Unless you’ve been dwelling under a rock, you know that a JFK aircraft controller and his supervisor have been suspended because the controller allowed his eight-year-old son and daughter to give take-off instructions to several airliners. On consecutive days, first the boy and then the girl communicated with the airline pilots, giving them clear runway instructions. At least one of the pilots complimented the boy over the radio
Since these incidents became public, the Secretary of Transportation and other officials have been calling for the controller’s head. Granted, it was boneheaded of him to have let his kids communicate with the airliners. But does he deserve to be fired? One expert interviewed on NBC Today does not think so because at no time were the airliners and their passengers placed in any danger.
A former student of mine who is a sergeant with the Houston police SWAT team has a close friend who is an airline pilot. He has flown all over the world and, after listening to the recordings, said that those kids were a lot easier to understand than the broken English used by Russian, Japanese, Brazilian and other foreign controllers. Besides that, he said, the pilots are always in charge, not the controllers.
The airline pilot thinks that a written reprimand would suffice in this case. My feeling is that, at most, a thirty-day suspension would more than adequately discipline a 12-year veteran controller and his supervisor. But with the public outcry generated by the media and the public condemnations from a bunch of official windbags, they’ll both probably get fired.
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