AS THE F-16 fighter jet approaches the air base for a landing after a gruelling mission, a voice comes through the airwaves.
It’s the calm and soothing voice of the air traffic controller (ATC) at Tengah Air Base, and she is guiding him in.
While many a fighter-pilot have been soothed by her voice, she left one swooning – and he eventually married her.
Okay, it was not just her voice that got former fighter pilot Jonathan Song, now 27, smitten by Captain Sharon Kaur, 30.
Captain Kaur has been an ATC at the air base for seven years and her task every day is to ensure that aircraft like the F-16, the E2C Hawkeye and Gulfstream 550 airborne early warning planes take off and land safely.
One of some 12 ATCs at the air base, CaptKaur told The New Paper she first heard her future husband’s voice in 2003 on the airwaves. He was taxiing on the runway getting ready for take-off.
But she was too focused on her job to remember anything about that first encounter.
She would speak to Mr Song, now a pilot with Singapore Airlines, several times more over the airwaves before finally being introduced to him at a function.
Even then, nothing happened.
Soon though, like a fighter pilot stalking his target, he came up with a plan and somehow managed to get her phone number.
Didn’t hit it off immediately
She said: “We did not hit it off immediately. Two to three months after the first meeting he got my number and he asked me out.
“And then he conned me into marrying him,” she said, in jest.
Did it become awkward talking over the airwaves to the man she was dating? No, she said, she had to treat him like any other pilot.
They got married in 2007 and he left the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) that year to join SIA.
ATCs have a call sign and Capt Kaur’s is Stellar. She said it’s tradition for women ATCs at the air base to have a call sign that starts with ‘S’.
Capt Kaur, who is one of three women ATCs at the air base, said: “I chose it myself. I always say it’s because I want to be a stellar performer.”
The couple have a 2-year-old daughter, Tara, which means “star” in Sanskrit and other Indian languages.
The political science and English language graduate from NUS had not planned to be an ATC when she entered university.
But she didn’t want a desk-bound job and thought the RSAF could give her something exciting to look forward to every day so she signed up on upon graduation.
She said: “I like the fact that there’s never a dull moment, it’s never the same thing every day.
“It’s dynamic, it’s exciting because things move so fast, it gets your adrenaline pumping.”
In her seven years on the job, there have been situations where things got a little tense.
Especially when the weather suddenly turns bad.
Several planes have been hit by lightning. But Capt Kaur managed to help every one of them to land safely.
Though such strikes can potentially damage the jet’s equipment, the Telegraph reported in June that in almost all cases the damage is superficial.
Capt Kaur said: “You know you have to be quick on your feet and you have to think quickly.
“You get a sense of satisfaction when you launch and recover your planes safely.”
She has to project a voice that is calm and clear so the pilots can focus on what they are doing.
She said: “He (the pilot) needs to know you are in control of whatever you are instructing him to do. This is especially so in an emergency when he has his own things to concentrate on. The last thing he needs is someone on the other side who sounds jittery.”
And because their planes fly so fast, the pilots won’t be in the same location if an ATC who is not clear in her instructions has to repeat it.
That would affect the whole game plan to land them safely, especially if there are other pilots in the air.
An F-16 pilot, Major Chan Ching Hao, said: “When you hear the voice that’s very composed and very steady, you place a lot of confidence and faith in the fact that this voice knows what she’s doing so that we can be sequenced safely in order to land.”
This article was first published in The New Paper.
