He is getting a roasting and I think he'll never do it again.

I do not think he should be fired, but that's not my call.

Yes, he was wrong to let a person not training to be a controller broadcast instructions to departing aircraft.

Give them a break. I'll bet the kid knows far more about what dad does for a living than most of the media. And relieving stress IS A GOOD THING.

I'll repeat my previous comment. Not one pilot seemed confused by the instructions.

Then again, in New York, they let all kinds of people ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, where billions of dollars and peoples' livelihoods are at stake. Perhaps the media should jump on that ill advised behavior too. Oh wait, they do already, whenever a new IPO trades with executives competent enough to ring a bell, it's featured on CNBC.

Never mind.

Memo blasts air traffic controller and supervisor over 'kids' incident - CNN.com

So an FAA Official is releasing sensitive information about an ongoing investigation, and KNOWS it (as he asked not to be identified), and this "unprofessional behaviour" isn't a problem with the FAA?

did anyone every let you drive a car before you had a learner's permit? you know, in a parking lot without other cars?

BAM...shoot the guy

Did you ever let someone, who wasn't a pilot, take the controls of your airplane and you were not a CFI or an airplane salesman demonstrating a new plane?

Bam...shoot the guy

Did you ever have intercourse...with someone you were not married to?

BAM...send him straight to hell.

Now, believe me...if this incident had lead to disaster in the sky, I would say put the guy in jail...but it lead to nothing more than a public relations problem for the FAA.

let us put things in perspective , shall we???????

by the way, a Pan Am 707 crew had a visitor to the cockpit one time. And the captain had the nerve to let the visitor sit in the left seat and actually fly the plane.

Oh, the visitor was a member of the board of directors and his name was Charles Lindbergh...do you have a problem with that??????? He trimeed the plane up better and got 5 more knots of speed with no increase in power.

And an Aeroflot pilot once let his daughter, and then his son, sit in left seat of an Airbus in cruise flight over Siberia once. The consequence of this piece of irresponsible and unprofessional behavior is aviation history.

For crying out loud guys!
Im sitting here laughing at the You Tube video too.
We are all sitting here laughing because nothing happened.
What if something went wrong?
Supervised or not. We are suppose to be professionals in a highly professional and technical industry, battling for creditbility and pay and conditions that reflect the training and money invested in ourselves.
This is not a place for kids having a day off school. And we are not talking about a small country airstrip either.
Unless the child was authorised to make the transmission, then................Next time I hear a child clear me to Take Off, do I assume he is being supervised in the tower or a malicious transmission? Like the warning in Jepps about malicious transmissions flying into Narita?

Yes he should be fired. But the U.S have enough unemployment problems as it is, so in the name of compassion...............

OK - What could possibly have gone wrong? :confused:

FIX news has this thing out of control......but what is new

Answering your question...absolutely nothing!

By the way...the AFL Airbus accident was caused by an airline and senior pilot not knowing the systems of his aircraft and NOT by a child in the cockpit!
It happened the same few weeks before on a TAROM flight and it didnt crash only by miracle...recorded on Video and Pics too, near Paris!
And with no Child interference to mess up...:hmm:

And is FAA also checking this DRAMATIC accident here?»»»
YouTube - Underage Air Traffic Controller
I think they really should...:}

janetflight

r u in vegas? how does area 51 look, close up?

or am I mistaken??????

What is the problem? A voice gives you a clearance (don't forget, we don't have the full tape) so you follow it. I really don't care what age the voice is, as long as the clearance is genuine. Given the clearances issued, each could be undone very quickly or were of little consequence if given in error. The high horse brigade need to get a life. There was no problem. The Feds would be better off spending their time working on the T's & C's of entry level pilots. That is where the real threat is. People sleeping in crew rooms, positioning for hours before duty, having two or three jobs to pay off debts - this is the real threat to US aviation - unscrupulous employers! Not switched on controllers taking their kids to work.

PM

Wow, what a load of tosh!

A lot of you are forgetting one important fact - you ATCers do not control the aircraft, we do.

I'm sure the weather was CAVOK, in which case take-off or no take-off clearance, it's down to us whether we pile on the coals and rumble off down the runway or not.

The other morning I was cleared to land at TRF while a Dash 8 was touching down... I had to correct the controller and the whole episode resulted in a missed approach...

I wasn't impressed.

I like this Don Browns blog on the topic... Daddy let me drive.

Search for gettheflick; tried to insert link but PPRUNE thinks it's a rude word...

@ Tigger Too
 

That sounds remarkably like a certain RAF station 'East of Suez" in the late 60s :) It worked if the "Duty Pilot" actually came to the Tower, of course, which is why it was sometimes called the "Approach Roome".

However, one helluva difference between the pre-briefed scenario you accurately described [on a Mil airfield, VMC, with guys from the sqn 'controlling' their colleagues] and doing it with a child at an International airport.

Anyway, Lightning pilots were always looking up for the runway, and kicking of the drift so carefully applied ... the best visibility measuring device I've ever known :)

ei-flyer: "The other morning I was cleared to land at TRF while a Dash 8 was touching down... I had to correct the controller and the whole episode resulted in a missed approach..."

Are you sure it was a controller, and not a girlfriend/boyfriend/grandson/first cousin twice removed?

From now on, listening to Channel 9, I'll be wondering ......
:rolleyes:.. :)

New thread ... "Sandefjord in the News"

"Stray moose issues landing clearance ... " :)

I'm skipping a lot of replies here, but at 0:52, the poor child seems to be clearing an aircraft for takeoff. The callsign is unintelligible.

Anybody recall Tenerife where 500+ people died ?

Isn't the feed from over the internet, so it isn't going to have the same quality as a proper recording no doubt certain parts will have been missed. It does seem to have been edited anyway.


Beside that, the guy should get a roasting but nothing more. As usual the media have blown it out of all proportion, the child was merely repeating what he was told to say and at no point could it be construed as controlling traffic.

I'm going to contribute to this thread in the hope that the Authorities read it before taking any action vis the controller.

At the age of 8 I had the nous to arrange a school wide collection for the Aberfan disaster. We raised more than any other school. Didn't occur to the adults.

At 11 I was driving the winch, towing gliders into the air - unattended.

At 12 driving Dad's car around the airfield and towing to/from the hangar.

I read pretty well too.

I would suggest (as a parent) that a child knows what's what after about 6. And because they are soaked in the local discipline (one that I remember is to look around the field before crossing. If I see an approaching glider - Stand Still).

I flew launch to landing at 14. Dad in the back.

Any bright child (an atco's child will be at least 50% bright) will know when to say "Daddy, what do I do now?"

I'd certainly trust my youngest to clear me for t/o over anybody else.

I have already posted my opinion in the ATC forum..and it basically is the guy made a mistake but safety was not compromised.
I also do not believe he was unprofessional in the way people seem to think was and that we should look at ourselves first.

The one question that no one seems to want to answer, of all the people saying sack him, it was wrong, dangerous, irresponsible, safety critical etc etc...

What was going to go wrong that would cause the carnage and mayhem intimated? What seconds from disaster event was this child going to cause through parrot fashion repeating a clearance given by a valid, experienced controller.

Tenerife?? Please...count the holes in the cheese in the accident report before comparing to this scenario...plus remind yourself as you read it that these poor souls were all "professional"
Aeroflot? Different scenario and panning out. No one noticed what had happened in the cockpit till too late and has been pointed out the pilots were not fully aware of the equipment ( ie they could have let go of the stick but didn't). What would the father not notice or hear in the control tower?

To all you other valid atcos out there who think safety was compromised.
What actions could the child have done that would have caused a DIRECT danger to any flight. No far fetched scenarios either given that the father was plugged in next to him and can overide any transmission. What if- what if -what if -doesn't work when you consider the few facts we know.

Kid transmits instructions told to him by father
Father broadcasts telling the aircraft (in a joking way) what is going on, which means he was plugged in at the time.

Those two facts put together limit the potential for any safety related errors. If the father can't overide the transmissions then it means controllers at JFK can't overide their trainees. Highly unlikely I am sure.

When the media does the speculating about "far fetched" scenarios related to ATC or flying we get up in arms about it.
So to all you professionals out there who think this was dangerous. Tell me how in way that wouldn't seem like reading it in the paper or seeing it on FOX news.

ONE - and one that could have and should have been eliminated.

On the beach