|Navlog|

Jetwhine has a good analysis of the traffic controller incident.

By now those interested will have heard the voice of a little boy giving takeoff and handoff clearances to five or less aircraft departing KJFK.

The FAA has suspended the boy’s father, a tower controller at KJFK, and the father’s supervisor. The Air Traffic Controller’s union (spit!) issued a condemnation.

Oh pleeeeaaaase! Like this is the worst thing to happen to air traffic. It was cute, the pilots were tickled pink (“awesome job,” one of them said) and it was all in good fun and most likely that little boy is on track to become a controller. Well, maybe not after this hellish reaction.

Controlling a tower isn’t the most exertive of jobs consisting basically of clearing departing aircraft for takeoff and landing, and handing them off to departure—of course, at an airport like KJFK, there’s definitely more involved than that, but this wasn’t radar control. If the airport wasn’t that busy, heck I could control.

This could have been handled by a reprimand and that’d be it (“gosh,  you know better than that. Don’t do it again, will ya!?!”) Instead, we have World War III.