Air France jet clips smaller plane at New York's JFK airport

[aterpster]

Loopdeloop:

In my opinion, JFK ATC are a huge flight safety problem that needs addressing. They speak too quickly, use non standard RT and aggressively bite your head off if questioned or asked to repeat an instruction. None of this is of benefit to flight safety and most of it is a hindrance. When you combine a third world airport with poor controllers, taxiing around JFK can be considered to be a very high threat environment.

JFK was a major airport for my former airline. I flew in there from 1964 to 1990. It has always had issues during busy times. It used to be it was busy from about 2:00 PM to 9:00 PM, or so. That has changed. It is busy starting much earlier now.

Chaotic, yes; third world, hardly. Those kinds of negative terms do nothing but invoke emotion. In effect, what I think you are saying is the AF captain would have been just fine had he been at a first world airport. At a first world airport a commuter airplane with its tail in a questionable position relative to the taxiway would not be a problem. An A380 pressing on as in "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead," would not have been a problem at a first world airport even with the commuter bird postured as it was at JFK.

Of course, controllers at first world airports never have accent or speaking issues, even when the ground traffic is overwhelming.

BTW, for those of you who live in countries where the national government owns all those first world airports, that is not the case in the U.S. With the exception of KDCA and KIAD, the U.S. national government does not own or operate airports. JFK, LGA, and EWR are owned by the Port of New York Authority which is an entity of of NY and NJ.

A lot of money has been spent on JFK, especially in the past several years. As to the controllers, they work for the FAA, but most of them are from the New York metro area. They have bidding rights, thus choose to live where most Americans would not.

One good way to avoid JFK is simply not have New York as a destination. It is Paris with a New York accent. Most of us choose to avoid the place(s).