I have just read this thread, from the beginning. I was laughing out loud for the most part. If ATC and pilots were as unable to listen to each other and get the job done as many of the folks in this thread are, the whole system would have to shut down.
Me? Why do I feel I have something to say?
Commercial, multi-engine & instrument rated; 10,000 + hours as PIC.
A & P mechanic. ( only means I have been around aviation a lot.)
100+ hours in Control towers, Approach radar rooms and coordinating complicated aerial mapping jobs with DFW, Chicago, and New York …
Many hours with personal friends in Tulsa & Atlanta tower.
Not as much flight time after 2001 as some of the big iron pilots on the board and the rule changes have been many. How many actually improved flight safety is very open to debate.
To the point of ATC and safety, I have had many ‘situations’ over the years, some of my making, some of bad luck or chance and 12 that were the direct fault of bad instructions from ATC.
In the end, it is the pilots responsibility. “The ATC controller made me do it.” is not a valid defense. By their very own rules it is plainly stated that we are required to not comply if they are wrong. We have to have a good reason later as to why, much more a reason to make the claim that they made a mistake or error in judgment than is required for them to accuse the pilot.
The point is though that no amount of procedure can cover all contingencies… A tired, mad, distracted, unhappy or just a normal human pilot or controller must use good judgment and common sense and training and good attitude to make flying safe as possible.
Pilots have one dis-advantage in that they are responsible for all of it in the end, and as long as the controller was following protocol, they are not to blame.
The FAA is not perfect nor does it accept blame very well for when it messes up.
A happy, well trained and rested controller making a living wage is who I want to listen to. He does not make near as many mistakes as the others will. And there will be mistakes, and judgment and adaptation has to happen for a good outcome no matter what the cause of the problem. Not rules and regulations. But we have to have rules and regulations to form the base.
One part of today’s problems is how we have allowed zero tolerance to creep in to almost everything that we don’t have a perfect answer to.
I am not airline nor am I the hobby pilot, I worked full time as a pilot and over 50% of the time I was making flights that were non standard and required modification of the normal everyday style of A to B flying that the airlines and general aviation does.
Now what this ATC controller did and what should be done about it. well, no matter what is done, it will be partly wrong for him, the kids involved, the way to get the best efforts of all ATC workers in the future, the public, the pilots and the useless added instruction for new controllers that will have nothing to do with getting them to approach each day and each hour and each bit of the complex world of safely getting aircraft from one place to the other in a better manner.
At this point, as far as a real affect on safety, there will be no improvement and IMO, an actual small decrease because judgment calls will have suffered another blow from this knee jerk reaction, most of it, IMO, driven by the media’s method of reporting it in such a way as to get the biggest reactions. (Yeah, I don’t like the news media, so shoot me.)
I was used as a training aid many times by the local controllers while they were training new people. It was easy to tell when they were doing training and they knew that they could ask me to make unusual maneuvers and accept strange and out of the ordinary instructions and would gladly help in what they were doing without the trainee having any idea that the deck was stacked. The airline pilots would gladly have done the same but constraints of time $$$$ and paying passengers did not bode well because of longer arrival and departures so the locals filled this function. I imagine there is a rule against it now or the will be soon in this drive to make sure the problem has been addressed when in actuality the net effect is to have reduced overall safety.
If there was more cross contact between controllers and pilots without the boss sitting there with a rule book about what the questions and answers had to be but a free exchange of why they each do, have to do and like to do things in a certain way within the rules and why it is that way from each point of view, there would be a greater increase in safety than any other thing I can think of.
This particular offense, it needs to be looked at in a different manner than is being done. What can we learn, not who we can blame and punish.
Real safety is not accomplished by forever writing new rules and regulations and restrictions or harsh punishment just because of ‘might have been’s’, but by an increase in knowledge of the human interface that is being used.
All my fights VFR above 10,000 feet, all perfectly legal are not one bit safer by the sterile cockpit rule below 10,000 feet applied in airline cockpits. Might actually make both aircraft be in more danger. There are no rules that do not infringe on someone / something sometime.
*:: The only time I would have too much fuel would be if I was on fire. ::: *