New "controller" at KJFK Tower...

Doug Taylor said:
You know, what got me into aviation was a in-flight cockpit visit on a United Airlines 727 from Visalia, CA to San Francisco.

I was sold.
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Me too, cockpit visits and the like directly led to my involvement with aviation, the Air Force paying me to go to college, and watching this play out is ticking me off.

Doug, I hope you will be joining me in sending a letter to the FAA Administrator reminding them why they have pilots and controllers to regulate. And that there are bigger fish to fry, every minute wasted on this is a minute that could be spent on real aviation safety issues.

A few thousand lettters in the next week could go a long way.
 
HeyEng said:
So freakin' sad. Just heard John Nance (former airline pilot dude now showing his tool on ABC) say "this would be like me taking a kid and putting him on my lap while I land the plane". Are you freakin' kidding me?! There is ANOTHER e-mail I need to send out.
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How much did they have to pay him to say that?
 
Doug Taylor said:
Let me dig around the admin panel of the website. If we've got Miles O'Brien, I know we've got Nance here somewhere.
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Looks like he is still in the AF Res (at least with some of the bio stuff I am finding). I am guessing up at McChord. Will have to take a look at the global address list when I go to work tomorrow.
 
Doug Taylor said:
You know, what got me into aviation was a in-flight cockpit visit on a United Airlines 727 from Visalia, CA to San Francisco.

I was sold.

We're so paranoid and "bruiseable" as a culture now, it's pretty sad.

I'm surprised the dorks on TMZ haven't screamed about the controller needing to go to "Microphone Rehab" or something like that.
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:yeahthat:

SFO closed its parking lot for watching airplanes because of 9/11. If someone wanted to sneak onto the AOA, there are a million and one ways to do it where no one would see them, why the hell would they do it in front of 50 people in a public lot? Even on a local level, most of the GA airports have signs out here saying NO TOUCHING THE RAMP UNLESS YOU HAVE AVIATORS AND A MUSTACHE. So now kids can't ride their bikes down to the local airport and hang around pilots learning about airplanes and washing them for rides. Well, they can I guess, but by doing so risk going to Guantanamo for not having a SIDA badge. When I was a kid and my dad worked for UA, I was invited into cockpits every time the pilots saw me drooling over all the dials, even got to sit in the jumpseats every now and then. All this non-reving I do now and I haven't seen a single kid being shown around a cockpit, but I have seen F/As chase kids and their parents AWAY from the cockpit during boarding.

Other than flight sim, I really don't see what would motivate kids to love airplanes now a days. I do not remember hearing the media ever attacking pilots when I was growing up, now its one incident after another.

So much for attracting "the best and the brightest", 20 years from now the only driving force for learning to fly will be SJS.
 
So disappointing...

NOTICE: Fun will no longer be tolerated. Yes, even the harmless kind.

Also, I recorded the ATIS once on a tower tour.... I don't think anyone died from it... but how can I be sure?
 
Kestrel452 said:
Is this how you normally try to prove your point, by calling the OP's argument "stupid"?
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I've already proved and stated what I had to say, yet some people keep having to come up with ridiculous arguments.


Slugger said:
Are you serious? Wow.
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x2! is there a source, because if they limit\prohibit tower\tracon visits over this, that's absolutely absurd. When will someone put their damn foot down and stand up for something in this country? Whenever the media gets involved everyone seems to just concede and change rules\procedures all because it will look better for joe public, WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A CLUE TO WHATS GOING ON WITH AIR TRAFFIC. This is the stuff that just makes me want to bang my head on the desk.
 
I fly out of JFK every time I go to work and I thought the whole thing is really sweet. What other kid can tell his friends that he cleare an airplane for takeoff in New york?

It's interesting to me that it doesn't seem like many pilots - you know, the ones who work with the controllers every single day - are to concerned about the whole thing.

The bottom line is that safety was not jeopardized at all during this whole thing. I think a slap on the wrist is in order and let's all get back to work.
 
Mark815 said:
I've already proved and stated what I had to say, yet some people keep having to come up with ridiculous arguments.




x2! is there a source, because if they limit\prohibit tower\tracon visits over this, that's absolutely absurd. When will someone put their damn foot down and stand up for something in this country? Whenever the media gets involved everyone seems to just concede and change rules\procedures all because it will look better for joe public, WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A CLUE TO WHATS GOING ON WITH AIR TRAFFIC. This is the stuff that just makes me want to bang my head on the desk.
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We had a Read and Initial about it this afternoon... No visitors, family, guests, etc. allowed in the operation areas unless there under official FAA business.
 
The sad thing is that if I had a friend at work with me that didn't sound like a child and I let them speak, no one would ever know...

Heck, there is a guy I work with that worked at HPN and said they would let the janitor work traffic sometimes because he loved aviation and was too old to apply to be an air traffic controller...
 
What a great opportunity for this kid! It's a complete joke that the controller and supervisor are in trouble. Once while working with our local Boy Scouts on the Aviation Merit Badge, I had a scout call for a taxi clearance, I did the read back but he made the initial call. I should be worried now. :o
 
XcalibeR said:
It seems many of the naysayers are forgetting, or don't even know about this one simple word:

"Disregard."

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that word used immediately after a trainee gave a clearance, I'd...well, I'd probably be able to go eat lunch at Chipotle, if nothing else. Heck, that sounds good, I might just go do that...
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Excellent point.

Once I got this clearance at an airport know to have trainees.
"Acey #, you're cleared for takeoff runway 12, turn left to heading 030. Be advised an F-15 is on a practice approach to 30. When he sees you he'll turn left to 210."
Before I could key the mic to decline the clearance, "Acey cancel clearance" come over the freq.

These guys are on top of stuff like that.
 
Kestrel452 said:
Where is the common sense in letting a child into a tower and direct traffic? Especially at such busy one to boot. Why should children be allow to talk on the radio while grown adults aren't allowed to even step foot inside the tower unless they're strongly involved with aviation? My ex-RA who is in CTI here can't even visit the class D tower here in town.

These are the kinds of things that create easily preventable accidents which make the government invoke laws on the rest of us. I don't consider my POV to be ignorant, but rather looking past how "cute" this is and seeing just how whack this guy is for bringing his kids into an environment where even the slightest hiccup or distraction can cause the deaths of hundreds.

My opinion is just as valid as all the other non-controllers trying to say that it was "cute".
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I was at UND in the CTI program and also an RA. Part of one of the ATC courses is spending a couple hours at the tower and observing. Other times, I've just felt like going up to the tower and visiting with the controllers and had no problem doing that.
So I find it very hard to believe that the tower would not let him visit. All that's needed is a phone call to the tower saying you want to come in and see what goes on. Sometimes that's not even needed and you can just show up.
 
Hell, every time I've been up in a tower, it seems like they're excited to have someone from "the outside" up there to visit.

Of course it doesn't hurt to take them some biscuits and gravy from Cracker Barrel.
 
tk727 said:
Rumor in the FAA is the program is on its way back. They just needed to get a new way to verify identification. So, now that the FAA has the PIV cards maybe it'll happen soon.
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It has nothing to do with identification or TSA it has to do with management.

In fact the jumpseat program is back. You have to do it within an 8 hour shift and are only allowed one Fam trip a year. Very hard to do, so basicly noone wants to do it.

It has to do with covering their butts so it doesn't look like we are taking gifts.

You can really tell the difference between controllers who have fam'ed (or had previous aviation careers that had them in the cockpit) and those that haven't. Those that have tend to be more laid back and open to requests. Those that haven't don't care and tend to deny requests.
 
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