Whenever I’m at the airport doing the airport thang – printing a boarding pass, checking my luggage, going through security, stumbling around the news agent looking for something to read, squinting at the monitors to figure out the correct gate, checking my flight isn’t (predictably and regrettably) delayed and coveting the Dyson Airblades in the bathrooms – inevitably while I’m going through all these motions, somewhere in the deep dark deep recesses of my addlepated brain is the most fervent and heartfelt of pleas “Oh dear God/Allah/Buddha/Krishna/Ron Hubbard/Russell Edginton/whoever the fuck else might be in charge at the moment (?!?) please don’t let anyone like John Cusack or Billy Bob Thornton be working in the air traffic control room tonight!
Ever since I first saw that movie I’ve been ever so convinced, and ever so slightly freaked out, that it takes a very (window licking) special sort of person who wants to work as an air traffic controller. Every shift full of life and death decisions. The souls and safety of hundreds of people in your hands every single day that you rock up to work – who could live with that sort of pressure? And if you did wouldn’t it turn you into being like the veritable lunatics depicted in Pushing Tin eventually anyway?!?
