JFK ATC in the news...

[4X-AXG]

Wow, never would have thought an event like this would trigger so many (and so highly emotional) reactions

I personally think people should not be so surprised by this..this kind of stuff happens every day.

A few years ago I was an assistant ATCO at ATC The Netherlands (without an R/T license) when the ATCO next to me went for a smoke and casually asked me if I could clear the Easyjet that was bound to make contact to climb to FL240. So when the pilot called ATC I simply cleared him to FL240 and that was it! I was nervous like hell but it was a great experience.

I really hope this guy does not lose his job over this..he should maybe be reprimanded or something like that, but to be fired of this would not benefit anyone.

[Dont Hang Up]

anengineer

You either play by the rules or you don't. There is no 'bending of'.

If we have to go down the "zero tolerance" route then I suggest that anyone who has ever broken a motor vehicle speed limit has placed lives in greater danger than this controller did on this day.

"Zero tolerance" is a dangerous weapon in a supposedly free society. I know it is fashionable these days, as it is seen as tough and uncompromising. In reality it should be reserved for situations where law and order has completly broken down (the situation for which the phrase was originally coined). In all other situations, response should be measured, considered, and fair. All qualitiies that require personal judgement and so these days seem in very short supply.

[d747]

Ok I am not a pilot and nor do I work in the industry.
Years ago I use to go to work with my dad during school holidays and I am now doing a similar job to him.
I really hope this kid enjoyed his time in ATC and if he liked it what better motivation to go back to school and get good grades and hopefully follow in his farthers footsteps.
I really feel for kids today, in my industry no kids are allowed to visit us on work experince becasue of stupid H&S rules.

If this poor farther looses his job I will be the first to put cash into a collection for him.

Please can some common sence be brought back to our poor world.

I can see both sides of the argument but common sence must shine thru here.

[Dream Land]

Before I began xmitting, I had an FAA issued CTO certificate, looked similar to a pilot certificate, received after general ATC training and testing.

[Tigger_Too]

A long time ago, we were encouraged to pay familiarization visits to the tower from time to time. Some 'pilot style' controlling was the norm, and doing the occasional PAR talkdown was positively encouraged. The only proviso was that the qualified controller would ask the pilot whether he was prepared to accept a talkdown from a 'controller' under training.

Illegal? Probably.

Safe? Yes.

In turn, we used to occassionally take the controllers flying. Sometimes, heavens above, we even let them handle the controls.

So where do we draw the line? I much prefer the common sense approach that I grew up with then to the blame culture that we live with now. People used to exercise their judgement, and they were then prepared (and expected) to justify their actions. Do we live in a safer world today? I don't think so.

[S76Heavy]

Zero tolerance is all about protecting managements a**e, nothing else.

It does zilch for true safety, it just provides the company litterally with a "get out of jail"card by allowing them to point the finger at the employee who must have broken one of the thousands of rules and regulations issued by management for the incident/accident to occur.

We seem to have it all backwards nowadays; something is seen as dangerous when an arbitrary rule gets broken, because professionals are no longer trusted to use training, experience and good judgement to arrive at decisions. Everything nowadays had to be according to a set format, so no thinking and especially no critcal thinking is either required nor allowed.



There was no danger, the situations were fully under control. But to save face a few experienced professionals will get into trouble because nobody dares to explain to the public that real people take real decisions that affect real lives, hundreds and thousands of times a day, to make everything happen in this world. And sometimes there are different ways of doing things that are equally safe but simply different.

Where do I sign the petition?

[justpics]

I am guessing most of those who say it was just harmless fun have kids of their own who they want/need to babysit while at work in cockpit or in tower. Or those who fondly remember when their dads took them to work.

It is understandable one wants to defend his own position but it still does not make it right

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<Please can some common sence be brought back to our poor world.>

D747. I presume you mean "sense"? It is NOT commonsense to play with peoples' lives. Air Traffic Controllers are trained and licenced to an extremely high standard, just like pilots.

Heaven forbid that you should ever need major surgery, but would you have the same attitude if a surgeon took his child to work and let him get on with using the knives and forks? Sometime ago a pilot let his son fly the airliner.. with resulting considerable loss of life.

There are a lot of fools on this thread. I just hope that none of them, be they pilots or controllers, ever, ever have my life in their hands...

[Dimitris]

Why suspend only the ATCO?

If they are suspending the ATCO, why not suspend the pilots of JetBlue that flowed the instructions ('cleared for takeoff') knowing that it was not the ATCO speaking. If this is an 'incident' that worth the job of the ATCO it sure worth the job of the Jetblue pilots. It is obvious the pilots knew they were not talking to the ATCO.

What do you think?

[M.Mouse]

Heathrow Director brings me back to my point I made a few pages back, where do you draw the line?

Can all controllers bring their offspring to work? How much controlling, under supervision of course, should they be allowed to do? Can I let my child fly in my co-pilot's seat, only while it is quiet of course? If the weather is nice can I let him land the aeroplane using autoland, after all I am there to supervise should things get difficult?

Can a barrister allow his/her child to ask a witness the simple questions? Or a surgeon allow their child to do the simple stitches after an operation?

Was the whole point of what the controller did to massage the controller's ego and demonstrate how brilliant his offspring are? What was the objective?

Dangerous, probably not. Complete lack of commonsense, I think so. Lack of sound judgement, I think so again.

If he is told that all is fine, it was a great idea and ignore the storm of protest can we then look forward to a rash of similar incidents, until of course something dangerous happens and then we can all wring our hands in horror that such a thing was ever allowed in the first place.

[TrafficPilot]

Wow. Lighten up again Heathrow Director. Remember even you were young once

I used to listen to you (Bren?) on 120.4 when I was an 11 year old boy sitting in my parents garden in Fulham watching aircraft approaching overhead our house on the way into Heathrow. You and your colleagues were one of the inspirations for me wanting to enter aviation as a career which I have now done.

I have had Pilot friends of mine saying hello to me over the radio after departure from Heathrow (luckily not on 120.4..I hate to think what would have happened!). I've also heard overflying airline captains allowing their kids to make calls over the RT to ATC. OK - it isn't totally professional but it WAS a bit of fun. It made everyone involved smile, no one got hurt and it was most likely a memory that stuck in those kids heads for a long time. It may have even encouraged them to want a career in aviation when they were older!

I really hope this guy just gets a ticking off and nothing more serious.

[LEGAL TENDER]

Heaven forbid that you should ever need major surgery, but would you have the same attitude if a surgeon took his child to work and let him get on with using the knives and forks? Sometime ago a pilot let his son fly the airliner.. with resulting considerable loss of life.

HD your analogies are completely out of context.
To compare the actions of the JKF ATCO to those of a surgeon who lets his son operate... It's like implying that the JFK child was operating unsupervised making his own decisions.
If you really want to draw an analogy, you could maybe say that the surgeon's child was passing the tools to his father, who would then operate. Slightly different isn't it?

And also.. the analogy of the Aeroflot accident. That is one case of God knows how many thousand times a visitor to the flight deck turned the heading bug, entered a frequency in the comms box, or even the cabin crew sitting in while the Captain's gone to the loo, tapping into the FMC to check the latest estimate for arrival.
Sure. If the kids hadn't been in the cockpit that accident would have never happened, but it's not the child's fault if it happened. It's down to complacency and poor supervision. Every training/mentoring/instructing session is a potential risk. That's why there are specific instructor ratings.

Analogies are a powerful way to put a point across, but I think you are not using yours in a correct way.

[protectthehornet]

it obviously was a "slow" time at JFK

the actual controller was right there, prompting the kid

the clearances made sense so the airline pilots didn't make a big deal about it (other false transmissions, like near Miami were obviously non standard clearances)

The FAA is so short handed on controllers that they shouldn't fire the controller or his boss. But they must promise to never do it again.

I can only imagine that things like this have happened before.

The FAA is guilty of many more sins than this incident.

[50west]

good grief!

can someone explain to me exactly who has been harmed or could have been harmed?

A couple of well supervised transmissions during a V quiet time at JFK when all in the loop knew exactly what was going on.

The pilots knew it was the controller's child and they were not issued with airways or taxy instructions.

My understanding is that the a/c was lined up and got the intsructions to trundle down an empty runway and take off into an empty departure cone.

really scary

[infrequentflyer789]

Originally Posted by LEGAL TENDER

HD your analogies are completely out of context.
To compare the actions of the JKF ATCO to those of a surgeon who lets his son operate... It's like implying that the JFK child was operating unsupervised making his own decisions.

It is precisely like the surgeon handing the kid the scalpel and saying "cut here, this long this deep". The surgeon is making the decision and supervising and standing ready to attempt to patch things up when the kid nicks a major artery.

I still don't want to be the patient, and yes I would expect the surgeon to be struck off.

If you really want to draw an analogy, you could maybe say that the surgeon's child was passing the tools to his father, who would then operate. Slightly different isn't it?

Different (see above), but I still wouldn't expect it to happen.

Every training/mentoring/instructing session is a potential risk. That's why there are specific instructor ratings.

And sims. And medical training for years before you get anywhere near cutting into living breathing humans, even under instruction.


KLM: "we're now at takeoff"
Tower: "ok"

What could possibly go wrong...

[d747]

Heathrow Director you need to take a chill pill.
The controller was silly but no lives at risk.
The flight you talk about was in my opinion dangerous as both kids were at the controls and as a passinger I would be unhappy about this. As others have said pre 9/11 flight deck visits were common place and even allowed kids to sit in the pilots seat.
I even think from hearing the audio the pilots found this ammunsing and probably made a dull day just a little more fun.
If you are to liken this to surgery it would bit like the kid passing the surgeon the knife to do the operation.....

When I had my first flying lesson I found ATC to be very difficult to understand this young chap was fairly clear. I also would like to maybe visit the tower at my local airport but I guess that too will be banned.

[lomapaseo]

I am amazed at the amount of emotion on this thread from all sides. It must be the judgemental internet that brings this out

I suppose that there can be some black and white about rules. But there should never be black and white about punishments (corrective actions)

If there were no consequences to rules then there would be no need to follow rules.

But give a thought to the negative and positive attitudes of applying punishment or reinforcement of the need to follow rules.

Assuming the rule breaker can provide value to the community then the object is to provide corrective action that salvages the good while reinforcing the need not to overcome this with even more bad.

That process should not be left to the public internet to decide since emotion without facts can not weigh the balances.

So the majority can talk about the rule breaking facts but add little to the weighing of consequences on either side of the argument.

[barrelroll4separation]

Having listened to the tape, I must admit I have heard much worse, and dangerous for that matter, RT over continental Europe! Do you hear the news agencies picking up on that?! By the way I am not condoning the actions of the controller, which no matter how well intentioned, probably not the best decision - hope everything turns out ok for him though as I have the highest respect for any of the controllers working the busiest airspace in the world.

[DC10RealMan]

I think that the replies to this thread show that there may be quite a few egos at stake here. I would suggest that the responsible individuals both airline pilots and atc staff saw no threat to safety and were quite happy with the situation, however commonsense may not be the deciding factor particularly with the press involved.

[M.Mouse]

WIll all those saying it was fine please also answer the question where do you draw the line and how?

Thanks.