Route Names

November 3, 2012

Today I found an article on the St. Louis Post Dispatch online website. I thought it was pretty neat so I had to share. It was written by Bill McClellan.

"The times change in ways that most of us do not notice. Old heroes get pushed aside for new ones.

That is happening now, unseen, in the air above us.

The Federal Aviation Administration is phasing out its ground-based navigational system and replacing it with GPS technology.

In the lingo of the air traffic controllers, routes in and out of airports are called flight procedures. These routes, or procedures, have names.

In the past, if you were flying out of Lambert, you might have been on a Lindy procedure.

Under the new system, Lindbergh has been replaced by Chuck Berry. Actually, the hometown king of rock-and-roll has four procedures — Chuck, Berry, Johnny and B Goode.

Technically, they are CHUUC, BERYY, JAHNY and BGOOD.

Each designation must contain five characters and be unique because the designations get entered into flight computers. So if there is a CHUCK somewhere else in the system, we can’t have it here.

In addition to procedures, there are turn points — locations along the routes at which the planes turn. These turn points also have names.

Most common names are taken. People in the air traffic control system come up with the names, and there is a tendency to name these things after themselves.

So Chuck Berry will have to be content with CHUUC BERYY.

It is not just Chuck Berry who has been honored. TEDDD and DRUSE will ring a bell to any pilot who knows anything about frozen custard.

The idea of honoring local icons came from the controllers at the St. Louis Terminal Radar Approach Control. That facility is located in St. Charles County.

While the air traffic controllers at the airport control a five-mile radius around Lambert up to 3,000 feet, the controllers at TRACON control aircraft within a 40-mile radius up to 15,000 feet. They operate out of a large, dark room, lit mainly by radar consoles. It looks like something out of “Star Wars.”

It’s high-stress work. Mandatory retirement comes at 56, although some controllers join the administrative staff.

I visited Thursday and met with controllers Tom Tierney and Buel Warden, who is also the facility’s union rep, and Tim Shegitz, the district manager. His district includes parts of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and all of Arkansas.

Tierney, Shegitz and the late Phil Harman, a staffer who died of a heart attack this spring, came up with most of the names for the procedures and turn points.

So who’s honored? Harman was a hockey fan, so turning points ALMAC, BAKIS, BERGY, BHULL, FDRKO, KRIYA, OSHIE, SUTRR honor Al MacInnis, David Backes, Patrik Berglund, Brett Hull, Bernie Federko, Paul Kariya, T.J. Oshie and the Sutter brothers.

Football fans will recognize BAKKN, JHART, DOBLR, WHRLI, BIDWL, KURRT, BRUUC, FAULK, HOLLT, VERML, SSAMM and JACSN.

STAAN, YADDI, OZZEE, BGMAC, GIBEE, JBUCK, FLUDD, PUJOL and KARPP will be familiar to pilots who follow the Cardinals, and they will likely hear Mike Shannon’s voice when they approach the turn point GETUP.

It’s not all sports. EEMOS and PROVL will speak to pizza-lovers, while fans of toasted ravioli will appreciate TRAVS. Classic rock gets a nod from turning point KSHE.

Perhaps the most iconic St. Louis approach will be for pilots who hit, in order, turning points BUUDD, WEIZZ and EERRR.

The old system had a little bit of local color itself. In addition to the LINDY procedures, there used to be a navigational point called COORS.

It pre-dated the fellows I met with, but Warden said he heard a story that an executive at the brewery had said something negative about the controllers during their ill-fated strike in 1981, and in response, the controllers had named a navigational point COORS.

Supposedly, that designation used to annoy a certain pilot, August Busch III.

In 2004, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association had its convention in St. Louis. The brewery generously hosted a party at Grant’s Farm.

Shortly thereafter, COORS was changed to AUGIE.

AUGIE still exists, a part of the ground-based navigational system that will be used by older aircraft that do not have GPS technology.

But LINDY is being phased out. Roll over Charles Lindbergh, and tell Tchaikovsky the news."


Click here for the website article.