Maybe I'm just not taking this seriously enough, but the idea of a child directing air traffic control doesn't seem to freak me out as much as it does everyone else. On February 17 at JFK airport in New York an air traffic controller brought his child to work with him. There was no school that day because of the snow, and for whatever reason this controller ended up bringing his kid with him. He then proceeded to let his child (voice sounds like a son, but at that age you can't really tell) direct traffic. You can hear the child's voice on five recorded transmissions directing the pilots "JetBlue 171 contact departure", and the like.
The kid sounds like he knows his stuff. Furthermore the pilots didn't seem upset about it and just responded as if he was any normal air traffic controller. Likely the "real" air traffic controller was coaching his child on what to say, so it isn't as if the child had free run of the air traffic. Also, the interaction between child-controller and pilots only lasted for a few minutes, so no big deal right?
The FAA seems to think it's a really big deal. So does the majority of the news services reporting this story. You'd think by their reaction that the child was in the tower by himself while his dad took a smoke break, or that the kid was actually piloting a plane. Speaking of which, haven't we seen this sort of thing before? Having a child check out the cockpit and see how the instruments work or make an announcement to the passengers wouldn't have been cause for concern before this whole 9/11 thing brought about tighter security measures. I'm sure plenty of parents have done this exact sort of thing with their children. Having a CEO's child sit at his father's desk and pretend to be a businessman doesn't mean the kid is actually running the company (incidentally the CEOs themselves often sit there pretending to be businessmen). But yes, I know there are limits. You wouldn't let your child go fight fires with you if you were a firefighter, even though you might give them a tour of the station, slide down the fire-pole, and sit in the firetruck.
I guess I just don't see why this has become such a big news story. It's in the newspapers, online news, and on television. Really? The main fuss over all this seems to be that controlling air traffic requires a lot of concentration and attention to detail, which you can't do if your child is in the tower with you. I think the biggest question shouldn't be "Why was that child allowed to direct the traffic", but "Why was the child allowed in the traffic control tower in the first place"? Regardless, that should be an internal investigation to determine if the actions of the air traffic controllers in the tower produced an increased risk to the planes, and not a media fiasco. Have we really become so uptight as a nation that we freak out over something like this? Some people should take themselves a little less seriously.
2 comments:
Haven't there been 13- and 14-year old children that have flown cross-country, actually piloting the plane?
Besides that, you would think that being an air traffic controller, the guy can be trusted to make a judgment call on whether letting his kid say a few words on the radio would be safe or not, wouldn't you?
I actually thought of looking up examples of children flying planes or the like, but figured it would be too time consuming for this blog. But, I'm quite sure I remember reading/hearing about it too.
I agree with your statement about the air traffic controller. You give the guy an important position like that and then don't trust him? In the end though, this thing was blown WAY out of proportion by the media....haven't they got health care issues to cover?
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