Dispatching in the Wild West of the Skies

Sara sat at her desk, staring at her screen with the kind of exhaustion that usually took a full 12-hour shift to achieve. The flight board looked normal—which, in dispatch, was the most suspicious thing imaginable.

Mike walked in, yawning, dropping his bag with a thud. “Why do you look like you’ve already survived three crises, and it’s not even 7 AM?”

Sara took a slow sip of her coffee. “Because I have. The 1980s are a lawless wasteland, Mike.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Is this another one of your ‘flight dispatch is a Greek tragedy’ speeches, or are you being literal?”

Sara just waved at the mess of printed-out flight plans and urgent memos piling up on her desk.

“Take a wild guess.”

Mike picked up one of the memos, skimmed it, then snorted. “Wait. Hold on. SkyAmerica just went bankrupt? Didn’t they start flying, like, six months ago?”

Sara nodded. “Yup. Filed Chapter 11 last night. Shut down immediately.”

Mike flipped through another paper. “Didn’t they have three planes in the air?”

“Oh, they did,” Sara said, rubbing her temples. “All three of them landed at different airports at 2 AM, and the crews were informed via fax that their airline no longer exists.”

Mike let out a low whistle. “So what happens to the passengers?”

Sara pulled out a new stack of papers and slammed them on the desk. “That’s what happens! Rebooking requests, stranded travelers, one guy who refuses to leave an airport lounge until someone reimburses him for a lobster dinner.”

Mike blinked. “Lobster?”

“He was in Cincinnati, Mike.”

“…There’s no way that was good lobster.”

Sara leaned back in her chair. “That’s not the point.”

Mike grinned, shaking his head. “The 80s are wild.”

Sara groaned. “Oh, you have no idea.”

A loud beep interrupted their conversation. Another urgent reroute request. Sara exhaled sharply before answering.

“Dispatch, go ahead.”

The radio crackled, then came the voice of a very confused pilot.

“Uh… so, we were scheduled to fly from Denver to Dallas, but I just got a call from corporate, and apparently, we’re now flying… to Minneapolis?”

Sara frowned.

“That’s… not how this works.”

The pilot sighed. “Tell that to my company’s new owner. They changed the route while we were taxiing.”

Mike choked on his coffee. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I were,” the pilot said. “Some genius in a boardroom decided this was the move to ‘stay competitive in the new deregulated market.’”

Sara resisted the urge to scream. “Okay, so who do you actually work for now?”

There was a long pause.

Then the pilot said, “…I don’t know.”

Mike’s jaw dropped. “HE DOESN’T KNOW?”

Sara pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mike. Fix this before I start believing in aviation gods and sacrificing office supplies for mercy.”

Mike barely had time to finish dealing with the Mystery Airline Situation before a new problem landed—literally.

A brand-new budget airline had just landed at JFK, and its crew was refusing to take off again.

Sara answered the next radio call, already bracing for the worst.

“This is Dispatch.”

A tired, exasperated first officer came over the line. “Yeah, uh… we just landed with this new startup airline, ‘Sunburst Air.’ Ever heard of them?”

Sara sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Great,” the pilot said. “So can you tell me why our plane doesn’t have enough fuel to reach our next destination?”

Sara blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Our owner—the guy who literally just started this airline last week—decided to cut costs by limiting fuel loads to only what’s legally required plus ‘a few extra gallons for comfort.’”

Mike dropped his pen. “That’s… NOT HOW FUEL PLANNING WORKS.”

Sara leaned closer to the mic. “Are you telling me your CEO personally made the decision to fuel-starve his own airline?”

“Correct.”

Sara took a long, slow sip of coffee before responding. “Tell him we don’t dispatch planes based on vibes.”

“Already tried,” the pilot deadpanned. “He said, and I quote, ‘Let’s not get bogged down in the details.’”

Mike stood up. “I am going to bog him down in the details.”

Sara sighed. “File a delay report, get the proper fuel, and tell your CEO that if he tries this again, I’m sending him a copy of basic aerodynamics with every page personally highlighted.”

Sara was knee-deep in rebooking stranded passengers when she heard Mike casually say the worst possible thing into an open frequency.

“I swear,” he muttered, “some of these new airlines are just expensive mid-life crises with engines.”

The radio went silent.

Then a very offended voice came through.

“…This is Jim Hartwell, CEO of Sunburst Air.”

Mike’s soul left his body.

Sara slowly turned to him, horrified. “Mike. What. Did. You. Do.”

There was a pause, then the CEO continued, his voice thinly veiled rage.

“Care to repeat that comment?”

Mike fumbled to hit mute.

“WE HAVE TO FAKE A SYSTEM CRASH.”

Sara was already dying of laughter.

“I can’t believe you just trashed a whole airline in front of its owner.”

“I thought it was a PRIVATE CHANNEL!”

“Oh no, mon ami,” Sara said, mimicking his disaster from the French ATC Strike. “You’re in this now.”

By the end of the shift, Mike’s locker had been decorated with a Sunburst Air logo. A memo from corporate reminded employees to be “mindful of open frequencies.” And Sara?

Sara just sat back, sipped her now-cold coffee, and muttered...

“The airlines are a circus, and we are dispatching the clowns now!”

Authors Note:This story reflects the chaos of a world in transition, where the forces of ambition, greed, and disorder collide with the individuals desperately trying to impose structure upon them. The airline industry, once governed by rigid control, has now been thrown into an era of unpredictability, mirroring the broader human struggle to find stability in a rapidly shifting landscape. Sara and Mike represent the quiet, unseen laborers who keep the machinery of civilization running, even as those above them—executives, opportunists, and self-proclaimed visionaries—throw wrenches into the system in pursuit of profit. The deregulated airline industry becomes a metaphor for unchecked ambition... companies appear overnight, flight routes change on a whim, and decision-making is dictated by ego rather than expertise.

Mike’s slip of the tongue—his unfiltered critique of a startup airline—reveals the hubris of both the corporate elite and those who must manage their recklessness. The executives reshaping the industry believe themselves to be visionaries, yet they rely entirely on people like Sara and Mike to make their impulsive decisions work. The absurdity of an airline changing its flight plan mid-taxi or a CEO personally dictating fuel minimums exposes the disconnect between those who create policy and those who must enforce reality. Sara, ever pragmatic, understands this futility. Her exhaustion, her sarcasm, her quiet amusement—these are the tools of someone who has accepted the madness of the world but refuses to be consumed by it. Her patience is not submission, but survival. Mike, in contrast, still fights against the absurdity, believing that logic should triumph, that reason should prevail. His mistake—mocking the powerful on an open channel—is both a moment of defiance and a moment of reckoning.

At its core, this story is about the battle between order and chaos, competence and arrogance, survival and folly. It is about the unspoken reality of all human institutions—that the ones making the decisions are rarely the ones who understand their consequences. And yet, amid the turbulence, there is humor, camaraderie, and resilience. The lesson is clear... to endure, one must learn to laugh at the madness, adapt to the inevitable, and, above all, mute the microphone before speaking the truth.