What happened to the child care centre?
My father worked for 32 years, in the two Air Radar Traffic System maintenance facilities in Kansas City. The last ten, as the manager of that regional facility inside the eighth and ninth floors of the second and more modern, fourteen-storey-tall air traffic control tower.
That's the backdrop.
Dad would sometimes take me up to the air control cab, after gaining permission from the lead air traffic radar controller on duty. It wasn't abnormal from what I could gather, to visit with escort and instructions.
It was quite a kick to be up, 14 stories off the ground, watching incoming and outgoing flights. I was 12 to 15 years old at those times. Kansas City is about 1/8th as busy as JFK, and those eight guys and gals manning the consoles and talking with pilots were pretty busy. I pretty much was told where to stand (out of their line of sight) and to keep quiet with my hands in my pockets.
10-15 minutes would too quickly pass and my father and I would then head down to the real control center on floors 10-11-12 of the tower, where the actual pressure-cooker existed. 10 controllers per floor, sitting in 75% darkness, with their glowing green consoles dominating their fields of view.
Again - no talking and even less walking around. Pretty boring shit for a 12 year old. They generally had one radar console that was used as a hot spare and vacant. Occasionally, one of the supervisors would demonstrate on that unit, what the real controllers were doing...and they might...maybe...let you - play on it for 10 or so minutes. But all safeties were on, and anything you did on that control unit was simulation, not live...no connection to any pilots or other official business. Certainly, no radio communications.
It was pretty piss poor judgement to allow a child to yak on the radio, even though he did have a script and adults were surrounding him. It tells me that at least some of the supervision had its attention diverted from what they should have been paying attention to.
You don't get on those kinds of com devices until you've been cleared, intensively trained for months, and then you supervised stringently. For all those reasons and because of the relatively low pay and high pressure - I decided young, to pursue a different career path.
It's reassuring, to me, that people fucked up and they are being held accountable.
The same GQP demanding we move on from January 6th, 2021 is still doing audits of the November 3rd, 2020 election.
What if there had been an emergency while the kid was playing?
The dad was right there, jesus. I did google this and the headlines were hilarious. No wonder everyone goes psycho over this shit.
"Kids direct air traffic in busy control tower" aaaagggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey, who else knows about air traffic control and wants to remind us? I watched a porn scene based on an airplane cockpit, does that count? lol.
There is a big difference to "bring your kid to work" if your job isn't responsible for keeping people safe and alive. If I had a kid and brought them to work nobody could possibly get hurt, whereas in the Air Traffic Control Industry, that is a different story. Somebody definitely didn't think this thru and should be punished appropriately whatever that is...just my opinion.Eo2nm7z33OTpWWYD
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy -unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill
Haha, i heard about this on the radio on the way to work on Friday. And Tim and "My Mom Calls Me George" had parents letting their kids call in. it was hilarious! They put a limit on the age from 4-8 i think. and a 4 year old called in and he was making freaky noises. it was by far the funniest thing i had heard all week.JQmngaMjZiBRWS3a
As a former air traffic controller I have to say that I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the report on this. I thought it was a Jay Leno skit or something like that. It was a really stupid idea and a complete lack of judgement for the individule to do this. Sorry, he is going to have to play the consiquences.