Looking for a bit of guidance here.... from qualified and experienced Air Traffic (Tower) Controllers.
Me: Pilot - mostly military 4-holer - but hold ATPL
Scenario - any airfield any time. Controller sees aircraft on finals that's obviously high and hot and the runway is not all that long and you are suddenly concerned that:
a. This guy is serious about planting it and stopping
b. You know damn well he hasn't got a chance of stopping in the distance available (particularly as there's an 8kt downwind component).
c. You'd already cleared him to land before you realized that he was suicidal.
d. It's an airliner with about 150+ people on board
e. You already feel like reaching for the crash button yet he's still above 500 feet.
f. After he plants it, it's probably going to be too late to send him around (or you'd not feel you could then anyway).
What to do, what to do?
Any controller might see this sort of thing once a year at least - to whatever extent of aggravation or extreme. Whilst I realise that the tendency is always to mind your own business and let him (and his oppo) break the jet, the temptation must always be there to simply send him around (presuming you are a socially responsible non-Al Qaeda type with the normal due regard for your fellow human beings).
You could also specify the taxiway take-off scenario - per Anchorage and the CAL A330 (and there's possibly others that I've not thought of but you've possibly seen). What I'm getting at here is that there's probably a lot of merit in a dispassionate uninvolved third party observer (with a microphone) intervening at some point when the very real expectation is that
not doing so will produce that familiar sound of rending metal, palls of smoke, heart-rending screams and the sound of sirens.
The big question is however whether or not:
a. You can intervene under your existing regs, guidance and SOP's - without flushing your career down the toilet.
b. Whether your Tower Boss or Supervisor will back you up (or whether your judgement will forever after be in question)
c. In the blinding absence of an accident (which you've neatly avoided) whether you will be able to successfully field all the nasty and indignant phone-calls (particularly from the testosterone-laced individual who's single-mindedness caused the ruckus in the first place).
d. If you are legally within your rights (or is it that, maybe, post-Reagan, controllers should be entitled ATC advisors and facilitators).
e. You can simply say when asked why? "Because I exercised my prerogative. I was simply not happy that it looked safe. End of story. Take it up with the padre."
The reason I ask is that the Managing Editor of a major Aviation Safety Publication asked me and I gave my view (that I'd not be upset at being sent around if I was alarming a Controller - and there was obviously much more at stake than my ego and a bit of fuel). However I also said that whether or not a licenced controller was still authorised to exercise such a prerogative? Well that I would have to check up on. Therefore this post. So no flaming pls. It is a genuine effort to establish where the goal-posts are in this post-Reagan era of laissez-faire ATC.
If anyone can email me a copy (and reference) of the pertinent FAA regulation (assuming that there is one), I'd be eternally grateful. However I warn you now that a large section of the pilot fraternity have already claimed that you do not have this right to exercise your alarm nor judgement...... and have no such prerogative.
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