Story here.
Obviously, the child was simply saying what he was told to say, and I don’t think the guy should lose his job. Still, this ought to qualify for a poor judgment award. What if the controller missed some other important blip on the screen because he’s chuckling with his kid?
Can’t help but think of the Russian pilot who let his son fly, with disastrous results.
I think he probably should be fired. He clearly doesn’t take his job responsibilities seriously enough. He makes a mistake and people can die. The kid is an absolutely unnecessary distraction in an already high stress workplace.
It probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do but he is obviously a major league controller based on the position he has and where he works. His father didn’t just hand him the microphone and go get coffee. He was just repeating the phrase he was told to say a few times when the workload allowed. The pilots seemed to think it was cute. Nobody would have known if some busybody didn’t get in a huff and go ballastic. Nobody should lose their job. They could give him milder discipline and clarify the policy to everyone else and that would work just fine.
Some busybody who reported a serious breach in code? I know how incredibly distracting it is when someone brings their kid into our office. There’s a reason why the kids aren’t even allowed IN the tower, much less allowed to do their parent’s job. I wonder how the passengers on the planes would respond if they learned that a kid was distracting the people that are responsible for them landing safely.
I think he should be fired, too. You shouldn’t be bringing your children to an average workplace, and an air traffic control area isn’t your average workplace. I honestly don’t understand the mentality of people who think it’s okay to bring their kids in to work. There is no place for kids at work. People are trying to work there - it isn’t a house party.
Poor judgement? Probably. A firing offence? Not based on the information given.
Not all children are screaming banshees that run around flipping switches and getting into everything if not constantly monitored. There is no evidence that “a kid was distracting the people that are responsible for them landing safely.” For all we know he was quietly reading a book or playing on his PSP until his dad decided to show him a little about his job.
I don’t see what the big deal is. If an emergency took place, the father could have taken control immediately. It’s not like the kid was left unsupervised or anything.
It wasn’t any more risky than letting a surgeon’s kid do a few simple cuts and cauterizations and maybe a simple bypass graft with daddy’s hand guiding his. If the kid’s hand slips, dad’s there to correct it quickly.
:rolleyes:
I really see nothing wrong with this. According to one article I saw it was a non peak time and the tower wasn’t very busy. What the kid was saying was exactly correct (I am a pilot and know the lingo) so I have no doubt his Dad was the one who was doing the job while just letting his kid make the radio calls to the plane. Since the Dad also spoke to the pilots it’s clear he had a headset on at the time as well so was able to directly hear the pilot responses. It sounds like everybody at the time, from the controllers to the pilots, were pretty amused. I agree it’s unprofessional, but don’t think discipline should go any further than “don’t do this again”.
He should be fired and possibly jailed.
Air traffic control is all about procedure. No exceptions, no omissions, no improvisations. Every i has to be dotted, every t crossed. No deviation whatsoever can be tolerated.
If you can’t act like an anal-retentive nerd with OCD, you have no business landing jets.
Boy am I glad I don’t work in an environment like yours. We’re a cubicle farm, but at least we have fun. Kids are welcome any time. Depending on the age, and if I’m not in the middle of something I might challange them to walk 100 feet or so from my desk and play a game of foosball (sp?)… or maybe Wii bowling. It isn’t like there are kids there every day, but when they are they are welcomed. We still get our jobs done and have managed to continue to turn a profit throught the whole economic mess we are going through. Could also be why I’ve been there 23 years and I’m not one of the most senior people of the group.
Back to the OP… it sounds like the Dad was still ultimately in control. Comparing it to a surgeon would only be correct if comparing it to the surgeon telling the kid what type of instrument to request from the nurse, but still having it handed to the surgeon (and the surgeon listening so if an error was made it could be corrected imediately). Still poor judgement, but he shouldn’t lose his job over it.
This is an example of a man who should be hit over the head with a stick till he bleeds. 
Termination worthy? No, not based on what I heard. But it definitely warrants a severe penalty.
To give another analogy, imagine a 911 dispatcher letting their child communicate with police and fire personnel. Even if the operator were “right there the whole time,” sometimes split seconds matter. When paying attention to the child–making sure he or she doesn’t push a wrong button or say something inappropriate–the operator could miss a brief, but important, piece of information. Maybe while watching Junior, and telling him to say “Go to 9835 E. 77 Street” he misinterprets it and says 9853 E. 77 Street. Damn. Cops and fire department go to the wrong address.
Now take that scenario, a busy 911 call center, and bring it up to the level of Kennedy Airport. Even though the incident happened at an “off time,” that’s all relative. An off time at Kennedy is probably still very busy. Watching the kid, watching the radar, communicating with the kid, communicating with the pilots, I don’t care if the guy is highly trained: He is not as focused as he could be if there were no kid in between him and his job.
All of this is light years different than letting little Billy stamp some forms at the DMV, or letting him copy some paperwork, or send an email to a client. There are lives and millions of dollars of machinery at stake here.
Stupid mistake. Give him some time off to think about it.
Some positions and tasks allow for a very small margin for levity. ATC is not a cubicle farm. The gent in question may be spared firing if his record’s otherwise sparkling, but there should be some stiff disciplinary measures. Something that people will look at and say to themselves, “right: file under things NOT to do”.
Memorandum
Re: New Policy
Just in case you thought it was OK to bring your kid into the air traffic control tower at JFK airport and let your kid provide flight instructions to unsuspecting commercial pilots who are left to wonder what the fuck is going on in the tower, we just wanted to clarify that THIS IS NOT OK. It is also NOT OK to do this two days in a row with two different kids. We are establishing this as a new formal policy and we ask that you conform to this policy immediately. Thank you.
Is it okay to let your son hold the stick though if you’re still supervising it? 
Gosh, I’m glad that that “homeland security” is so focused on airline safety that I have to throw away almost all my liquids, undergo invasive body scans and pat-downs, get swabbed down with chemicals, take off my shoes even when the floor is covered with ice-cold snow-melt, have my luggage rooted through, and argue about whether or not I have the “right” to take my diabetes medicine on a plane - rather than oh, I don’t know, not letting fucking kids in a control tower, let alone giving instructions to airplanes?
Firing and blacklisting from any air-related employment is too lenient, but I can’t think of a more suitable punishment so it will have to do. And God help me, I’ve already seen blogs where people are bitching “if Reagan had never fired the ATCs in the 1980’s, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I hope nobody thinks I’m saying this guy did the right thing… he didn’t… it was stupid.
But… it isn’t the same as a 911 call. It was directing ground traffic, which is still a big deal, but it is also communicating to a trained professionel who uses his experience and training to make sure even if a bad instruction is given does not cause serious harm. I really doubt an experienced pilot would blindly follow a child’s voice over the radio. I think if he would have said take 117 Bravo (I’m just making this up) the pilot would have recognized there was a 747 currently landing there in the half second before the dad would have quickly chimed in with an “ignore that” message with the correct instructions.
A kid giving CPR instructions to a paniced parent isn’t quite on the same level. The planes also were moving slowly on the ground into position and had a pretty good idea of where they were to go… just waiting for the go ahead, not screaming in at hundreds of miles per hour from the air.
Again… stupid, but not life threatening.
I agree with this (except that, it’s not like the kid was even “supervised”–the kid didn’t make any decisions at all, he was just a mouthpiece.
:rolleyes: indeed. The kid wasn’t making decisions, he was just a parrot. Also, it sounds like the controller was the ground controller, who just tells planes where to go on the ground and gives clearances for takeoff. Obviously it’s an important job (and can have disastrous results if not done properly), but it’s probably the least important phase of air traffic control.
Again, it is not the case that the kid was allowed to do something while the dad hovered over him ready to take over. The dad just told the kid what to say and the kid said it. This is completely different than a surgeon telling his or her kid where to cut etc.
Well, there goes ‘take your kid to work’ day. I was wondering how they’d hammer nails in that coffin…