Where is he, is this the Twilight Zone ??
Time: Early 1980's
Place: Indianapolis International TCA (Terminal Control Area)
Players: Myself, one tower controller, one last flight into the airport for the night
It was a cool fall evening and about midnight. The evening watch guys had left and it was all quiet in the equipment room and the RADAR room in the base building. I went up to the tower to see if they needed anything or there was anything going on. When I arrived on the tower cab floor the local controller pointed out the window and said "look at that!". About one third of the south side of Marion County was having a power failure, it was pitch black over a large area of south Indianapolis. My comment was: "power failure I assume" and his reply was "fog". The weather bureau had actually called the facility earlier and advised us, it was a very unusual and dense fog approaching from the south east. Looking out the tower closely this huge vertical wall of pitch black could be seen coming right at the airport slowly. It was quite incredible, as it progressed over the city it looked like a rolling power failure, all lights went out, nothing could be seen through the wall of fog. At this time it might be a good idea to read an earlier story Down looking for the runway if you have not already read it, then come back here with your back button.
Hanging from the ceiling of the tower is a RADAR display. It is there to assist the tower controllers in sequencing traffic into the airport and is usually left set for a 6 mile range from the center of the display. I looked up and observed an aircraft on the RADAR at about 5 miles, on approach to the airport. About that time the wall of fog hit the edge of the airport and it looked like someone was turning off parking lot light breakers one at a time. In a few moments the entire airport terminal building literally vanished in the pea soup fog. We looked at each other and I said "wow, I nave have seen anything like that." as the entire ramp area faded into black. I noticed on the RADAR that the aircraft on final approach was apparently just crossing over onto airport property and would in a few seconds be at the threshold of the active runway. I questioned the controller if he should say something to the pilot about the fog. He advised me that once an aircraft is cleared for the approach the policy is not to say anything that could distract the pilot. Once a flight is cleared for the approach that tells the pilot the runway is clear and the airport belongs to him for his landing. It is up to the pilot what action is taken after he is told "you are cleared for the approach". The next few seconds were a little like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The wall of fog, a vertical black wall, went up as far as we could see and was just crossing the place where the runways intersect in the middle of the airport. Which begs the question, what happened to the guy on approach. He was on the RADAR, he was charging out of the sky at 140 miles an hour, he crossed the airport fence, he was trapped in the pea soup fog somewhere. We looked at each other with the silent thought "where is this guy". It reminded me of a episode of The Twilight Zone, did aliens take this guy or what. As we looked at the solid black wall and down at the runway the nose of an airplane shot out of the fog about 20 feet above the pavement and directly over the runway at a very height rate of speed. The captain was down looking for the runway by feel and by that time when he shot out of the fog his hand was on the throttle to go around. Rather than go around and then most likely divert to Detroit he throttled down and settled on the runway, then deployed the reverse thrusters and to much reverse thrust it rattled the tower windows.
As the pilot made his way to the parking area with the DC-9 aircraft we asked about the approach, what he had seen. He remarked they were out about 6 miles and were cleared for the approach. The visibility was clear and 20 miles and the airport was right in front of them, the runway lined up and in sight. Then in a few seconds the entire airport vanished, runway, parking lot lights, everything went solid black. He said they just transitioned back to instruments and continued the approach. He forgot to mention they continued the approach well below minimum decision height trying to feel their way to some pavement to set the airplane down on. We inquired if it was a difficult approach and the pilot replied it was but he figured that if they did not get down on that pass they would be headed for Detroit and they really didn't want to spend the night in Detroit.
The good news is those flights were devoid of passengers, they were just moving airplanes around at night to position them for the next day's business. That nose of an airplane shooting out of a wall of fog ranks as one of the strangest things I ever saw from the tower.