“We don’t usually know where they’re going but we can ask,” Director of Airport Operations Ryan Frost says as he peers through a second-story administrative office and onto the tarmac.Įach year, this weekend sees the highest number of operations and fuel sales, ranging from 100,000 to 240,000 gallons in fuel sales and upwards of 1,300 landings and takeoffs. That’s when those with the means to hop on a jet for an impromptu trip find themselves looking to escape endless winter or get out of town for a place even warmer than Southwest Florida. The weekend that racks up the most arrivals and departures and sells the most fuel is that random three-day weekend in February made possible by Presidents Day. It’s not Christmas, it’s not Labor Day, it’s not even the Naples Winter Wine Festival. ![]() Welcome to the busiest weekend of the year at the Naples Municipal Airport. They’re talking quickly, but there’s no hint of panic in their voices, despite the fact that the job of air traffic controller frequently appears in online lists labeling it among the most stressful professions. To do that, everyone begins talking at once. Suddenly the wind shifts and gusts from the northwest force the tower to shut down runway 05 and open runway 23. ![]() “If we tell our kids ‘no,’ it’s always ‘negative.’” “Our kids don’t say ‘what,’ they say ‘say again,’” Ski says. “Five” becomes “fife” and “nine” becomes “niner” and there are no such thing as letters really, they’re all Whiskeys and Tangos and Foxtrots. Until you reach the top of the seven-story air traffic control tower and hear Ski and Dave and Todd and Maria rattling off numbers and letters in a rush of complicated sentences seemingly devoid of any verb that might offer direction to a pilot. That’s how Air Traffic Manager Ski Kordelski’s instructor put it to him once. If you pretend the airfield is a paper plate and the planes are a bunch of ants, really your only job as an air traffic controller is to make sure the insects don’t run into each other.
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