The nine-year-old children who came into work with their father at the JFK Tower (story, with audio recording) seem to have captured the public imagination. I’ve been asked my opinion on this subject at least 25 times. A lot of why people are excited seems to stem from a misunderstanding of how the air traffic control (ATC) system works. Folks seem to think that controllers make split-second decisions and pilots react instantly to commands heard on the radio. The reality is that a plane can take off from JFK, lose contact with the controllers due to radio failure, and fly all the way to Los Angeles and land, without ever talking to another controller. The route of flight clearance issued prior to departure should be sufficient to get all the way to LAX.
How about the takeoff clearances issued by the 9-year-olds? A light simple plane might start rolling immediately after receiving such a clearance. A heavy complex plane could be delayed for 15 seconds or longer as the pilots ran final checklists and waited for the engines to “spool up” (going from idle to full thrust takes about 8 seconds on the biggest planes). A controller would have several seconds after issuing the takeoff clearance to cancel it, which would cause the pilot to pull the power back and stop on the runway, possibly after rolling forward a few feet. The opportunities for miscommunication here were very few. The planes had already been told to “position and hold” on a particular runway by the father. At this point a jet is parked on an active runway. The pilots know that they can’t hang out there for very long. The only possible things that could be said to them are “continue to hold” (unnecessary but possibly something ATC would say), “cleared for takeoff”, or “exit the runway and contact Ground”. They already have their assigned departure heading, altitude, and the frequency for the next controller.
The 9-year-olds also told some of the pilots to “contact Departure”. What would have happened if they never received the instruction and stayed with the Tower? Eventually they would have realized that they shouldn’t be talking to Tower at 5,000′ above the ground and called to request a frequency change and/or simply switched to their already-assigned Departure control frequency.
Because ATC needs to train new controllers, each workstation is equipped so that both the trainee and trainer can talk on the same frequency. The trainer can break in and override the trainee. This happens all the time at Hanscom Field, our home airport. The 9-year-olds did their job perfectly, so there was never a need for their father to correct or step in over them, but he could have done so at any time.
There are several aspects to working as a tower controller. One is to figure out an overall flow and sequence that will work for a dozen or so airplanes at a time; this is pretty challenging and involves thinking in four dimensions (3D space plus time). A much simpler task is issuing instructions to make that flow and sequence happen. It seems doubtful that the 9-year-olds were involved in the puzzle solving challenge. They took on part of the instruction-issuing task. As a pilot I am much more nervous when a 25-year-old is being trained at Hanscom than I would have been at JFK talking to these 9-year-olds.
For those who thought that the 9-year-olds were truly doing the job, I was surprised that they did not also question why more than $200,000 per year of their tax dollars were going to pay salary/benefits/pension for each controller. As far as the FAA bureaucracy is concerned, this is the organization that spent $9 billion in the 1980s and 1990s on some new software that had to be thrown out, the most expensive civilian software project failure in history. By making America $9 billion poorer, surely some Americans died as a consequence (being poor is generally less safe than being rich). Yet no FAA employees were disciplined. In fact, all concerned got pay raises, promotions, etc. The same organization is now disciplining the father of the 9-year-olds and his supervisor.
I knew the boy was being closely coached by his father. I know it’s against the reg’s, but no one should lose their job over this. A warning should do it.
In 1989, I passed the ATC exam with flying colors. At the control center in Nashua, New Hampshire, I zipped through the interviewing, health, psych and screening process. I was all set to go on to the training center in Oklahoma, but I failed the color vision test (a slight impairment) – the last test.
I had no problem working on the monitors at the center, but was told the FAA was going to switch to a whole new system with full color monitors displaying geographical relief maps. I appealed over and over – even to the Surgeon General, but was shot down.
A friend is a controller at Macarthur on Long Island. As late as the early 2000’s he said they never went with the full color relief map monitors and that many of the control centers were still using the old style monitors. Losing out on that opportunity still bugs me sometimes.
Speaking as someone who as a child did exactly what those kids did (and more), I thoroughly agree. This entire boondoggle is a good example of how bad outrage-driven media coverage can get.
From the second I read this story I thought “What’s the big deal?!” I actually was going to ask Phil his opinion but figured he’d comment (sooner than this) or show up in a TV interview. I really wish the media had asked a pilot if they were scared about this. I mean, the pilot in one of the planes chuckled.
The ignorance of the American public doesn’t surprise me any more, but this is hardly worth official disciplinary action.
Werner: Sorry to hear about your experience. I’ve been considerably lucky in that I have no sense of smell and have been able to obtain waivers for medical jobs that require this.
Heaven help us if a flight attendant lets a child say “tray tables up and seatbacks to their full upright position”…. the plane may very well crash….. (rolls eyes)