In case you haven’t heard, an air traffic controller got himself suspended after he took his child to work and allowed him to communicate instructions to aircraft over an air traffic control frequency at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (you can read more about the incident on Boston’s Fox 25 website or listen to the audio here). Naturally, opinions have varied with the Aircrew Buzz blog taking a highly critical position while the Jetwhine blog took the position that people should just relax. Meanwhile, Brett Synder of the Cranky Flier blog goes as far as to write that he “thought it was pretty damn funny” and comedian Jay Leno noted that:
Of course the airlines have jumped all over this. They say if you want an adult in the control tower, it’s going to be an extra 30 bucks now.
I would tend to lean more toward the opinions expressed in the Jetwhine and the Cranky Flier blogs that people should relax a bit more. However, its hard to feel sorry for the air traffic controller who got suspended for not thinking that someone might NOT be amused if they heard that a child was talking over an ATC frequency and that someone might make a fuss about it.
Nevertheless, what do you think? Should the air traffic controller have been suspended or should he have been given a little bit more slack and told not to do it again?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I honestly don’t see too much of a problem with it. The kid did really well, was only saying frequency changes and “cleared for takeoff”, and said perfectly what his Dad told him to say. I must say, the kid did better than I do sometimes on the radio as a student pilot.
Also, all the pilots during the time he was talking were amused and didn’t have any issues. Plus, there was no safety issues and the controller could instantly override the child’s mike if anything went wrong.
The whole thing has just been blown out of proportion as is usually the case with a lot of aviation stories in the general media.
I’ve blogged about this in my “Storm in a teacup” post: http://www.navlog.net/?p=28
Fred Woodbridge´s last blog ..It LOOKED Unsafe
I’ve blogged about this as well: http://www.flight.org/blog/2010/03/06/jfk-controller-lets-kids-direct-aircraft/
Personally, I thought that the act was nothing short of stupidity.