Because the incident wasn't ATC related, I had a rather quick reading through the most interesting parts of the ATC interviews and from one of the interviews I copied a few text-lines that were rather ... interesting
about ASDE-X:
* So the ASDE and me don’t have a good relationship because it’s as far as I’m concerned, it’s totally hit or miss.
* There’s a flashing thing that’s broken, that’s been broken, which I’ve reported probably 100 times on the ASDE forms. You’ll find them with my initials on them
* I’ve seen - without getting into storytelling, I watched an entire emergency response team line up on the runway with an aircraft on final, not show up on the ASDE and the ASDE not go off. I watched five firetrucks line up on 22 Right with an aircraft while we were using 22 Right, thinking they were on Yankee and the ASDE didn’t go off and the local control had to send the aircraft around on 22 Right.
* Yes, so the MLAT will flash, and it says MLAT not working. Great. So I have reported that hundreds of times to the FAA, officially on paperwork, in writing, and I keep getting told it’s a Verizon issue. Now that means nothing to me. That’s your problem. I’m telling you that the equipment that you’re telling me I need to rely on that people don’t die, especially when we can’t see out the window
* -- doesn’t work properly. And I actually was yelled at by my manager for saying, on a relief briefing, that the ASDE is either out of service or not working properly. That was after I ran a runway sweep with a vehicle that the vehicle never showed up on the runway and the ASDE didn’t show them at all.
* So that’s the culture that goes on about the ASDE is that I’ve become more of a pain in the ass for constantly filling out this form to say that the ASDE doesn’t work where it goes downstairs and probably just goes into the garbage, because it’s a no, quote-unquote, known issue. They take it out of the logs, so it doesn’t cause FAA issues at wherever the FAA has to deal with that issue being on their log every day.
about pilots:
* No, I expect that all pilots will listen to nothing I say at all times, because that’s how they operate.
* They all switch, they do it all the time, it’s a common thing, they -- because they’re hotshots, and I’m just a, you know, a radio operator and they know everything, and they do this all the time. They switch frequencies when they’re not supposed to. They act like a bunch of amateurs all the time. Every day, all day dealing with having to say things. And let me tell you something. After COVID, it has been 10 times worse, and I’m sure that this is not a JFK issue, that this is a NAS problem. Ten times worse after COVID where you’re having to repeat simple, basic, taxiing instructions to every pilot from top to bottom, from seniors to, you know -- from Saturday pilots to international pilots and everyone in between. You’re having to say things four and five times, basic instructions to pilots.
* Because if you give them more than three things, their brain turns to mush and they forget everything, and then they say, say again, and -- or they say something wrong and you can’t work ground control, because you will be constantly talking to the same pilot three and four times. So if you don’t break it down into turn left Bravo, hold short of Kilo. Because if I gave a Bravo, Kilo, cross 31 Left, forget about it. She’d be -- you know, some of them can, obviously, some of them can't, but you can’t work that way because you’ll -- you’re just working uphill.