FAA: Child in air traffic tower talking to pilots 'not acceptable'

[ralgith]

0

Bullshit. Some jobs you don't fuck around with, even when you're being 'careful'. Planes full of people are not something you can just say "whoops", we'll fix that and no one will know the difference.

If something did go terribly wrong, even without ANY fault from the kid giving clearance to land, you know they're going to eat shit over that, an inquiry and all kinds of other shit made out of it.

It's so not worth the trouble and it's a good thing nothing bad happened to create the shit storm that would follow if it did.

Except that nothing DID go wrong.

Seems to me that the child simply spoke the words he/she was instructed to verbatim. There was no incorrect commands, instructions or language so where is the problem?

The father simply let the kid speak which I'm sure gave them a real thrill and may be the inspiration for the kid to become an air traffic controller in the future. Now don't thay have a bit of a time getting enough quality people interested in this profession? Would this not be a great recruiting tool for a future generation? I think it is.

Sounds like a bunch of scared rabbits running around with the chicken little syndrome at full intensity!

Thank you. Points well said.

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Now, while I never finished getting my license I've taken a few piloting lessons. Admittedly in small planes, I would never want to fly something the size of a building anyways. However, we don't know the age of this child, or anything else. And I STILL have no problem with this. This is how you get children involved; as Flamethrower pointed out. I "flew" the first time in THIRD GRADE. Sure, it was a 6 seater and the pilot continued to operate the rudder... but his hands were off the control column a couple inches. Obviously he could have grabbed it long before I could have done anything drastic enough to threaten the plane, but it gave me my love of flying. Everything sounded responsible and well controlled to me. This is simply paranoid people freaking out. Think about it, if the kid had started babbling and wasn't giving clear concise commands in the PROPER format the planes WOULD not have obeyed. There was absolutely no danger. None. More power to the man for taking his kid to work and teaching him about the job.

EDIT TO ADD: Also, they clearly state in the video that the planes had been warned beforehand, which means that what I said above about the kid giving properly formatted and concise and clear commands would be even more strictly paid attention to.