Air traffic control (ATC) is your friend in the clouds, helping to keep you out of trouble. You talk to them from time to time in rapid bursts of jargon and they reply in kind – a flurry of PoBs, ETAs, QNHs, VFRs – but all the time you and they are listening out for each other. They are an all-knowing benevolent presence you can trust. A humble student pilot like me has frequently been told by his flying instructor that air-traffic control cares about you, wants what is best for you. So you should ask them for help or advice, especially if you lose your way. It is almost a metaphor for prayer.After the loss of the Malaysian Boeing 777 over the southern Indian Ocean in March, I heard commercial airline pilots describing how, seven miles into the utterly inhospitable upper atmos