Letters to the editor
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Regarding the editorial "Adults Only: The Business of Air Traffic Control Isn't Child's Play" (March 10): I'm quite insulted by the quick judgment and uneducated attacks the media blitz find the time to comment on.
The airline/air traffic control industry is multifaceted and extremely complicated to which no news editor should have the gall to freely comment on with such disregard to the system. Flying an airplane is not the same as clearing an airplane to take off, and comparing a crash of a 300,000-pound Russian airliner due to an unsupervised kid at the controls flying over the mountains of Russia in 1994 to an air traffic controller's very specific and focused command of a youth at a slow time of day at a U.S. airport is ridiculous and irresponsible.
"One of America's Great Newspapers" should be offering insight and education about aviation, not instilling your own personal fears and mongering the hype behind this story. I challenge you to find the concern or discomfort in the voices of the pilots on the tape. In the verbal exchange between experts in their field, the well-qualified pilots at low-cost/high-frills JetBlue Airways and global dominating Delta Airlines comment with fun and professional understanding.
The Federal Aviation Administration is reacting to pressure from an uneducated media's perceived danger of the event, not the reality of it. This news item proves to me that education is key to be able to see beyond editors publishing such an extreme opinion and to sensationalize a story in order to sell newspapers or build ratings for their "news" programs.
BRENDAN CONNOLLY
Eighty Four
The writer is a captain for a U.S. airline.
A real distraction
Children in air traffic control towers ... harmless and cute? Were the children in the tower for an entire shift? If so, who was supervising these children for the shift? I don't know any elementary-aged child who would be content to sit on their father's lap for an entire shift.
Children are a distraction, not only to the father who was being paid to give his full attention to the job, but to other air traffic controllers. This practice has been going on for years, and it is time for the FAA to correct this. It is not just this one controller at this one tower on these two days.
First Published March 16, 2010 12:00 am
