Neville Clough Retires

Back in 1964, Neville went to Tamworth to work in the Tower after being stationed in Sydney for less than twelve months. This is where he got to know many of the pilots who were flying for East-West Airlines, some of whom are now flying for Qantas, Ansett or Australian Airlines. “The East-West pilots all used to come up into the Tower for briefing. You were a jack-of-all-trades at Tamworth. We used to meet them, and say goodday to them. Occasionally, we’d see them on Sunday nights at the Aero Club. Everyone used to throw a steak on the barbecue outside, and they’d show a film up on the hangar wall. It was like a drive-in! We had six kids then, and they were all reasonably small, we used to put a mattress in the back of the station wagon, and some pillows. The pilots used to almost reserve a spot for us where I could park the wagon side-on to the wall, so the kids could all see the film. Yes, they were good times!”

Good times, which obviously sewed the seed for later R/T relationships that Neville was to have with those pilots as a controller back at Sydney’s Area Control Centre. Neville Clough first took our attention some years back when he was in the Approach Control Cell. At the time he was one of the oldest controllers to check out on Approach. He was forty five at the time. Most of the other fellows going for their Approach ratings were in their early thirties or late twenties. Nev didn’t stay long on Approach however, some seven or eight months, but it was long enough to attract our attention to him at Australian Aviation as we constantly monitored the ATC transmissions from Sydney. The job of Supervisor in the Tower became vacant and Neville successfully applied.

Of his time in Approach, Neville is of the opinion that the number of aircraft he handled there was no more than when he worked as an Arrivals Controller. He did Arrivals from 1969 for two and a half years, working with people like Len Cumming and Shirley Anderson. Shirley trained Neville on Arrivals and Flow Control, and obviously did a terrific job of imparting her knowledge. Neville stood out as an extraordinary Air Traffic Controller, capable of quietly and efficiently handling large numbers of aircraft with safety. He also has some advice for younger Controllers when he says that as you progress from one job to another in ATC, you should never forget what you learned on the previous jobs. The usual progression for new ATCs is to go through all the various Sector Control stations, after which, when you have your Approach rating, you get sent upstairs to the Tower cab, where you can actually see what’s taking place on the airfield. Progression now is much slower than it once was.

I asked Neville about some of the philosophies he has adopted relating to his job as ‘Senior Tower’. “A good Tower Controller probably amounts to having a bit of imagination and being one jump ahead. I particularly like to keep the pilots informed about why I do things, and keep them updated on the weather and in particular, the winds. The surface conditions are broadcast on the ATIS, but the actual wind component is never constant. It fluctuates, and when the visibility is fluctuating, that’s when I like to provide up-to-date information for the pilots. If a pilot knows that when he breaks cloud, he’s going to be able to see the runway very easily, it makes his job easier, and the pressure on him, just that much less. That’s what I try to impress on the younger fellows I train in the Tower. If a pilot knows what’s going on, he will relate to the ATIS. A good Aerodrome Controller will keep the pilot updated with the weather if it varies significantly from what’s on the ATIS. However, I’m the first to admit you can’t always afford the luxury of keeping pilots fully informed of the reasons why you are doing certain things. Particularly as an Approach Controller, the amount of ‘talk time’ you have available to you is very limited. You have to go to basic phrases. A typical case is runway 25 departures, with runways 25/34 for arrivals. That situation at Sydney means none of them are ‘straight-in approaches’, all have to be radar vectored. You may have to give them four vectors, or even more, to get them onto final approach. And every time you talk to them they have to acknowledge. If they’re on RW 25, 25/34, you’re talking all the time! You just can’t afford to say ‘goodday’ to this fellow and that fellow. This is one of the reasons why most of the Approach Controllers even when they have ‘straight-in’ approaches, keep talk to a minimum. And when they’re not talking, they’re thinking about the overall situation. When they’re chatting to an aircraft, they’re looking at another one on the radar screen. ”

Neville’s strength in the Tower is certainly the way he puts pilots needs as the number one priority when he is controlling. He asks pilots of general aviation or corporate aircraft while they’re on finals where they are bound on the airfield to park, and he gets them there with the minimum of fuss and time waste. “If a fellow is bound for Flight Facilities, and I let him roll almost to the end of runway 07, he’s not going to present a problem to the Surface Movement Controller. Also, if a pilot wants to taxi from A to B, you don’t send him via C, unless absolutely necessary. ” And on terminology, Neville has very definite ideas. “Our phrases are listed in the AIP, it is set down what we should say to pilot under most circumstances. But that doesn’t always cover it! Even if it does cover it, and you think that something else should be said, you should say it! But then again, you’ve got to be reasonably concise with it, and reasonably quick on occasions to get the message across. You have to motivate.

Look at this situation. You’ve got a 747 going to Honolulu. You know he’s heavy, and you see the opportunity to get him away on RW 16 ahead of a landing on RW 07. But to do this, he’s got to continue rolling. He’s got to roll on and go! When he says ‘ready’ – ‘ready’ according to AIP means ‘he will roll on and go in the one continuous movement’. But this doesn’t necessarily apply to an international pilot who has twelve hours of fuel in his 747’s wings, and is at maximum all-up-weight. He would probably like to roll on and stop, then line up and carefully open the throttles for all engines at the same rate, and then go. But if it means the difference between forgetting about his departure and selecting someone from the other side of the runway, if I say, ‘Can you continue rolling for an immediate departure?’, he will accept that. But to do it, he’s got to work very hard. But he’ll do it, because fuel and time are expensive! You have to talk to them and generate the desired amount of motivation the fellow needs to do what you want him to do. This is part of the deal in being a good Aerodrome Controller. ”

Sometimes, however, the pilot can’t quite do what is desired, or would rather not under the circumstances, and Neville has complete sympathy. “You have to be a little understanding. Say you have a 727 going, which is a heavy/medium type aircraft. This aeroplane generates a fair amount of wake turbulence. On occasions, next in line, you have a Friendship, the good old Friendship, it’s our best standby! He can go immediately behind the 727, but some don’t like it! So you’ve got to put it to the Friendship pilot. . . ‘727 departing, are you willing to accept an immediate departure behind that aircraft?’ If he says ‘No’, it may be in the past he has struck a bit of turbulence behind a 727. I remember back in 1972 or ’73, a DC-9 got airborne while I was in the Tower, and he rolled a bit. I said. . . ‘Ops. normal?’, and he said ‘Yes, I’ve just struck a bit of turbulence from the 727 ahead. ‘ I thought to myself, ‘that’s one to remember’, even though he’s entitled to go straight away; if he wishes, give him that little bit of extra room. ”

Australian Aviation believes that some of Neville Clough’s most brilliant work was performed while he was in Approach Control. Earlier times spent on Arrivals Control was perhaps the training ground that enabled the brilliance to develop.

Shirley Anderson trained Neville both on Arrivals and Flow. With Arrivals, when there was a lot of holding involved, because of traffic or weather, Neville had a lot of aircraft on his frequency. “We used to handle quite a few at once, from 360 degrees, from 80 miles southwest, 90 miles to the north, and 150 miles to the east. You did all this on your own, more or less. You kept talking. That’s where we were able to develop expertise handling large numbers of aircraft. ”

An example of just how good Neville Clough was when he worked Approach Control is the night we recounted to him where there was a real red hot sequence lined up for him to handle. It was about 9pm local in Sydney, and Shirley Anderson was the Flow Controller. Neville had both Approach consoles combined, and Shirley served him up quite a sequence. “I had twelve or thirteen aircraft on frequency. Shirl thought I could make the bloody thing work! I didn’t know whether I could. Fred Charters was STAC (Senior Terminal Area Controller) or the Supervisor. He wasn’t game to take his eyes off the radar screen. -I had Friendships in particular all over . the place, and this Canadian Pacific DC-8, programmed for runway 34. He was the key. I cut him in a bit, mainly to make the sequence work. I sort of vectored him around a bit. One aircraft asked me ‘miles to run’. I had to say ‘don’t know’, because I really did not know. I was vectoring so many aircraft, I could not accurately equate track miles to run to the threshold. And you’re supposed to have five miles separation between arrivals on runway 07, but I closed them up to about three and a half miles! And then I left the slot available to slip this fellow in the DC-8 in on runway 34. I still vividly remember this one! Anyway, the upshot of it was, they all got down, no gorounds, the Tower even managed to get a few departures away! When it was all over, Fred said to me, ‘Hey, you’ve gone past knock off time!’ I got up and turned around, and Shirley was standing there grinning at me. I said to her, ‘Shirl, I think you were the only one who believed that I could handle all that. ‘ Fred wasn’t saying anything. It really was one of the heaviest sequences I ever handled on Approach. “