Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? You don’t even need aviation experience and you know what that means. That clearance, delivered by a youngster to a commercial aircraft, has unleashed a storm of complaint across the country.
Days ago, an Air Traffic Controller at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, brought his young son to work with him and allowed him to issue that clearance. The next day, he brought his young daughter to work and she had a similar opportunity. You would think global aviation safety had been compromised given the unleashing of media coverage, and the controller waits as his fate is considered by the Federal Aviation Administration.
As a twenty-plus year private pilot, and father of four sons who have all done the same thing as these two New York kids, I am stunned at the over-reaction to this non-event. My two older boys, when they were in their early teens, accompanied me to Boston Center, the FAA facility on Rte. 3 in Nashua, NH, where a friend of mine was a senior controller and manager. They each were allowed to issue a benign clearance to a commercial jet. “Cactus 121, climb and maintain 35,000…”. The reply, in old-salt pilot parlance, “roger that Boston, Cactus 121 climb and maintain 350…” . I still remember it. You would have thought they had talked to God. Both pilots, like the ones days ago in New York, not only took it in stride, but seemed a little lightened by it. No surprise.
Aviation is an American institution that is rooted…rooted in, the fascination of youngsters in the wonder of flight. I bet I don’t know a single pilot who didn’t spend a little of their childhood clinging to a chainlink fence at a small airfield somewhere in America. Back then, stories of washing airplanes in exchange for a ride were commonplace. Even now, at Boire Field in Nashua where I fly, a kid doesn’t have to hang around too long on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with too much of a forlorn look on his face, before someone is going to offer him a hop around the patch.
In over twenty years of flying, my greatest joy is bringing young people up for their first flight, and maybe a few minutes at the controls. I’ll know right off, depending on their response, if they’re going to catch “the bug”. No thought pleases me more than to think that, years from now, when that young kid, now a young man receiving his “certificate” (license), may remember his flight with me as the catalyst that sent him off on a lifelong romance with aviation. I remember flying with my father and his instructor, Harvey Sawyer of the Silver Ranch Airport in Jaffrey, NH. My father soloed but never went on to get his ticket, but I knew then that someday, I would fly airplanes.
The controller in New York is undoubtedly proud of his job, as he should be, and wanted to let his kids see…for just one day, what exactly he does at work. What an invigorating, exciting and bracing job, watching and controlling airplanes in and around JFK Airport, with a view that is unrivaled and only a few will ever see at all. Are we so tight now that we can’t allow a kid a chance, with father and controller by his side, to clear an airplane for takeoff? C’mon. I’ve listened to people on talk radio for days now excoriating this controller. Lighten up. This is how kids learn, get enthused, dream and grow. It isn’t all about the classroom.
More importantly, if the flying public wants someone to get mad at…try the FAA itself, which will use this “incident” as a podium to demonstrate to the public how serious they are about safety. What people don’t know, is that the FAA routinely denies safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board, year after year. decade after decade. From the fuel tank explosion that took down TWA Flight 700 over Long Island Sound, to the events leading up to the ValuJet crash into the Everglades,both crashes caused by problems the NTSB had warned about years earlier, the FAA is always putting airline finances above passenger safety, time after time after time.
The FAA might trouble itself with keeping “kids” from flying commercial airplanes, like the two horrendously under-experienced pilots who crashed the Continental flight in Buffalo,NY last year. Flew an approach through bad weather, knew they were picking up ice, and when the airplane finally stalled, the pilot pulled back on the stick instead of applying full power with stick forward. Exactly the wrong input and everyone on board died. The “time-in-type” and minimum experience requirements, along with pay, have dwindled to the point where pilots beginning the climb up the ladder to “Captain” may not even be shaving yet. I’ve seen Captains on commercial flights I’ve taken that looked like Doogie Howser, like someone’s nephew was flying the plane. I still prefer to see a little gray hair, or a bald spot, in the left seat. There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.
The rest of the world can mamby-pamby itself into a sterile white room where nothing bad ever happens, but I will choose to take as big a bite of the apple as I can, and I hope my kids will too. Life is about experiences, and experiences shape who we are and influence which and how many doors will open along our journey through life. I salute the controller who took his kids to work. Look…if that was where I worked…I would have a new guest everyday because let’s face it…that’s a really cool job!