Chapter 10 — Between Two Runways

The table in the simulation training room was covered with paper printed with static radar screens, each sheet capturing a frame from past incidents, stored as training materials, flight names and locations anonymized according to regulations. Boi Thu arranged them in chronological order, his finger stopping on the third sheet, where two bright dots almost touched each other.

The simulation training room is located on the first floor, smaller than the real radar room, with only two old screens used to recreate scenarios for students to practice before being seated in the real position. The smell of printer paper and photocopier ink still lingered in the air, mixed with the smell of cold coffee in the cup Bach had brought with him since morning, not having finished drinking it yet.

"The station chief gave me permission to do this," she said to Bach, who was standing across the table, arms folded across his chest, clearly hesitant. "Not on duty, just training support while I wait for the conclusion of the investigation. You don't have to worry about me violating any regulations."

"I don't worry about that," Bach said quickly, then seemed to regret speaking so quickly. "I'm just... not sure what I should ask you first."

"Then don't ask first." Boi Thu pushed the first piece of paper towards him. "Look here. This is a frame from an incident that happened six years ago at another station. What do you see?"

Bach bent down to look, silent for nearly a minute, his finger gliding along the flight path drawn with a blurred pencil. "Two targets are converging. The horizontal distance is about four nautical miles, the altitude difference is eight hundred feet."

"Yes. Now, if you were the duty controller at that time, what would you have done?"

"Vector one of the two, probably diverts the west one, as it has more space to turn without cutting across other channels."

"Good. That's also what the duty controller at that time did." Boi Thu turned to the next page. "But this is the frame forty seconds later. What else do you see?"

Bach looked closer, then paused. "The vectored one... it didn't respond right away. The distance is still closing."

"Exactly. The cadet at that time — yes, there was also a cadet at that time watching, just like you are now — realized this before the main controller, because he was separately monitoring the vectored aircraft, without having his attention distracted by other streams." Boi Thu stopped and looked straight into Bach's eyes. "What do you think that student did?"

"Report now?"

"No." Boi Thu shook his head, his voice had no intention of blaming, just a truth that needed to be stated clearly. "The student waited another ten seconds, because he wasn't sure if the main controller already knew, and didn't want to interrupt unnecessarily."

"Ten seconds," Bach repeated, his voice low.

"Ten seconds, in a situation where the gap is closing at a relative rate of nearly five hundred nautical miles per hour, equates to nearly one and a half nautical miles every ten seconds." Boi Thu pushed the last piece of paper towards him, the frame showed that the distance between the two dots of light had narrowed to the point where the red alert automatically activated. "The end result was still safe, because the main controller discovered it soon after and promptly handled it. But the margin of safety was much thinner than it needed to be, and in the post-incident analysis report, what was the main contributing cause noted?"

"Delay in reporting from the supervisory position," Bach said, reading the correct terminology from memory from theory lessons.

"That's right. It's not because that student is bad. It's not because he can't see the problem. It's because he let his fear of bothering others overwhelm his reflex to report immediately." Boi Thu sat down in the chair opposite, his voice softening. "Do you remember last week's shift? When you saw the helicopter's altitude increase abnormally?"

Bach nodded and said nothing, because they both knew exactly what he was thinking.

"You hesitated for just a beat," Boi Thu said. "I don't say that to blame you. I say it because I want you to understand, that hesitation is not your fault, it is a natural reaction for almost anyone new to the profession. The problem is not how to never hesitate. The problem is how to make that hesitation not last more than a second or two, and how to make sure that when it happens, you still say it, even if you are not completely sure."

"Do you ever hesitate?" Bach asked, the question popped out before he could consider whether he should ask or not.

Boi Thu was silent for a long time, long enough for Bach to think she wouldn't answer.

"Yes," she said finally. "Once, a long time ago. And I learned, in the hardest way possible, that the cost of not speaking can be much greater than the cost of saying the wrong thing."

She didn't say any more details, and Bach, despite his curiosity, didn't ask any more — there was something in her voice that made him understand that this wasn't the door he should knock on right now.

"There's one more case I want to show you," Boi Thu said, taking out another set of papers from the briefcase. "This case was exactly the opposite. One cadet reported so much, so often, that the main controller began to ignore a portion of his alerts because he thought most were false alarms."

Bach frowned. "So how should we balance it?"

"There is no fixed formula," Boi Thu said. "But there is a principle I always teach my students: if what you see can affect safe separation, even if it's just a small possibility, just say it, but say it briefly, to the point, don't beat around the bush to explain before giving the core information. The sentence 'I see something unusual at the altitude of that plane' is always less effective than the sentence 'the unique Seagull is gaining altitude faster than expected, currently two thousand six hundred feet'. Same content, but a second way of saying it. two give listeners the information they need immediately to take action."

"Like that day," Bach said, his voice small. "At first you said 'there's something', then you said the number."

"That's right. And it's something we can practice, unlike our initial reflexes, which are difficult to change overnight. Expression is a skill, and skill can be practiced." Boi Thu tapped her finger lightly on the stack of papers. "Next time, before opening your mouth, try to think in your mind: what object, what phenomenon, what specific number. Those three things first, explain later."

"I will practice," Bach said, scribbling in his notebook.

"Today's lesson," Boi Thu said, gathering the papers into a neat pile, "is not that you have to be perfect, never hesitate. The lesson is: speak first, edit later. A wrong report can be corrected in three seconds. A report left unsaid can never be corrected in time."

Bach nodded, quickly took notes in his personal notebook, then hesitantly asked another question, his voice much quieter than the previous ones. "Miss Thu, when do you think you will return to official duty?"

"I don't know," Boi Thu said truthfully. "It depends on the conclusion of the investigation and psychological evaluation. But no matter when I come back, I want you to remember what we just talked about today, even if I'm no longer sitting next to you to repeat it."

"I will remember." Bach paused, then added, his voice so sincere that Boi Thu had to look away for a second to maintain his familiar composure. "I hope you come back soon. Not just because the station is short of people. Because I learn the most when you sit next to me, more than anyone else."

Boi Thu did not respond immediately. She looked out the small window of the simulation training room, where she could see a corner of the changing afternoon sky, and thought of how, just a few weeks ago, she never thought she would be standing in this position — not someone trying to prove she was good enough, but someone trying to pass on the lesson she herself had learned at great cost, to someone younger than her eight years earlier, somewhere else, on a rainy night where she wished she had said those crucial thirty seconds. best in life.

"Thank you," she said, just like that, and they both understood that the statement carried more than its surface meaning.

Bach collected his cold coffee cup, stood up, and stopped at the door. "Ms. Thu, next time if you need someone to practice with, just call me. Even if it's not during office hours."

“I'll remember that,” she said, and this time, when he left the room, she sat back a moment longer, looking at the stack of static radar screen printouts still on the table, feeling something far lighter than the feeling she'd been carrying around all these days—not because the burden was gone, but because for the first time in years, she realized that teaching others what she'd learned, in the hardest way, was a form of healing she'd never thought possible.