I am not a pilot or atc, and have no knowledge of their practices. I laughed. I think its funny, and a bit cute. If you told me I was on one of the flights the kid was directing, i would have been even more amused. And the fact that everyone is so worked up over a non issue is the most amusing thing of all, imo.
shrug
I’ve trusted ATC and pilots with my life dozens of times. They’ve yet to kill me. I will trust that this one had everything under control.
Sadly, if I were this guys boss, I would have to discipline him just to placate the frenzied masses.
I have worked at an international airport for 13 years. I am a State Transportation employee. I have no FAA Security Pass for the “behind the wire” zones, including the tower.
If I tresspassed on tower territory, even by accident, if I wound up anywhere inside the wire without written permission or a pre-arranged appointment, I would be fined $10,000, & maybe jailed, for 2 years +.
Bosda, assuming your rules are similar to ours (Australia), you can probably go behind the wire provided you are escorted by an authorised person. I’ve taken my 3 year old daughter airside to look at “Daddy’s aeroplane”, it’s not a problem.
Edit: In case the link isn’t clear, the ATC Dad is an authorised person and can probably legally have visitors in the tower the same way I can have visitors in my aeroplane while it’s on the ground. The child’s presence in the tower is not the issue.
If an ATC simply taking his child to work would subject that child to imprisonment unless the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Show and Tell Programs and Take Your Daughter to Work Day signed form 69FDUP in triplicate, then that’s a stupid law.
I don’t know too much about how ATC works, but I happen to have a bunch of associates who work for a couple of railroads, and I have been in Grand Central Terminal’s RTC office (which controls all of Metro-North Railroad), which is one of the busiest in the country. This was 11AM on a Sunday, where each line has 2 trains an hour in each direction, as well as a couple of Amtrak trains and maybe a freight train thrown in. During rush hours on weekdays (when there are trains entering/leaving NYC at an average rate of 1 per MINUTE), they keep guards at the door to make sure that NOBODY can distract or interfere with operations. This is definitely NOT an appropriate environment for kids, as “cool” as it may seem to them. I’m not sure what kind of “signaling” system ATC and planes use, but any little distraction, from the anal-retentive controller stopping to do an “aww kiddies!” moment or answer their questions, to kids wanting to get hands on with the computers or buttons, could at the least slow down the railroad, causing a whole chain reaction of delays, or at the worst, cause a crash or derailment.
I was 25 at the time, so I was mature enough to handle myself in an appropriate fashion, but I and everyone else there KNEW I wasn’t supposed to be in there. Hell, that documentary that National Geographic did on GCT a couple years ago was bragging about how their RTC office is kept in a top secret location (take the elevator to the 6th floor) - it’s basically behind that Hermes statue).
Last year, Newsday started a huge crackdown against the LIRR after one of the engineers let one of his non-railroad associates operate a morning rushhour train, and one of the passengers blew the whistle (figuratively to the newspaper, not the actual train whistle). The engineer not only got fired, but had criminal charges brought up against him for reckless endangerment. Newsday started encouraging (and paying) commuters to report any other infractions, and they were coming in by the boatload over the next couple of weeks. Ever since then, nobody is willing to take a chance anymore.
I’m almost SURE that this ATC office has a written policy about who is and isn’t allowed to be in there, and there’s no doubt that there’s a policy about who is allowed to perform ATC operations (this is the type of thing you need to get license or certification from the FAA). If the kid isn’t allowed in there, or doesn’t have an ATC license, then he and whoever brought him in there was in the wrong, and deserve what is coming to them.
I hope all the folks implying or hinting that you have to be a pilot or work in ATC or ground control in order to have a valid opinion on this subject are going to not be hypocrites, and that I can rely on them to step up to the plate and make the same implications that no one could have a valid opinion on, oh, energy or environmental discussions on this board unless they have my level of professional work experience and multiple engineering degrees.
So I expect to be seeing some bright and shiny faces in those threads dropping hints like “how many years have you worked as a power plant engineer” or “what exactly is your experience with Part 75 of the CFR?”
Or maybe it’s possible people can look at an issue and have their opinion still carry some validity. Who knows? I guess we’d have to rely upon the opinions of argument experts, rather than dare to speculate.
I don’t think anyone is saying people aren’t entitled to an opinion, regardless. Some have expressed that pilots are no more aware of how dangerous this action was or wasn’t, based on their experience talking on the radio to the tower.
Many pilots, not just here, all over the media, seem to want everyone to think they have some deeper insight and if they don’t think it’s a big deal then everyone else should just calm down.
Having an ATC in my family, I have heard otherwise, directly from someone who actually would know if this is serious or no biggie. In his opinion pilots are going to think it’s no big deal because they routinely let kids sit at the controls and bend regulations without ill consequences. He was adamant that this skews their view and that overriding protocols for ATC’s is, in fact, a huge deal.
I think it’s more than fair to challenge a pilot telling people it’s no biggie, everyone is making too much of it, etc. Especially when they want special consideration, for their opinion, because they are pilots.
So the controller was only relaying to the child what to say. That takes a lot more concentration on the one task then saying it himself. He can say it himself or, in this case, he can say it himself to the child, then have to pay attention to the child to make sure he says it correctly and make corrections if he doesn’t. That’s a huge distraction. Normally after he says something himself he can be thinking about what he has to do next, not this time. If something urgent had happened during the time he had to monitor what his child said there could have been delays or misunderstandings with disastrous results.
Just because nothing bad happened this time does not make it less serious.
This reminds me of an apocryphal story about a barrister and a judge. The barrister loved to talk, and the judge was an impatient sort. At closing arguments, the barrister went on and on, covering every point in excruciating detail. As he wrapped it up, the judge muttered, “And after all that, I am none the wiser…”
The barrister responded, “None the wiser, my Lord, but infinitely better informed.”
If the media is making a big deal of something being a huge safety risk, I do not begrudge anyone not an expert in the field from being very concerned, and having strong feelings. However, if some experts in the field step in to say, Whoa, this is being blown out of proportion, one would hope that the layman would take heed.
For example, not long ago we heard so much about death panels being a threat to seniors. The populace was outraged. Then experts stepped in to say, Hey, not so fast! Most people took that into account.
Now, experienced people in this field disagree, but one cannot dismiss the fact that some pilots think this is no big deal. Not listening to their comments an instead relying on poor analogies – the rail road controller being a particularly bad one considering the informed analogies posted thus far – is in its own way embracing ignorance.
I’m reading that as, “We didn’t think we needed to TELL these professionals not to do that.” As my husband the Safety Officer says, his company doesn’t make their policies based on common sense, because that will bite you in the ass every time.
I agree that most, if not all, of the analogies are bad.
My post early in this thread did not address really the safety issue, but the security issue. In fact, I reviewed both my posts and I do not believe I mentioned safety at all. But the security issue itself, while not necessarily the focus of the event at hand, arises due to the fact that the event at hand happened at all. Do you see where I’m coming from?
I’ve had background checks out the wazoo. I’m licensed to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public. I have received a police radio license in the past. I’ve worked for government projects in Iraq which required me to be vetted to a level higher than I’ll wager any ATC or TSA screener has likely ever been. And yet I’m still required to be treated like a criminal at the airport, arguing about whether or not I can bring my medicine on a flight when I have two doctors prescriptions in-hand, while apparently up until today any rogue controller can decide it’s Open Mike Night and bring in an unvetted, uncleared, unsecured person to a control tower to give instructions to aircraft.
It stuns me that anyone can defend that breach of security principles, if not rule of law, especially a pilot, even if this time it was a “cute” kid who was directing ground traffic.
If I were this controller’s managers, I’d be having serious doubts about his judgement. If I had an employee who made these kinds of decisions, knowing full well that they are against regulations, and knowing that if something goes wrong, it can go very very wrong, I’d be busting this guy back down to making coffee. He’s have to prove to me that he really does know the importance of his job, and the severity of his mistake. Because next time it might be “Let’s bring little Timmy’s boy scout troop to work” day.
Well if you didn’t use analogies…then it must have been a good argument.
I feel the safety issue is a serious one, but I wanted to limit on what I posted on that because I wasn’t sure what exactly the safety issue was at the time I posted. However, the security issue seemed, and seems, plain to me.
Pilots are not ATC’s. Talking on the radio to the tower does not give you special insight into the safety issue being discussed. Putting on the pretense that they are more in the know on this because they are pilots is misleading and disingenuous.
Oh really? I may not know the intricacies of tower operations, but I understand what’s going on in the airport environment, and how tower fits into the picture. Pilots are in essence the end user of the product ATC delivers–traffic deconfliction, coordination, and safety. So getting the pilot’s take on the effects of this whole bruhaha is actually relevant.
You’re basing much of your view on one relative’s viewpoint, which I’m equally discounting because a) I’m assuming he’s in the Canadian ATC system, and not the U.S., and b) his utterly bullshit remark that “pilots are going to think it’s no big deal because they routinely let kids sit at the controls and bend regulations without ill consequences. He was adamant that this skews their view and that overriding protocols for ATC’s is, in fact, a huge deal.” What. The. Fuck. You trot it out like it’s the brass ring of evidence here. If you want to discount the pilot’s viewpoint, I can just as easily discount one totally biased ATC viewpoint.
I’m stunned by the blatant mis-characterization of what happened. You’re calling a kid an unvetted, uncleared, unsecured person? Are we that far gone as a society that we’re considering kids a threat to good order and discipline? I understand you’re pissed of about your TSA screening, but that really has little if anything to do with tower security.
There’s no mischaracterization at all - if you have a link or some citation that says the kid was given proper security screening prior to entering the tower, I’d like to see it. Or that the guy had prior clearance and vetting to bring the kid in. I believe that his suspension is if nothing else evidence that no, he in fact did not have the kid vetted to enter.
I get it, it’s a “cute” kid, so there’s no security risk, right? Well when does the visitor cease being “cute” and start being a security risk? What about a teenager? How about a 20-something? What about the friend of a family member? How about the controller’s fishin’ buddy Skeeter? Where do we draw the line? That’s why the TSA does the seemingly insane practice of screening 5 year-olds and nonagenarians in wheelchairs. Yeah it sounds crazy; what’s the alternative, leave it up to the so-called “good horse sense” of the employee? Do I need to post a few hundred links of crazy TSA shenanigans to show why that’s a bad idea?
What sort of security process do you think I have to go through if I want to give a person a power plant tour - even if they never enter the control room? Just let your imagination run wild. Now given that the worst a person who is ignorant, negligent, or maleficent can realistically do at a coal power plant is shut off the plant (or kill themselves, I guess), how does that compare to what could happen in a control tower?
I’m not stupid nor a liar. I fully recognize that in this case the security implications in this case were next to nothing. But it’s a shitty security policy to do what happened here, and I think it says a lot about the controller who let his kid in, and he obviously should find a new line of work. Perhaps there is some sort of desk job outside of operations he would be good at instead. He should be thankful that he’s only getting Administrative leave for right now - if I brought an unscreened visitor into the sensitive areas of my office the Big Guards with Tasers would be dumping my limp body by the curb for pickup.
It’s clear I won’t convince anyone on here who thinks it’s no big deal to bring kids into the control tower and let them have an open mike. The FAA seems to be on my side and I’ll wager no kid ever gets in another control tower again unless he’s part of a vetted class tour, so the point really is moot.
So answer me this flyboy; Have you ever, even once, bent protocols? Like say put a kid in the pilots seat and let them play at flying your plane? Ever acted every inch the captain, in the air, and bent protocols based on your ‘better’ assessment of which ones need, or needn’t, be followed, right now? The point, is pilots do so all the time, by their own admission and, yes it does discount their interpretation of whether this breach of protocol is egregious or not.
‘Understanding an airport environment’, does not give you deeper insight into whether this breach of protocol was, or was not, a big deal. I eat in restaurants all the time, doesn’t make me a chef.
I’ll take the opinion of someone who actually sits in the seat over an inflated ego that thinks talking on the radio, and hanging out at the airport, gives their opinion any weight whatsoever.
This made me laugh.