Yes, safety is a big deal. And the guy should be reprimanded in some way. Just not as the result of a kneejerk, and not to the loss of his job. This controller was in entire control the whole time, and limited the son’s transmissions to takeoff operations, not landing operations (and thanks, Waffle Decider, for the clarification). AFAIK, there has only been one accident in the U.S. due to bad tower taxi instructions, way back in 1972 in Chicago.
From the way I read the articles on this, it looks like the FAA has historically allowed kids to tour towers, so I think it’s a bit far-reaching to posit that kids in the tower present some sort of potentially dire distraction or threat of unpredictable and uncontrollable behavior. A cup of coffee can be a distraction, and those aren’t banned in the tower.
And some people are latching on to the whole unnecessary chatter thing. This happens all the time. I’ve enjoyed every single “Good day” (or variation thereof) I’ve ever received. That’s unnecessary chatter, but pretty standard. A simple “Adios, amigo” is nothing.
enipla, IME, if I’m expecting to be told to hold short, and that’s the radio call I get in a kid’s voice or any other voice that I’m not expecting, I’m going to assume it’s legit, unless it’s telling me something bizarre. It’d be quite the feat for a kid to figure out which aircraft were doing what and park a van outside the airport with a high-power transmitter and try to play a prank.
For taking off, the first thing you do in the air on the radios is switch to departure, so there couldn’t be any confusion or surprise for any of those pilots. If this kid was telling me position and hold, and I wasn’t sure about it for whatever reason, I’d just ask for a repeat, and hope to hear a real ATC controller say something.
Theres a difference between saying “fuck the regs, its obvious it doesnt apply in THIS case and would actually make things more dangerous” and “fuck the regs, its not as dangerous as they imply”.
The BEST spin you can put on the kiddy ATC is its in the second group.
If you think there is a “good judgement” arguement for putting it in the first group I’d love to hear it.
Understand, I’m not necessarily defending the guy. I just don’t think it was the big deal a lot of people seem think it was. But I don’t think it was a case of saying anything close to “fuck the regs”, because I doubt there’s a reg in place for this. It comes down to judgment.
But I will check and see if any regulations were in fact broken. I have the ATC rulebook - will look through it later.
My guess is that there is no specific prohibition spelled out in the rules governing this incident. But there might be a general admonishment against distractions or non-necessary actions. The flight rules have a regulation up front and center that says pilots must obtain “all available information” about a flight, and another about “careless or reckless operation of an aircraft”. Those are both rather general, and allow the FAA to violate a pilot for just about anything that they think was their fault. Wouldn’t be surprised to see them use something similar for ATC in this case if a more specific rule was not violated.
ATC’s are supposed to follow protocol the way soldiers are supposed to follow orders.
It is the first mandate of their job. If you can’t follow orders then you’re not a good soldier. If you can’t follow protocols you’re not a good ATC. Whether there was danger to others or not.
And the only opinion that matters to me, on the matter, is the FAA and ATC’s, not pilots or stewardesses or baggage handlers. No matter how many hours of conversation, over the radio, a pilot may have with ATC’s it doesn’t provide insight into what is or isn’t a dangerous decision in the tower.
On PPRuNe there are some ATCers who don’t see it as a big deal either, there are one or too that are horrified but most of them all think it was stupid but not necessarily dangerous.
Apparently the guy’s daughter had a go the next day.
I suspect there are more events that have been classified as such, but we also have to consider incidents and near misses. This industry needs to be proactive, no reactive. We need to look at incidents - how they happen, when and where they happen, how often - and plan to prevent them, because incidents can turn into accidents.
Several hundred events of all types are reported per year, and a reportable incident is generally one in which the possibility of an accident existed. Just from reading the Canadian CADORS once in a while, ATC mistakes show up pretty often.
There are millions of flights per day - sooner or later, that possibility of an accident will become a reality, and then we will be sitting here on the boards wondering why and how such a thing could have happened.
I just never want to hear about an accident in which the people in charge of managing the aircraft were also taking care of their children.
The armchair refereeing from those who honestly don’t have a clue as to how ATC works (not only here) is mildly entertaining. I’m not suggesting that the guy get off scot free, either. Some form of punishment is called for, but I don’t see this as a firing offense.
Inappropriate, sure. A bad decision, sure. An unimaginable threat to anyone’s safety, no.
Many airports have taxiways that run parallel to runways, and it’s possible, for example, for the pilots to misinterpret signage/receive confusing instructions about when to turn the plane off connecting ramps. Hereis a summary of an event in Oslo last week, where the plane took off from one of two taxiways running parallel to the runway. The investigation is on-going, but looking at the airport map, it isn’t too hard to see how the layout could be confusing to an inattentive pilot, or perhaps there is some bizarre signage, and (it seems) ATC either didn’t notice nor did they have time to stop the plane before it took off.
I’m not blaming ATC here, but this could have been a tragic accident had there been another plane on that taxiway (e.g. plane A cleared on runway to take-off, plane B cleared to cross taxiway M towards the buildings, but A is on M…boom!).
Another event occurred in Amsterdamon Feb 10th. Also a case of a taxiway running parallel to a runway.
And don’t get me wrong. I don’t think its a fire his ass and throw him under the jail offense either. But its IMO certainly not a best practices sorta thing either. And its also not a is A or B the safer thing to do sorta debate either IMO.
A Singapore Airlines plane hit a crane a few years back when it took off on the wrong runway in Taiwan. It was a foggy day, pilot read the runway wrong and ATC couldn’t see the plane…
And I would sooner take surgical advice from a nurse than a complete layman. I don’t think this is really about job specifics though, it’s more about whether someone should be fired for making one bad decision.
Well they seem to be as divided as us. Most seem to think it was ‘staggeringly unprofessional’, which is kind of what we’ve said too. Also I’m not sure what makes you think any of these people are ATC, other than perhaps they self identified as such, y’know, anonymously on the internet.
There seem to be more than a few saying he’ll lose his career over this, regardless.
I don’t see many here calling for him to be fired, just sanctioned.