"Air boss" is in control when Fleet Week airshow takes flight over San Francisco
As jets roar over San Francisco during the Fleet Week airshow, one woman is tasked with conducting the show.
"During the show itself, sunglasses, a schedule, a radio and watch the sky," Donna Flynn told CBS News Bay Area. "Being at show center and being the boss, that's what it's all about for me."
Once Flynn puts on her headset and readies her radio, she's better known as the "air boss."
"Air boss is almost like the director of a play," Flynn explained. "You take all the different characters, and you put them together and you get them all to play from the same sheet of music. Some people call me a circus performer, because it's almost like a circus in the sky."
After more than 30 years of working as an air boss, her skills conducting the massive airshow have become an art as she skillfully instructs pilots performing dangerous maneuvers over thousands of spectators.
"I never sit down. I'm always standing. I have a special set of radios that have I put together over the years, of course, with those basic handhelds as backups. And then we just go to work. My job is to watch every single maneuver," Flynn said. "Not stand and talk, but watch every single maneuver, because things can go sideways, as you would expect, very quickly at times. So you have to be in the zone, in the box."
The most important task, she says, is keeping what she calls "the box" clear.
"The aerobatic area is sterile, so we do have to secure it. We keep it secure for 12,000 feet long and 3,000 feet deep," said Flynn. "Being the air boss, it feels like I have more responsibility, because it's not just one person, not one performer. It's many, and so I have to switch my brain from one performance to the next. So if I have the Patriots, then I have to switch my brain on for United, then a civilian or a military act like the beautiful F-35s and F-22s that are going to be flying, I have to go literally from one act to the next in my brain."
After all these years watching the gravity-defying air maneuvers, she says she can't be shaken as jets whizz past. But she can still be wowed.
"30 years in this business, I still get excited. I really get excited when I see the heritage flight, which we're going to experience during the weekend. The F-22 will be flying with a Mustang, and during that heritage flight, it's very heartwarming," she recalls. "A lot of these military aircraft, and even a lot of the civilians work in the military, and I'm so very proud of what they do, and I really, truly thank them for their service."
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