Posts Tagged ‘child talking on ATC’
Who’s Watching the Watchers?
People regularly quiz us about FAA and self-imposed safety regulations, trying to define and understand them. And, now and then, they ask us to bend the rules “just a little bit” to accommodate an extra hour in their schedules or an extra couple of hundred pounds of payload. With an eight ton aircraft, what’s a couple hundred pounds between friends? After all, it won’t make much difference, right? I am surprised at how often they are surprised when we say no. Statistically, flying may be safer than driving, but bending the rules “just a little bit” isn’t how it stays that way. We stick to the rules because they are there to keep us, our aircraft, our crew, our passengers and the people on the ground safe. Bottom line – the cost of being wrong is just too high.
So, last night, when I was watching the news and I heard an adorable little exchange between a child in the air traffic control tower at New York’s JFK Airport and a JetBlue airliner full of passengers, I was absolutely dumbstruck, which you know is quite a feat if we’ve ever met. Hundreds of people’s lives were involved in that little exchange between a child who had gone to work with a parent and an airliner in an ACTIVE FLIGHT!!!
The Associated Press’ Joan Lowy wrote about this incident and others that shine a rather harsh light on Air Traffic Control and raises the question: Who’s watching the watchers?
In the case of Tiny Tyke ATC, the FAA has suspended both the controller and his supervisor pending an investigation, and the NTSB is holding a forum this spring to discuss pilot and air traffic controller professionalism. Do I think that the aircraft was in danger? No, the licensed controller was right there and the child was clearly repeating only what he was told to say. Now, do I think that it was an instance of colossally poor judgement? Absolutely. And, in this industry, more than in many, instances of colossally poor judgement cannot be ignored. The costs are simply too high.
