traffic from one destination to another destination in a safe, orderly and expeditious manner.”
The Grant County airport is in a spot with lots of sunshine, good visibility most of the time and relatively moderate traffic. But planes are still coming in from different directions, at different altitudes, big planes (sometimes really big) and little planes (sometimes very little), all required to make room for each other on the same runways.
The controllers use a combination of their own eyes and radar to keep it all sorted out. There’s a second radar station below the main control room that is opened when air traffic warrants.
Technology has improved in 26 years, Ballard said, and rules change to keep up with changing airplane use and capability. But the basics of air traffic control, what the crew in the tower has to look for when guiding planes in and out, have not changed, he said.
While it’s a highly technical field, there’s an art to it, Ballard said. With experience, “you get to learn where the traps are, what works best and what doesn’t work best.”
The control room usually was a good place to be, he said. “One thing I can say, I have always enjoyed working with the airplanes. I have always enjoyed being in the tower,” he said.
“It’s a challenge - it gets your adrenaline going once in a while, but that’s okay too.”
Air traffic control was the job he wanted, pretty much from the beginning, he said. An Air Force kid, he was working as a welder in Virginia after school; he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do, but he didn’t think welding was it, Ballard said.
He arranged to talk to the friend of a friend, an air traffic controller. He asked the guy about his job, he said, and what it took to get into the field. “As soon as he started talking, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.
He got his training in the Air Force, he said, and started applying for jobs once he finished his tour of duty. But new air traffic controllers must be younger than age 31, and that deadline was looming, he said.
He got word of a job in Moses Lake, “which I found out about the day of the (job announcement) closing.” Ballard got to the post office at 11:30 p.m., he said, and persuaded the postal workers to postmark the packet for that day. “It’s been a really lucky story for me,” he said.
The good luck continued. His Air Force roommate lived in Moses Lake and knew the airport managers, he said. Ballard got a job.
In career terms, Moses Lake often is one of those places where people get a start and move on somewhere else. Ballard stayed. His wife is from Moses Lake, he said, and “I like the town. I like the people.”
He’s going to miss the tower. “Oh, yeah. I guess that’s why I stayed in it this long. It’s been fun.”