Child directs airplanes from JFK air traffic control tower – FAA not amused


Bring your child to work day usually involves showing the little ones how your office looks, and letting them play with the water cooler. At New York JFK Airport, someone took things a little too far by letting a child issue commands to aircraft. In the video above, you can clearly hear the kid, with someone in the background telling him what to say.

Thankfully, the pilots all seem to find it rather funny, and I assume it brightened up their otherwise boring day. Sadly, the FAA doesn’t share their sense of humor, as a full investigation is underway to determine who did what, and why. The FAA had this to say:

Pending the outcome of our investigation, the employees involved in this incident are not controlling air traffic. This behavior is not acceptable and does not demonstrate the kind of professionalism expected from all FAA employees.

Even though rules were broken, I doubt airplanes were in any kind of danger during the short burst of entertainment from the tower.

FAA admits near-collision of two jets

Early in the morning on November 23, two jets coming in for landing at Denver International Airport had a near-miss, as one plane tried to make a U-turn into the path of the other, causing the jets to come within 200 feet of one another.

According to ABC News, one jet was in a line of planes coming in for landing. The other was on a parallel path, and needed to be guided in to the line. Air traffic controllers gave the second plane incorrect instructions though, requiring it to turn around to right in the path of the other plane. The plane’s collision avoidance system sounded an alarm, and the pilots were able to avoid the other plane.

ABC News quoted a source as saying that the two planes merged on the radar screen and came with “a blink of an eye” of each other. As is always the case with incidents like these, the FAA is investigating.

New FAA plane tracking computer off to a bad start

For years, the Federal Aviation Administration has been working on modernizing the computer systems that keep our skies safe.

Many of these systems have been in operation for over 30 years, and while the old “it it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” saying may apply to a lot of stuff, it isn’t really applicable to air traffic control.

One of the new systems being tested by the FAA is actually live in Salt Lake City. The “En Route Automation” computer system provides better flight management, and allows flight controllers to handle more aircraft, in a wider range than the current systems.

Sadly, the system is not entirely free of glitches, as a controller at Salt Lake City airport encountered last weekend. When monitoring a flight on its way to Texas, the screen suddenly changed the plane to one that had just landed.

The new system was immediately taken offline, and all planes were told to increase their distances between each other while the backup air traffic control computers were brought online.

The glitch has been identified and a fix will be applied. Obviously, a new system is needed to reduce delays in the sky, but if basic things like aircraft identification do not work correctly, there may be quite a bit of work necessary before the new system goes nationwide.

Airport dining in style – in an air traffic control tower

Amsterdam Airport has always been home to some very decent restaurants, and today, they welcomed the newest establishment to their lineup. The WINGS food & drinks restaurant is located at the east side of the airport, home to the old Schiphol location (which closed in the 60’s).

What sets this restaurant apart from any other airport eatery, is that it is built inside an old air traffic control tower. The tower was built in 1952, when Schiphol handled just 325 passengers a day.

In 1998, the tower was scheduled to be demolished, but thanks to donations from various Dutch companies, a moving team picked the tower up, and moved it 30 meters from its original location, saving it from the wrecking ball. At 661,000 lbs, not an easy thing to do.

With the tower at its new location, construction crews transformed it from its original task into a restaurant and meeting center. The tower features four floors of meeting rooms, all overlooking the airport runways.

Unfortunately, WINGS is not easy to reach from the main airport building, but a bus service operates between the main terminal buildings and “Schiphol Oost”. WINGS is open on weekdays, and offers a full menu with everything from typical Dutch food to various international dishes and sandwiches.

Jet circles Zamboanga airport waiting for missing air traffic controllers

Unlike our very own Kent Wien, I never trained to be a pilot, but even without those years of training, I can’t imagine it is very comforting to get close to your destination airport and find an unstaffed air traffic control tower.

This is exactly what happened when a jet carrying 156 passengers arrived in the airspace of Zamboanga airport in the Philippines, after a flight from the nation’s capital.

Instead of hearing the familiar commands from the tower telling them they were cleared to land, the Philippine Airlines flight crew heard nothing. It took 30 minutes of circling around the airport for someone to finally make their way to the tower and permit the jet to land.

Of the 5 controllers who were supposed to be on duty that morning, 2 were missing, 2 were late and one was on an approved day off, but their approval note did not make it to the airport administrator. Talk about a total breakdown of communications.

The excuse the remaining 4 controllers presented was that public transport was hard to find the day after Christmas, but officials say the controllers may still have been a little too much in “party mode”. I’m sure that is comforting to hear if you were in the air around Zamboanga that morning.

The newspaper article claims the controllers were fired, but Philippine officials merely say the 5 are currently suspended pending an investigation.

(Via: Sydney Morning Herald)

Other tales from the skies
Amazing and insane stories from a real-life flight attendant and co-pilot