Editor’s note: When Wolfgang Langewiesche wrote “Bringing ’Em in at Idlewild” for Air Facts in October 1954, airline flying was still a marvel of emerging technologies. Idlewild Airport—known today as John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)—had been open only six years, serving as New York’s new gateway to the world. In this vivid, behind-the-scenes account, Langewiesche brings readers into the radar room and control tower that made all-weather airline operations possible, at a time when instrument flying and air traffic control were still evolving rapidly.

Langewiesche writes with his signature clarity and respect for the people who make flying work. More than 70 years later, his description of fog-bound approaches, radar “talk-downs,” and the calm professionalism of controllers and pilots still captures aviation’s timeless mix of technology and human skill.

Bringing ‘Em in at Idlewild

by Wolfgang Langewiesche

At Idlewild Airport, New York, this morning, the weather is bad: ceiling 300 feet, visibility half a mile, drizzle, fog. But still they keep flying. You can’t see them land; when they materialize out of the fog they are already on the ground, taxiing up to the ramp.

The biggest problem of flying has always been landing in bad weather. Here they have just about got it licked. An airport operating in bad weather is aviation’s proudest show. Only trouble: it is hard to see. The pilots fly blind. The Control Tower controls blind. The action takes place in the clouds. The show is by its very nature invisible.

Among the metropolitan airports, Idlewild is the specialist for long distance traffic. It offers runways two miles long instead of the standard one mile. This allows take-offs with the heavy fuel loads that an airplane needs to make it non-stop to London, Paris, California, the Azores. But Idlewild is not in a class by itself. Among these world airports, it is not the busiest; that’s Chicago. It’s not the best; that’s London or perhaps Zurich. It’s by a long shot not the most impressive; the passenger building is temporary, crowded, awkward. But the Idlewild control tower is the highest in the world—185 feet. In bad weather it sticks right up into the clouds. This tower is a four-story building perched on top of a giant hangar. The hangar, however, happens not to exist yet, so meanwhile the tower floats up there anyway.

Radar Eye

Up in the Tower, on this particular morning, all the glass is almost useless: there is nothing to see but runways fading into the fog. The real works is four floors down—a soundproofed, air-conditioned room, heavily curtained, almost dark. Three controllers sit, elbows touching, before a thing half-switchboard, half-instrument panel, and talk into microphones. Radar scopes flicker and glow; radio voices come in from nowhere as pilots report their positions. Behind the three controllers, almost leaning over them, stands the Supervisor of the Watch, listening to two or three voices at once.

Flying Tortoise

Pan American Clipper 101, coming across from Europe at night, is scheduled to land at 8 a.m. At 7:30 it is flying in clouds, offshore, approaching Nantucket Island from the northeast. The flight is not yet in radio contact with Idlewild. But neither is it on its own. Company dispatchers on the ground are following the flight on paper, planning ahead; watching wind, weather, fuel speed. Radio stations, some government-owned, some airline-owned, are tuned in for any calls the ship might make. It had made a fuel stop in Newfoundland with the help of Canadian radar and under the control of a Canadian tower.

All night long Oceanic Air Traffic Control has kept its eye on Clipper 101. Now Boston Air Traffic Control is responsible for it. An airplane in blind flight carries with itself, as a turtle carries its shell, a protective box of airspace 1,000 feet high, ten miles broad and about 50 miles long: within this box, ATC allows no other airplane to fly blind. As the flight progresses, the pilots report. As they report, ATC—working on large wallboards—posts it ahead and reserves it airspace. By diret interphone, Boston hands the flight on to New York.

So the red carpet unrolls ahead of Clipper 101 as it flies.

“Scotland”

Coming up on the tip of Long Island, 100 miles from Idlewild the pilots now retune their radio and report to the New York Center. This controls blind flights over the metropolitan area. Same technique as ATC, same protective box, but the tempo now quickens as the traffic streams converge on New York.

The Center gives a new traffic clearance: “Clipper 101 cleared to the Scotland Holding Pattern via St. James, direct Mitchel, to cruise and maintain 10,000 feet.” est. James” is the intersection of two radio beams; underneath it lie, unseen in such weather, the big estates of the Long Island North Shore. “Mitchel” is a radio station. “Scotland” is a radio beacon 16 miles the other side of Idlewild for an airplane approaching from Europe. This beacon serves as gateway, so to speak, for Idlewild: all blind-flying traffic bound into Idlewild goes to “Scotland” first.

An instrument approach, flying blind right down to the runway, is not an adventure, but a procedure — standardized, government-approved, well-practiced. People sometimes think the pilot finds his own way down, along radio beams. They say: “Our pilot stooged around in the clouds for an hour, trying to find a hole.” Ridiculous! He doesn’t need a hole. He’s got a map that shows precisely the beams and beacons, the proper flight path, the right altitude for each point. The pattern is compulsory: you fly it, and no other. It brings the pilot out of the clouds in a position where he’s looking right down the runway, ready to land.

Procedures are much alike for most of the world’s busy airports. Only the distances, directions, radio frequencies differ. “Scotland” is in fact a lightship anchored outside New York Harbor. It does double duty by carrying this aviation beacon. For London the same sort of radio beacon is near Windsor Castle; for Bangkok, near a big temple. The pilot in the clouds does not get such local flavor. To the men in the nose of Clipper 101, “Scotland” is simply an unseen point that attracts the needle of their radio direction-finder. As long as the beacon is ahead, the needle on the dial will point forward. When the needle swings around and starts pointing backward, they will know they are there.

Cog in a Wheel

The essence of all this is routine. Everybody does strictly the expected, says the expected. Everybody knows ahead of time what happens next. In flying everything is standardized. Flying habits are much more alike the world over than, for example, driving habits are. In Brazil if you run over a man he doesn’t sue you—you sue him. In France you can dart out of the side road and it’s up to the main-road traffic to give way. The British drive on the left. Nothing like that in flying. The foreign pilot has nothing new to learn at Idlewild.

Other airplanes have got to beacon “Scotland” before you. They are “holding,” waiting their turn to land. If you could see them they would look like vultures circling lazily over the lightship, each 1000 feet higher than the next man below him. The New York Center puts the newest arrival at the top of the stack. The Idlewild Tower pulls the bottom airplane out and clears it to approach the airport. Then the Tower lowers all airplanes in the stack by 1,000 feet. The whole thing is simply an aeronautical form of standing in line. Finally, you get to be low man, you are cleared to start your approach, you head for the airport. Now you pick up the beam of the Instrument Landing System. This beam, if it were visible, would look like a searchlight, shining from the runway outward and upward toward the holding stack. For the pilot it forms an inclined ramp that leads him right down to the runway. Over this path the Tower exercises its stop-and-go control.

Idlewild now can take an airplane in every three minutes or so, and still let airplanes out in between, in any weather that’s legally flyable—which means down to “200 and a half” (ceiling 200 feet, visibility half a mile).

A New Profession

Biggest help is radar. On the radar-scope in Idlewild Tower each airplane shows up as a dot of light crawling on a black background. Etched on the scope is a map of aeronautical New York—main airports, radio beams, main traffic lanes. Each airplane puts itself directly on the map. You see them rise out of La Guardia Field and swim off toward Boston; you see them crawl along the beam from Washington into Newark; and you see Idlewild’s traffic converging on beacon “Scotland” from all sides.

It’s quite a chess-game. The controller has to know how they all move, and must think ahead. Like a pilot, he must expect things that won’t happen but merely might. He has a Venezuelan Constellation on approach, four miles out. The main in the glass-house says on the intercom that a British Overseas Stratocruiser is ready for takeoff. Let him go? There is time; but the Britisher might be slow to get rolling. The Venezuelan Captin might choose not to land but climb back up into the stuff. In that case, three minutes from now, two airplanes would be in the clouds too close together. So: “Hold British Overseas. ”

Radar and radio add their own complications to the game. Radar doesn’t show who’s who: on the scope all airplanes look alike—just dots of light. Yet the controller must know who’s who. He may at any moment have to call one of them and give it a change of altitude. If he wants to check, he says, looking at the radar scope: “United 434, make a right turn for radar identification.” Then the dot that crawls around to the right—that’s United 434. But this wastes time, slows up traffic, freezes the controller’s attention too long on one airplane. He tries, instead, to catch the airplane when it reports over a radio checkpoint: “United 434, Glen Cove, 6000 feet.” The light-dot then at Glen Cove, that’s United. After that he must keep track of each of his sheep mentally. While he watches one, and talks to it, the others walk off. Two minutes later the radar picture is quite different yet he must still know who’s who.

The work is subdivided. One man works the stack; one works departures. Each talks on his own frequency with his pilots; but each must keep an ear on what the other man says, on the answers he gets, and on his airplanes on the radar scope. This seems to be the hardest-to-find qualification of a controller. If you get flustered when someone talks to you across the desk while someone else talks to you on the phone, you are no controller. The staff of 25 men at Idlewild Tower are of a great range of age, personality, background. One used to play in Paul Whiteman’s band. Some learned air-traffc control in the Air Force and have never done anything else. Some are seasoned pilots; some come from electronics. What they have in common is this odd ability to carry several lines of action and memory in mind.

And if a controller is cool, if he is fast, if he is meticulous, all he accomplishes is nothing: no complaints, no beefs from the pilots, no excessive stacking, no delays. The traffic develops, disappears, builds up again.

Then the light flickers on the interphone, and New York Center says: “Idlewild? Have an estimate for you. Clipper 101 at 48.” This means (most things being unsaid among these precision talkers) that 101 will reach the Scotland Holding Stack at 7:48.

The Stack

Clipper 101 is soon over “Scot. land” at 9500 feet, “holding”— i.e. wheeling ’round and ’round in a race-track pattern. He does not have to be told what the traffc picture is. The radio is a big party line and every pilot in the stack is on it. Every few minutes he hears the Tower clear an airplane for approach to the airport; and then a conversation runs up the stack as everybody is “laddered” one step down. United 434, descend immediately to 4500 feet, report leaving 5,500.”, “United 434 leaving 5500.” Finally Clipper 101 is at 2,500, and the Tower says: “Clipper 101, descend immediately to 1,500, report over Scotland northeast-bound.” This is the direction of the airport.

Down in the Tower, now, one little gold bug on the radar-scope leaves “Scotland” and starts crawling along the lane to Idlewild. That’s 101. Idlewild Tower: “Have you in radar contact.”

The Payoff

In the cockpit of 101 the Captain is concentrating on flying the Instrument Landing System beam. This is a job; perhaps the most skillful an airline pilot is required to do. When you think how this radio beam comes up from the runway like a searchlight beam, it seems it should be easy to fly down it—like driving a car down a road. The difference is—the pilot can’t see out: he does not see the beam stretch out in perspective before him. His indicator (two needles crossing on a dial) tells him merely whether he is on the beam, or off to the right, or below it, or what.

By constant practice the pilot does see the beam before him—with his mind’s eye. But his mind is busy. His eye is busy; it can’t stay on the beam indicator, but must continually flicker over many instruments—speed? altitude? direction? wings level? nose too low ? power? direction now? So even the best pilot weaves along the beam.

But if he weaves the least bit too much the whole approach will have been made in vain. He will be unable to land. This is what is now on the pilot’s mind—and on the Tower’s too. This is what sets the present limit of all-weather flying, and it is worth understanding.

When a pilot breaks out of a 300-foot ceiling he is only 3,000 feet from the beginning of the runway. This leaves the pilot eight seconds in which he can maneuver to line the airplane up with the runway. When he breaks out, the runway must stretch almost exactly straight ahead of him. If he is more than about 100 feet offside, the mathematics of the case make a landing impossible. Nothing to do now but open the throttles and climb back into the stuff.

This is not dangerous. Dangerous would be a violent sashay, trying to get in after all. But a “missed approach” is not good either. It bothers the passengers when suddenly the engines start roaring at take-off power. It bothers the Tower; the airplane now has to go back to the top of the stack. It bothers the company. Perhaps, by the time his turn comes again, Idlewild weather goes below limits, and he has to go to Philadelphia.

Talk Down

To cut down on missed approaches, one of the controllers in Idlewild Tower sits facing a special radar scope, and puts out a special line of talk over a special radio frequency. His radar looks upward along the approach beam; and on his scope he can see with his natural eye what the captain can see only with his mind’s eye: the motion of the airplane down the beam. He now gives the captain a running commentary. He does not tell him what to do, but—subtle psychological difference merely how he looks on the scope: “two miles from touchdown . . .200 feet right of course . . . 50 feet above glide-path 100 feet right of course, on glide-path, one mile from touch-down. And so on. This gives a little help to the pilot’s over-busy eye and his hard-pressed mind.

So now Flight 101 approaches the break-out and the first view of the runway. The co-pilot looks out. The captain keeps his eye firmly on the instruments, regardless of what he may see out of the corner of his eye: roof-tops, beach hotels, boats until the co-pilot tells him, formally: “You—are—visual.” The ground is in sight.

Now the captain looks up. What is his exact position relative to the runway? Can he land? Or must he climb away? He is doing 150mph in a machine three times as heavy as the biggest trailer truck. The visibility is half a mile: he can see only 12 seconds ahead of him. He must get the picture quickly and positively.

At this point the airport reaches out to lead him in—not now with electronic hocus-pocus but now with plain powerful orange colored fog lights which form an extension of the runway, beyond the airport boundary for half a mile, and guide the pilot in. At Idlewild these lights are mounted on a pier that extends out into the bay, for the last of the approach lies over water and would be extra tricky without something to guide the eye.

His flying is now like your driving— “instinctive.” His hands and feet react directly to what his eyes see. He makes a couple of slight snaking swerves to line up exactly with the runway; he calls out: “Full flap,” sweeps across the airport boundary, and starts feeling for the ground with his wheels.

Flight Plan Cancelled

For the men in Idlewild Tower, nothing has changed. Clipper 101 has landed but the traffic stream flows right on. Somehow, watching them work, you have felt all the time there will come a moment when all airplanes are down and all hangar doors are closed; and someone shall declare a state of “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hills.” But that moment never comes, not at Idlewild.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Air Facts Staff

Air Facts began in 1938 with Leighton Collins’ vision to promote private air transportation. Today, as an online journal, Air Facts brings pilots together by sharing real-world flying experiences that inspire learning, good judgment, and a love of flying.

Latest posts by Air Facts Staff (see all)

• Top Air Facts Articles of 2025 - December 29, 2025
• Fate, Freezing Rain, and a Captain’s Decision with Chris Schaich - December 5, 2025
• From the Archives: Bringing ‘Em in at Idlewild - November 19, 2025